Page 141 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Media Studies 125

about it and see images of it in the local newspaper. If I relied only on
that newspaper for my sense of the place, I ’ d have a very limited picture
to work with. The newspaper, run and owned by Whites, presents what
might be called a White picture of North Philadelphia. News stories operate
with the presupposition that the reality of a world in which Whites have
money and Blacks do not is normal rather than objectionable. That under-
lying assumption or presupposition is never spoken about and never
made visible in news stories, but it limits the range of stories told in the
newspaper. Certain stories that do not conform to that presupposition will
be routinely and almost unconsciously left out, while those that do conform
will be included. A story by a Black that argued for a redistribution of
wealth so that everyone had enough cash to get by comfortably, both Black
and White, would be out of step with the newspaper ’ s normal “ tone. ” It

would appear too “ radical ” or not sufficiently “ mainstream. ” Yet equally
objectionable stories by Whites that portray Blacks as animalistic and
violent are considered normal. They conform to the dominant presuppo-
sition of the newspaper that Blacks are “ normally ” and in an acceptable
way poor.
For example, a headline on February 15, 2009, consists of these words:
“ Cold - Blooded Killer. ” It refers to a Black man who shot and killed a White

police officer who was responding to a fight. A sub - headline reads, “ The

Suspect: Ramsey Calls Career Criminal, 33, ‘ Unsalvageable. ’ ” In the fi rst
paragraph of the story, Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey describes the
as - yet - unnamed perpetrator as someone who “ should not have been

among us, period. ” The suspect is finally named and humanized in the
fourth paragraph, well after the reader has had him depicted as unworthy
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of sympathy or understanding.
The distribution of information over and across paragraphs arranged in
a certain order is called narrative . We tell the narrative or story of things,
events, people, and the world when we describe it in a certain order.
Narratives usually have a subject, the doer of the action or the voice of the
story teller. Here the subject is Ramsey, and the object of his story narrative,
the story he tells, is the Black suspect. This perfectly normal narrative
strategy – of having an authoritative White policeman recount the story of
what happened using highly evaluative words such as “ career criminal ” –
has the effect of aligning the reader with the White police and against the
Black population. The Blacks are objects and do not get to tell stories about
events. Those who do get to tell such stories, the ones who are privileged
or dominant, are White.