Page 286 - Culture Society and the Media

276 HOW THE MEDIA REPORT RACE
Power. In any event this ‘media blindness’ was not confined to the press. As
Downing recorded, BBC TV News

Took with the utmost seriousness the claims of a Manchester West Indian
to be a colonel in the black power movement, and to have discovered a
loophole in electoral law which would enable him to flood Manchester
City Corporation with black power advocates…. Later in the year the
whole affair was exposed by a ‘24 Hours’ item; the news section, however,
maintained a stony silence in the face of their own gullibility. (Downing,
1975, p. 115)

It may seem that the reporting of the ‘Black Power Plot’ is an extreme case; that
the safest conclusion is that once the media had ignored contrary evidence (or at
least had not let it alter the framework within which the story was being
reported), it simply became too embarrassing to admit that they had—partly by
virtue of the sheer intensity of coverage—perpetuated a hoax on themselves.
What makes the case of general interest is the nature of the prevailing
assumptions themselves and the ease (rather than the tenacity) with which the
media were able to adhere to this readymade framework, in which blackness
appears to be automatically coupled with threat and conflict. It must be borne in
mind, however, that just as ‘bad news’ is more newsworthy for journalists than is
good news, so ‘bad reporting’, in the sense outlined by Evans, is more
noteworthy for media critics than is careful reporting. The reporting of the Blood
Brothers or of the Black Power Plot may thus be typical of slipshod or careless
reporting without being typical of all reporting.
What most media critics do hold to be typical of all reporting is that the media
have concentrated on the threat perceived by the white majority to be implicit in
black immigration and in the black presence; and that they have neglected the
extent of discrimination and disadvantage experienced by blacks except in so far
as these very conditions seem to contribute towards the supposed threat, for
example, by fostering anti-social behaviour. They seek to give the impression
that in all important respects the media have presented their audience with an
unvarying picture of race and immigration in Britain. Husband, for example,
writes that the ‘news consensus’ suggests that the bulk of the white population

receiving news media definition of events would find a statement that
black immigration is a threat and a problem quite reasonable…the news
media have reported race relations in too uncritical a way: they have
reflected racist assumptions and reported without adequate analysis racist
behaviour and racist policy. (Husband, 1975, pp. 26–7)

It is true that because news values favour stories about racial conflict rather than
about racial harmony, media reporting is likely to portray black immigration as a