Staff Editorial:The Media’s Coverage of Black Crises

While TVOne's newest show "Find Our Missing" should be commended for its efforts to locate missing black children whose disappearances the media often does not cover, it raises serious questions about the media's coverage of issues that affect communities of color and what should be done about it.

For all of the talk about the discrepancies in media coverage in the black community, resentment about the mainstream media's apparent decreased level of regard for black life is not a new phenomenon.

For example, in the wake of all the publicity that the Casey Anthony trial generated, many people argued that if Anthony had been black, there would have been no question about her being convicted. Even more people argued that a case about the disappearance and murder of a young black child would not have gotten even a fraction of the level of media attention that the Anthony trial received.

Unfortunately, this trend does not just apply to the media's coverage of missing children. Many national headlines and news broadcasts about the United States Navy Seals' rescue of American and Danish hostages from Somali pirates failed to explore, or even mention, the debilitating famine that has been gripping the country for months.

Therefore, as many of us know, when it comes to covering stories concerning problems that affect people of color, the angle from which much of the media chooses to tell the story often reflects the interests of another community or minimizes the importance of black life.

In this way, both the coverage and lack of coverage of loss and distress in our communities can sometimes make it seem as though the tragedies that we experience are instances of fate or inadvertent solutions to "the Negro problem."

At the same time, while many black people would like for the media to cover important issues that take place in our communities, we also want to be represented as a whole, with more than just the negative aspects or stereotypes of our lives and communities being highlighted.

Still, reporters in the predominantly white world of media may also feel uncomfortable or unqualified to explore the issues that affect blacks, whether on the continent or on the corner, in detail.

Along the same lines, while most people celebrated TVOne for its efforts, some people challenged the show as being an example of "reverse racism" because it explicitly focuses on finding missing people of color.

If in 2012, it is still necessary to explain that the media's established pattern of covering missing white people—without that being identified as "racism"—is what makes a show dedicated to finding missing blacks necessary, then there are still big problems with race relations that we are not willing to discuss.

TVOne has the right idea. If we cannot depend on the messenger, it is up to us to deliver the message ourselves.

Our View: It is important to have independent black media outlets to tell our stories in the way that we think they should be told.