Racial and Cultural Diversity in News Media
Objectivity and accuracy are among the most important journalistic values. Consistently, however, Canadian news media has under-represented and stereotyped racialized groups.
Objectivity and accuracy are among the most important journalistic values. Consistently, however, Canadian news media has under-represented and stereotyped racialized groups.
That Indigenous women are likely to be victims of violence is not news: Indigenous women aged 25 to 44 are five times more likely to suffer a violent death than other women in Canada.
Canada is a diverse and multicultural nation, but a major criticism that can be leveled at Canadian media’s treatment of religion is that it does not reflect this diversity. Lack of representation is, for some religions, as considerable an issue as misrepresentation is for others. Media recognition of Canada’s ‘religious mosaic’ and increased coverage of underrepresented religions is the first step towards accurate media portrayal.
In this lesson, students identify the differences between TV families and real families by analyzing the conventions used by TV shows; and by comparing the problems and actions of television families to real world families.
Canada is a culturally diverse country that is home to many different religions. These religions, however, are not always equally represented in Canadian media, where portrayals of religion are often stereotyped and disempowering.
Since the 1990s, media educators Anita Day and Guy Golan have identified increased tension between people of faith and media outlets [1]. Media and religion are two concepts that can be challenging to partner: religion is frequently misrepresented in media for a wide variety of reasons, whether as a result of mistakenly held beliefs or by dramatizing religion to sell newspapers or attract viewers.
The That’s Not Me tutorial focuses on the role that mainstream media play in shaping our perceptions about diversity. The tutorial explores what we see – and what we don’t see – on TV and in newspapers, video games, movies, the internet and other media. The tutorial looks at common trends in media portrayals of diversity and examines the reasons behind these trends; explores some of the factors behind media bias when covering diversity issues; and talks about the importance of media education to talking about diversity issues and empowering young people to take action.
Anti-Semitism is experiencing a modern revival in popular media, not only in Canada but worldwide. While Canada, with the fourth largest Jewish population in the world, is not among the nations where anti-Semitism has increased most dramatically, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has nonetheless acknowledged violence against Jewish people as a significant problem in this country [1]. Awareness of media stereotypes and misrepresentations faced by the Jewish community is fundamental in countering this anti-Semitist resurgence with tolerance and acceptance.
I can look at the media and see people from my group widely represented as heroes, role models, leaders, news anchors, television hosts, and experts.
Two important ideas relating to teens are the imaginary audience and the personal fable. The imaginary audience makes them overestimate how much attention other people are paying to them. This makes them more self-conscious and leads them to think of privacy primarily in terms of impression management – trying to control how others see them. The personal fable makes teens see themselves as the main character of a story and, as a result, leads many to believe that bad things will simply not happen to them.