Throughout this course, we have critically considered the role that the media plays in shaping (or misshaping) U.S. democratic politics. In “Teaching Trayvon: Race, Media, and the Politics of Spectacle,” Noble critically examines the media’s role in representing episodes of “violent racialized death in the United States”(13). Noble suggests that media coverage of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012 obscured more than it revealed about racial violence. Does Noble’s perspective help you to think differently about media reports of more recent deaths of African Americans at the hands of law enforcement or white civilians?
2 thoughts on “Week 11 Day 1 Discussion Question 2”
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This article, “Teaching Trayvon”, written by Safiya Umoja Noble, is helpful in understanding how specific crimes and events can takeover the news compared to others while discussing the Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman case that swept the nation in 2012. It makes it clear that the media likes to capitalize on intensely focusing on certain stories that are able to be molded in various aspects of how they’re shared in order to appeal to individual audiences, twisting the case in order to grab and hold the attention of specific demographics. Right from the beginning of the article Noble shows how differently various media sources choose to interpret and share the news, with 41 segments about the story shared on CNN, 13 on MSNBC, and only 1 on Fox. Noble later makes an interesting observation on this specific case, although it applies to other stories of this nature, saying, “It is crucial that we look at the creation of Trayvon and George as commodities – stories for consumption, including the way in which their stories proliferated and were consumed for a variety of purposes.” This notion is really fascinating, as it appeared that the story had so much coverage because of the greater weight that it carried for racial injustices, while this quote makes it apparent that media sources simply harnessed that public interest to create a commodity to sell. Noble also points out how social media and these extreme interests taken to stories by specific and usually biased groups can hide the truth and real importance of a story, referring to Martin and Zimmerman when saying, “Their commodity status had the potential to cloud the ability to read the action of killing a black person, and by extension black people, in social and historical context.” Overall, I find that the article really makes it apparent how the media is a business, with more of a focus on selling a product or commodity of a story, rather than delivering direct and factual news. It’s apparent that the stories that I have seen and heard about the case and other cases of similar content have been biased and focused on being sold to me, prompting me to think about finding more unbiased sources and focus on finding a variety factual information, not just that that is thought to appeal to me.
I personally think the media twists and spins several different events and it’s just more obvious in a case like the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. My one, unwavering example is the recent events that occurred in Charlotte around the death of Keith Lamont Scott. This event had absolutely nothing to do with race. You know how I know that? The victim, Scott was black, the police officer who shot him was black, and the police chief of CMPD is also black. How on earth could such a situation be about racial injustice and/or prejudices? The media on the other hand took this shooting and ran with it. CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News, all of the main television media outlets, painted this shooting as a result of racial stereotypes and racial divide in our nation. I very well understand the racial implications of something like the death of Trayvon Martin, where the police officer was white, but when all directly involved members are of the same race, it cannot be about race. Is our country racially divided still? Sure it is, no doubt. But the media plays to that divide that we as a country are trying to resolve. They want ratings and they get those ratings by presenting current events in the most noteworthy manner. Unfortunately they unrecognizably are only contributing to this racial divide that is causing so many problems in our nation.