Since its inception, television has become the predominant medium in which Americans have come to learn about themselves and the problems of the day. But television has done a good job of presenting some of the most important issues facing the United States, class and race. Mantsios Gregory was right when he wrote in his essay, "Class in America: Myths and Realities", that "the institutions that make mass culture and define the parameters of public debate have avoided the problems of class." (Rereading 319) but did not realize that television, particularly the evening news, deals with class and race, but in ways that skew the debate instead of adding a clarification. The news, both local and network broadcasts, it tends to perpetuate stereotypes of the lower class and present an inaccurate description of poverty. Prevention of problems of class is driven by the desire to achieve high ratings and the demographics of the mainly middle class or the group of 18 to 49 years of age, who are more attractive to advertisers. But in doing so, not only the media help create inaccurate perceptions of class and poverty in the United States, but also makes the public want policies and legislative responses to problems that exacerbate rather than solve Them . Studies have shown that the gap between the haves and have-nots have widened over the past eight years since the beginning of the longest economic expansion in American history. The United States has one of the highest proportions in the income gaps between rich and poor of any industrialized nation. 1% of U.S. families has increased to 78%, while more than half the population fifth saw their incomes decline by 5.3%. (Mantsios 321). But it would be hard pressed to hear such facts in the evening news. During the economic expansion that was driven by the high-tech stock bubble, stories of twentysomethings who were getting rich after onset dotcom began trading on Wall Street and high-tech giants such as Cisco Systems were the standard. Jeff Bezos, the chairman before AOL (now AOL Time Warner), was the darling of Time magazine in 1999 named him its "Person of the Year." CNBC had touted the stocks of these Internet companies and "Good Morning America" he had stressed the Pets.com mascot, a puppet in his program (which was discovered after the Disney Corp., which is the parent company "Good Morning America," also owned stock in Pets.com before they went out of business, to the shame of Diane Sawyer, co-host on the news program in the morning). "Nightline "also from ABC News, did a story on the lifestyle and social habits, or lack thereof, of these nouveau riche Silicon Valley. A year later, as the tech bubble was starting to explode, which published a story about two young men and their travails in investment to get your startup dot-com. These stories gave the impression that everyone in America was rolling in wealth. In fact, many reports conclude that more and more Americans are investing on Wall Street (the advertisers also gave this impression ads for investment firms obstruction of radio waves, especially in news programs .) While the number of Americans who had money in the stock market has increased with 401k plans, what these reports did not say was that a large majority had only $ 1,000 invested in stocks, while 1% of Americans had more than 75% of shares on Wall Street. ; When the bubble burst of high technology, the stories which later changed to how suddenly unemployed workers in Silicon Valley were going. The reports focused on parts of pink-slip which is being held in San Jose and San Francisco and the pursuit of further employment of the unemployed. The media also offer viewers ideas on how to obtain new jobs, such as resume and interviewing tips. The end of the economic expansion that began under President Clinton, and now ends at the end of his term, experts and business analysts offer the opportunity to scratch their heads and wonder how the bubble could have reached be so enormous in the first place. None were quick to blame their own feet, as were those who "speak up" for these stocks to their viewers and readers, although there was no discernible evidence that these new companies were doing or is going to get a profit. Should also be noted that many of these analysts, like those on CNBC, have invested heavily in the reputation of these companies as many shares owned by them. Lost in all this dialogue about wealth were the middle class and poor in America. Although of little investors were losing money in stocks that went belly up, analysts and investment bankers were doing a roaring trade. Since many of them knew from the outset that these companies did not have the promise of making a profit, which came when the first signs of trouble on the horizon and were able to recover their investments (the Enron debacle is nothing more than a extreme case of this). But if the reality of middle-class Americans during the late nineties was left unreported, the history of the lower class became a taboo. Suggest that there are still poor people in the United States during this period of expansion was anathema to many of the news narrative media and politicians were spinning about how more Americans benefit from the economic boom. After President Clinton signed into law the Welfare Reform 1996, which, along with other politicians, is hailed as a success when more than 7 million people moved from the welfare rolls. The media followed suit in its assessment of the law. But the success of the Welfare Reform Act were far more complex than is being reported. Yes, more women on welfare and work, but many of the jobs they had were these former recipients often with low wages. In the Bay Area, where you must earn a wage of $ 25.99 per hour in order to survive, the average welfare recipient in Contra Costa County earned $ 9.11 placed in new jobs (Source: Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services, CA Budget Project of the West Contra Costa Times). Child care, housing and education are issues that also were woefully directed. A few years after the signing of the act, the food bank crop throughout the country began reporting that people more and more interested in his services. Highlighted the Welfare Reform Act as but one of many reasons why so many people were starving. While other media such as newspapers, reported on these issues, most especially broadcast news, ignores these facts.When the media reporting on the poor and the lower class, its representation often paints an inaccurate picture of poverty. According to the media, the faces of the poor tend to be black or Latino and provided criminal mentality. These presentations are simplistic and not the present poverty in all its diversity and complexity. While most stories of social assistance recipients tend to feature black women, the reality is that most women on welfare are white. Another face of the poor are the elderly, many of which depend solely on Social Security for subsistence - the fact that is mentioned in the news, but only when they report on various political bickering in Washington, DC on Social Security . The poor often live in the suburbs, another fact that is rarely mentioned in the news (though to his credit, "Nightline" did a story on this subject some years ago, following several families in the suburbs who trusted on the banks of the crop for food). The news still prefer the stereotypical representation of the poor living in ghettos riddled with crime. But it is children who are the real faces of poverty. United States has the highest rate of child poverty than any other industrialized country. More than a quarter of all children under six years in the United States live in poverty, according to Mantsios (Rereading 321). But when children are the subject of news, usually shown as the perpetrators of heinous crimes, not victims of hunger, homelessness, inadequate or education.Crime stories make up the majority of reports on the evening and network news. In a 1997 study published by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), the coverage of violent crime on network news increased over 700% between 1993 and 1996. 09.11 Despite briefly pushed many other crime stories off the radar screen, have not completely disappeared from the news programs. Despite the fact that crime has declined since the early nineties, the media insists that saturate their newscasts with crime stories, the scarier the better. The phrase "If it bleeds, it leads" local news came edict of the directors about what stories get top priority on the evening news and what not. While the tabloidization of crime stories have always been fairly equal (the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, being a recent example), there are marked differences in how crimes committed by the middle class or the rich and the crimes committed by the poor and people of color are covered by the media, especially radio and through the expert class. A perfect example is how the media covered the 1999 Columbine shooting and the trial of Lionel Tate, 2001. When teenagers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris burst into the halls of Columbine High School in 1999, killing 18 of his classmates before turning their guns on themselves, America was shocked by the enormity of the event (also includes plans to blow up the school) and the number of innocent lives lost in the carnage, despite the fact that similar shootings by young school had in the two years before that. Immediately after the incident, the Americans, with the media as a mediator, began to wonder why two young teens apparently well-to-the-home would be brought to an act so violent and cruel. Everyone from talk shows in twenty-four hours, the cable news networks like CNN and Fox News Network, a news program in the morning, as the "Today Show" and "Good Morning America", presented at the experts in psychology, legal analysts, politicians, police chiefs, social commentators and the occasional celebrity media whore to sift through the remains of the minds of these two young men and resolve what could have been the cause of the shooting . Their responses were varied. While some suggest that these youths were victims of bullying by athletes in sports of their school, others said that violent means, such as video games and music from artists like Marilyn Manson and Insane Clown Posse, were the real culprits . Conservatives lamented the fact that God and religion had been drawn from the educational institutions of our country and the Ten Commandments had been posted at this school, maybe these terrible killings that had not occurred (ironically, Columbine, Colorado is a very religious community). Liberals said the atmosphere rigid social communities ostracized young people who were considered "different" or "weird" or simply do not fit into the Goths and so-called "Trenchcoat Mafia" also had the fingers pointed in their direction This backlash against them across the country (days after the Columbine massacre, Goth teens reported being harassed not only by other classmates, but school administrators, too.) What was particularly strange in all this to explain the need for "cause and effect", especially from conservatives, was that Klebold and Harris had been poor and black or Latino, and explanations were made to understand their behavior, explanations than it would have been excoriated for "blame society for the behavior of individuals." Such criticism is leveled at all times when violence in poor communities of color are dissected to explanation.When of Lionel Tate was 14 years sentenced to life imprisonment without parole, becoming the youngest person to be handed a sentence in U.S. history by brutally beating his six-year-old friend Tiffany Eunick to death, there were some suggestions in the media Tate communication, like Klebold and Harris, was a victim of violent media. While all stakeholders, including prosecutors, was surprised when Broward County Judge Joe Lazarus made his harsh sentence, no one agreed with the jury's evaluation in the rejection of the defense lawyers argued that Tate had been more influenced by the WWF and was trying to copy the moves had been made by wrestlers like Hulk Hogan and The Rock in a little when he killed Tiffany. Television experts also uniformly rejected this argument for the defense. They took note of the size of the young against the old Tiffany's 6 years and the way it should have been old enough to know his own strength. Although there were a few who stood up for Lionel Tate, and everyone agreed with prosecutors and defense attorneys that the judge's sentence was too harsh, even going so far as to suggest that Florida Gov. Jeb Bush should commute punishment, few of these experts offer the same empathy to the Tate or the need to understand their motives, as he had with Klebold and Harris, two years earlier. The cases of the young, also in Florida, who shot and killed his teacher, or the now-disputed "Wilding" hits a broker of New York woman more than a decade, appeared in the media as an example of amoral, pathological "super predator" (ie, young poor black) loose in the cities of our country. It would be easy to brush off criticism of how the media covered the Columbine massacre in comparison to other crime stories, especially those committed by the poor or people of color, as an example of the bleeding heart liberal papers " race card "or" class struggle "jour criticism directed against anyone who dares to raise the issues of classism and racism in this country. After all, the media was so brutal against the Ramsey family, and even speculated that if the parents of JonBenet and her brother were responsible for his death. But the hardness of the media against the Ramsey family is beyond the point. What matters is the fact that not all wealthy white families were judged critical pathological deviation or lower-class blacks often found in similar cases. Ramsey, who were never charged with anything related to JonBenet's death (in fact nobody has been charged in her murder. His case is still unsolved), were treated as a rare anomaly, but interesting, as the phenomenon of conjoined twins in the heart of the Virgin and to make Colorado. In the media, the message is clear: the poor or black or Latino, when accused of a crime, are considered "common" pathological problems and should be "locked" and out of the way of society, while that white-collar or middle-class criminals are considered "deviant" in relation to race and social status, and the causes of the deviation is necessary to analyze, understand and, where necessary media bias, news corrected. The race and class can have devastating results. Like most Americans get their news information from television, and cable news broadcasts and not to show the complexity of the problems associated with poverty, solutions to these problems are often so simplistic, visceral rhetoric associated with politicians. Politicians routinely pander to the middle class votes and the wealthy for campaign donations. Middle and fears of working class crime and anger toward the "welfare queens" and "black quota" are so easy to exploit. During the 80's, Reagan and social conservatives had painted a vivid portrait of women on welfare as driving around in limos and live like kings in taxpayer dollars for the time Democrat Bill Clinton ran for office in 1992 I was in a stump of welfare reform. While it may be true that some social assistance recipients during the 1980's had "stolen" the system, which paled in comparison to the number of men who had "stolen" thousands of elderly in the S & L scandals (One of these men was also the son of former Vice President and brother of current President George W. Bush). Conservatives succeeded in painting this image of welfare mothers because many had the radio pulpit and television programs as the McLaughlin group, not "talk about a president in the White House whose skills in communication are considered almost legendary, to spread his word. It also helped that many working class Americans who bought the portrait angry at anyone for not pulling their fair weight, despite the fact that they were among the many who suffer from the same Reaganite policies that hurt the poor and favored the rich and elite. Two examples of how media affect the law is the law of drugs and crime in California "Three Strikes" law. During the eighties, when he became a crack scourge in urban cities across the country, stories of shootings, gang wars and drug-related killings became a feature every night on local and network news . Programs such as "Nightline" even ran town meetings to discuss the issue. While much of the violence and drug abuse were apparently relegated to poor urban communities, and black (polls have shown that the average drug user is actually a white man in his twenties), crime stories related to the crack spawned the worst fears of working and middle class, regardless of race. When the media coined the term "carjacking" in the American lexicon, politicians responded and tightened laws against abuse and the crimes associated with crack that day in states like California, have been repealed or softened ( during the 2000 election, voters in California voted overwhelmingly for Proposition 36, which divert nonviolent drug offenders out of overcrowded prisons and jails and rehabilitation). Many believed that these drug laws are inconsistent. Poor blacks who were caught selling or drug use were harsher sentences than white defendants, middle class, due to the different rates applied to end anti-cocaine (urge President Bush to add Ecstasy to the list of drugs crime added an interesting twist to this issue because most ecstasy users tend to be white and middle class). In 1994, the nation was riveted when a girl named Polly Klaas was kidnapped from his home in Petaluma, and later murdered by Richard Allen Davis. The local and national news followed every step in the investigation of the kidnapping and disappearance of the right to the breaking news of the discovery of his body and through the trial and conviction of his murderer. Much of the nation was shocked to learn later that Davis was arrested he had been a career criminal, turning inside and outside the system like a yo-yo, when there are clear indications that he was a danger to society. Although such crimes as kidnapping and murder of Polly Klaas are aberrant and that children are killed each year by an acquaintance, a parent, for example, the Klaas kidnapping fed on fear all parents. Concerned citizens, relatives of the victims, and politicians came together and created Proposition 184, which became known as the "Three Strikes" law. Those convicted for his third strike felony, they are given a strict "25 years to life sentence, with little discretion by the judge. The law was intended to frighten the criminals from committing crimes and bring those who are behind bars where they belong for a long time. Although it would be simplistic to suggest that coverage of the media Klaas kidnapping led to this law is not too difficult to suggest that the history of the media to play their crime stories with his "if it leads, it bleeds" mentality conditioned a society that was pretty desperate for a solution to the crimes that bedeviled. The experts, defense lawyers, and police now claim that the "Three Strikes" law has had detrimental effects on the criminal justice system. Provide examples like the case of the man who was given 25 years to life for stealing a bicycle as evidence that the law allows no middle ground in the statement. In fact, one of the reasons why he won was because Proposition 36 proponents had successfully demonstrated that, because of overcrowding in prisons because of the "Three Strikes" law to lock up nonviolent drug offenders would save money taxpayers. However, politicians and prosecutors say that "Three Strikes" works, which aims to lower crime rates in California as evidence. But criminal justice expected as the RAND Corporation and Alfred Blumenstein, a criminal justice professor at Carnegie Mellon University have done studies that suggest that crime rates in states that do not have "Three Strikes" laws his books have fallen to the same comparable rates in California, and even counties, like San Francisco, where the leniency of the law applied, I've seen the same low crime rates similar to those counties where "Three Strikes" is vigorously applied, like Kern, Los Angeles. However, the appetite for "tough on crime" is strong in the laws of California. The same year that Prop. 36 won, another statement of Proposition 21, which called for tougher sentences for juvenile offenders, had won, this despite the fact that juvenile crime rates, especially among black teenagers, have decreased dramatically since 1993 (Prop. 21 was placed in the law books when school shootings at Columbine and Santee, California were still subject to debate on television). Since President Bill Clinton signed the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and even before that date, the media have been consolidated in a growing number. Now, news agencies, which in the past were expected to be earning great money and the prestige of having a good news organization was well worth the reputation of a network, is now expected to cut the bottom line. News Room was reduced to make them more profitable, leaving little space, time or resources to thoroughly investigate the complex stories. sex scandals, like Bill Clinton - While some news agencies continue to try to tell good stories about the problems facing this country (women's Nightline in the number of prison years ago), the Most tend to follow the stories are ratings grabbers and Monica Lewinsky and Gary Condit and Chandra Levy scandal, shark attacks, and celebrity interviews lint. The 9 / 11 terrorist attacks changed the focus a bit (the news media certainly deserve praise for going three days without publicity, the loss of millions of ad dollars in the process, offering the latest news of the attacks and its consequences), but, turns out it was an anomaly. Unfortunately, this "deviation" from the information that any informed citizenry needs to preserve the integrity of a democratic country, undermines democracy in the process. It is clear that after 9 / 11, many Americans, ignorant of world news and current events, were ill-prepared to understand how and why these pernicious attacks could have occurred in the first place. They were even more reluctant to discuss or understand the complexities and possible consequences of the direction of the president was leading the nation in its handling of the "war against terrorism." The media, in turn, followed suit and largely avoided challenging the policy. Whether dealing with issues such as poverty, race, crime, foreign policy or internal, the conventional media do not live up to their responsibilities, which are enshrined in the Constitution of our country.
