Page - 155 - in Media – Migration – Integration - European and North American Perspectives

Augie Fleras | Ethnic and Aboriginal Media in Canada 155 3.2 Accounting for Ethnic and Aboriginal Media: Reactive/Proactive; Outward/Inward Ethnic media originated for a variety of reasons, both reactive and proactive as well as outward and inward. On the reactive side, ethnic and racialized minorities resent their exclusion from the mainstream newsmedia (Husband 2005; deSouza and Williamson 2006). Historically, newsmedia (mis)treatment of aboriginal peoples, immigrants, and racialized ethnic minorities left everything to be desired, given their placement into one of five negative frames, namely as invisible, problems, stereotypes, adornments, or whitewashed (Fleras and Kunz 2001). In an industry driven by the logic that only bad news is good news, the framing of minorities as troublemakers resulted in one sided coverage that demonized and denied (Butterwege 2005). Teun A. van Dijk (1993) writes: The strategies, structures, and procedures of reporting, the choice of themes, the perspective, the transfer of opinions, style and rhetoric, are directed at presenting “us” positively and “them” negatively…Their cause is only worth reporting when they cause problems, are caught in criminality or violence or can be represented as a threat to white hegemony. Despite modest improvements in the quality and quantity of coverage, mainstream newsmedia remains a problem in two ways: first in a systemically biasing way that frames minorities as troublesome constituents; second, in their failure to frame ‘deep’ diversities except as conflict or problem (Fleras 2004/06). This problematic should come as no surprise: Newsmedia are fundamentally racialized because of how rules, values, practices, discourses and rewards are dispersed (both deliberately or inadvertently) thereby reinforcing white interests and eurocentric agendas. The end result? By framing diversity around conflict or problems as catalysts for newsworthiness to the exclusion of alternative frameworks – ie. by normalizing invisibility while problematizing visibility – newsmedia coverage of minorities has proven systemically biasing rather than systematically biased (Everitt 2005). Newsmedia mistreatment of minorities and aboriginal peoples continues unabated (ERCOMER 2002; Jiwani 2006; Miller 2005; also Kelley 2006). But while news media may have once openly vilified minorities as aliens in a whiteman’s country, it is no longer socially acceptable to do. A growing reluctance to say anything negative about minorities for fear of being branded racists or reactionary (McGowan 2001) encourages thinly veiled criticism that are subliminally pro white. First, minorities are criticized for not fitting into the framework of society as they should (minorities are ok if they are useful or