The MediaName

Institution

Year

The media is the voice of the public that is meant to inform, enlighten, and direct the people on current events. Over the past one-year, dramatic changes in the public domain has taken place affecting the lives of the people directly and indirectly. The media’s coverage of these issues has either tainted or depicted the truth and thus shaped how people reacted. One of the common events of 2019 and 2020 has been racial divisions and tensions. The killings of Black men and women by the police led to deep racial division between the Blacks and the Whites. Of great concern is the trajectory taken by the media where some channels chose to take sides thus intensifying the matter. The media was found to be biased in the coverage of the killings and the protests. There are those who felt that the Black Lives Matter protest were justified but some media outlets termed the protest as lawlessness and source of insecurity.

These divisions by the media as well outlined by the Normative Media Theory that analyzes the message conveying mechanisms that are mean to derive or compel the listener to take sides. The theory states that the value of a message is only depicted based on the language used as well as the value and nature of the content. Distorted information is always harmful as it triggers mixed reactions and can even cause of division as seen the way the media covers some content (Anna, 2018). The events shaping the protests were viewed from different angle but the key thing is that the media was always to blame for the lack of coherence and biased approach when covering the news. Based on the way the events were covered, the issue of conflict perspective arises where the views held were seen to contradict the matters on the ground. Reference

Anna L. (2018). Social Problems: Community, Policy, and Social Action 6th Edition. SAGE Publications, Inc