Local News Extra Credit

I did not notice too many trends for the local news assignment. I actually watched my newscasts in two different places (Lakewood, CO and Norman, OK), so there were completely different ways of reporting the news. Something I did notice, though, was when the suspect was a minority, a picture was shown most often. If the suspect was White, a picture was only shown in one of the newscasts. I feel like the identities and the stories of the White victims were hidden, keeping the information more confidential. But other than that, I did not notice a huge gap in the racial treatment. They treated the White man who committed fraud the same as the Hispanic woman who tried to kill her husband. No special treatment was given according to race or gender.

Although I did not see any racial stereotypes, I do know they exist. I personally believe society, especially the news, is getting better about equal treatment for different races and genders. I know that there are still certain news stations that do not, but the general majority is leaning towards equality. I even saw similarities between a metropolitan city news station in Denver as opposed to the Oklahoma City news. They both were fairly objective in their stories.

I feel like after watching those videos for our previous blog assignment that the news were subjective because they were just in it for a profit, and controlled by a few select companies. But I did not notice that too much. The anchors were different races, the reporters were different races. Diversity was all over the newsroom. I could just be blind to things that are happening, but I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on these situations, being able to tell if it is biased or not, and I don't really see that. There are definite biases when it comes to politics in the news, and touchy subjects like wars and issues overseas. But as far as local crime news, there are not many stereotypical or racial/gender-related issues.