Polarized Media and the Black Lives Matter Movement
In “Black Lives Matter in Polarized News Media: Politics, Policing, Prejudice, and Protest,” author Dr. Simone N. Durham analyses news content about BLM, which is mainly out of the control of the people within the movement. BLM was founded by three black women Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi. However, unlike the civil rights movement of the 1960s, BLM is a decentralized network without official leaders. Support for the Black Lives Matter movement is polarized along several lines, with black people, democrats, and young people more likely to endorse it.
This chapter examines two questions, how is BLM covered across politically polarized news media, and how does that coverage either challenge or maintain the racial status quo? Dr. Durham looks at two sources, Slate and The Blaze. Traditional news media can help shape and perpetuate two-dimensional stereotypes, like the Asian model minority, angry black women, or that black men are more likely to be criminals. For her chapter, she analyzed all of the text information from the sample, including tweets embedded in the articles, title, body text, author, and date of publication.
Four main categories arose through the analysis and coding, politics, policing, prejudice, and protest. Seventy-four percent of the articles in the sample from Slate mentioned BLM, and only 33 percent from the Blaze did. This is important because the sample was taken from articles that explicitly mention the BLM movement. The Blaze often centered on conservative black politicians in an effort to legitimize their positions. The Blaze also tended to highlight prejudice against police or conservative voters rather than against black people, while Slate highlighted how racist policing impacts communities.
These two new outlets also had very different perspectives on issues like police brutality as the cause of the protests, and they wrote from different vantage points. While the Blaze tended to justify police action, Slate painted the community concerns as a legitimate cause for protest. The Blaze represents BLM as disruptive and focuses on how the protests inconvenienced private citizens rather than reporting on the reasons behind the protests. On the other hand, Slate used more neutral language and often reported about the ways that more disruptive white actions were not criticized in the same way. For example, they pointed out how white sports fans who riot don’t get painted as badly as the BLM protesters in conservative news media.
The two outlets also differed in their opinions on police brutality. In their reporting, the Blaze doesn’t tend to link these incidents to any broader pattern or to the causes of the BLM protests. Their articles were generally supportive of the police’s efforts and sympathetic to their challenges. Slate, on the other hand, depicts police brutality as protest worthy and often links it to the larger pattern of discriminatory policing. They tried to avoid looking at each incident in a vacuum rather than trying to justify police killings or falling back on the “one bad apple” defense.
Dr. Durham’s analysis found strikingly divergent narratives surrounding BLM. “Through thematic analysis of one year of news coverage from two separate sources, I find that even though these sources largely discuss the same issues and events, they do so in very different ways” (Durham, 2022, p. 180). Their takes on racial projects align with their political slants. In today’s political climate, Fake News is a consistent topic of conversation. However, there is also a problem with populations consuming traditional news, which only reports from a narrow perspective. News does not have to be untrue to be misleading.
When news organizations become entrenched in one line of thinking, they promote that worldview constantly, and their takes become hegemonic. It is likely that the consumer bases of Slate and the Blaze don’t often intersect. Therefore, each group consumes and accepts very different narratives based on the same events and information. When a story is so clearly laid out and repeatedly reinforced, it can be hard to understand how anyone could see an issue differently. These competing hegemonies serve to further polarize the public. This is why information literacy and critical thinking are extremely important when engaging with highly manicured and intentional traditional news media.
About the Author
Stella Hudson is a Graduate Assistant with the Baha’i Chair for World Peace. She graduated from the College of William and Mary in 2021 with a B.A. in English. She is attending the University of Maryland and pursuing a Master’s of Library and Information Science.