Week of 2/10 Post 2

As I mentioned in my introductory post, most of my exposure to race and ethnicity as a child was through the media. Sadly, I cannot think of many instances where I have seen positive images of other races through the media when I was younger. I am not saying they do not exist. I am, however, suggesting that the media downplays the roles of minorities who achieve higher status yet highlights the cases in which minorities fall into the normal stereotypes. For example in the years since 9/11, I have really only notices Middle Eastern people being portrayed as a people from a backwards culture. I know this is not entirely true; however, the media coverage I can remember includes, most obviously, 9/11, the Lackawanna 6 and the Hassan trial. I am not saying there has not been any positive media coverage about peoples from the Middle East, but the negative coverage happens to be the most attention grabbing. So, I have a question for everyone: Does the media hold any responsibility here? Should they try to balance out bad media coverage on a specific race or ethnicity with positive media coverage? I am absolutely positive that all this negative exposure has enforced or reinforced prejudices, but is the media to blame? Or is anyone to blame?