1500 w0rds essay

Reality for the sponsors: this is what media makes!
How media exercise the power of ethno racial construction?

Billboard, radio, Television, newspaper, advertisement, World Wide Web, Book ,CD, video Cassette, SMS, computer game, mobile computer; we are besieged by these medias that shape our understandings.
The world today is dominated by the media power. Different images, analysis, news and realities are produced according to the Media's attitudes, attachments and ideologies and all these can belong to the sponsors who are from different racial, ethnical, religious, political, economical and identical backgrounds; People who support Medias financially, ideologically and politically. So the produced reality cannot be the real reality because it is nourishing from sponsors` ideological viewpoints.
What Baudrillard mentioned as "hyper reality" is referring to the artificiality of real that blur the boundaries between the "real" and the "simulation, entertainment, and current affairs" (cited by Barker, 2001: 212). To me, hyper realities are not neutral but ideological. They have ideological orientation.
America, as a multicultural society, with varied racial and ethnical groups is matter of concern in this article with focusing on Blacks and how media as producer of message or transmitters of ' sign vehicle'(cited by Rojek, 2003; 94) in this Melton Pot is exercising the power of ethno racial construction.
Race has been a controversial problem since exploration of America. It is woven to warp and woof of American society and penetrating to all social institutions and media is not the exception.
Media with the potentiality of disseminating facts, information and opinions has a special place in American society. According to media policy 101 statistics, the average American spends over 4 hours a day watching TV, 78% of adults listen to radio, 88% of Americans believe internet has important role in their daily routine and average American child view 40000 commercials per year. About 12 million viewers watch nightly ABC, NBC and CBS news (Jacobs, 2ooo; 24).
And how ethnic and racial groups like Black Americans in this significant place are represented?
In America, it was not until late 1960 and early 1970 that we find any black families in television drama (Barker, 2000; 267) .The first television programme to feature Black Americans was Amos `n' Andy (Barker, 2000; 268). Hall believed that, this programme was a comedy that became a symbol of degradation of black people by the use of humor based on stereotypes. Media representations of people of color increased during 1980_90. Hall, a black Jamaican who May experienced racial discrimination, has such idea about black American representation.
Stuart Hall believes that binary forms of representation exist between ' THEM' as white and ' US' as black. White has always been represented as good and black as bad, respectively civilized/ primitive and attractive/ ugly. Takaki also in ' The tempest in the wilderness' showed this kind of binary position in case of British and Irish (Takaki, 1993; 28). Although these two are from the same origin but British are considered as civilized and nurtured but Irish as natural and savage.
This misrepresentation and ignorance also happens to Arabs in Hollywood movies. Norman Solomon indicated that Arabs in Hollywood are always representing as dirty, untrustworthy, violent and lecherous (Solomon, 2004; 4).

Ideologies support media
Althussers was a Marxist philosopher who talked about the concept of Ideology. He believed ideology is one of the three levels of social formation. This concept means system of representation such as images, myths, ideas or concepts (Barker, 2000; 77). Ideology constitutes subjects and subjects are fragmented and have pluralistic subject positions. Ideology is understood to be material phenomenon rooted in daily conditions. In his definition, there are four ideological state apparatuses:
1. family
2. education system ( transmits ruling class ideology)
3. church
4. mass media
To me, ideology can be one of the important factors of media formation.
In America since 1975, two thirds of independent newspaper and one third of TV owners have disappeared. Merely, 4% of radio station and less than 2% of T.V stations are owned by people of the color.
Reason of misrepresentation of Black Americans goes back to the hidden ideologies. Existence of racial media is dependent to existence of racial ideology. Benshoff and Griffin in their book "American on film" indicating that American cinema for the most part functions under the dominant ideology of white patriarchal capitalism (Benshoff & Griffin, 2004; 75).
According to the above statistics, I think American media is becoming more and more dominant on the masses and they not only decide what to watch but also how to think about and believe the "produced reality". Also I can say that almost media power is controlled by white Americans not the people of the color. This shows how much they are marginalized from the mainstream space of society and how ethno racial power exist in media as well. This ethno racial ideology exists in infrastructure and the superstructure is misrepresentation or ignorance.

Gramsci, ideology and hegemony
Gramsci, an Italian writer, politician and political theorist, in late 19th and early 20th century, defined hegemony as "situation where historical bloc of ruling class factions exercises social authority and leadership over the subordinate classes" ( cited by Barker, 2000; 80) .
He believed representation of formal education system as a meritocracy and people of color as by nature inferior and less capable than white people is formed by ideology. The hegemonic bloc as he said is not single socioeconomic category perhaps ideology plays a crucial role in alliances of the groups. In Gramscian word, hegemony has to be constantly remade and renowned.
To have these two theories as a model, I think Black Americans have experience of subordination toward whites during the history and this historical bloc has been existed since exploration of America. History of slavery and tortures against Black Americans was a cycle of remaking and re owning hegemony for white Americans.
During 1960_70 America experienced race crisis that caused so many professionals and journalists to arrange series of conferences to consider racial issues. In that time media was deficient in neutrality of race problems. Carolyn Martindale in his pamphlet "The white press and Black America" declared that media had failed three matters:
1. To cover Black as normal part of American society instead reinforcing and promoting stereo types.
2. Portraying problems that black Americans face.
3. Explain causes and underlying condition of black Americans.
According to Martindale (1986) and Campbell (1995), "African Americans in news cast are represented as criminals connected to gun and violence "(cited by Barker, 2000; 269)

Up to here, by reviewing Althussers and Gramsci theories I tired to say representation of blacks in American media is implicating existence of ideology and hegemony's concepts. Clearly media such as newspaper, TV, web sites and other forms (mentioned in introduction) are dominated more by white power in America and blacks a portion of America's population are subordinated by the white dominant ideology and hegemony of whites for directing and sponsoring the media.
Also the white media produce the reality which can be hyper reality that implicated values and ideologies of whites. Media has this capability for two reasons:
1. Media is managed by corporation's capitals so profit play important role in producing reality. In my idea media is a capitalistic phenomenon which is nourishing by capital.
2. Media creates the reality and what is offering to the audiences is "hallucinatory resemble" version ( Barker, 2000; 212)
According to Nietzsche, "pure knowledge is impermissible and nothing more than expediency of certain race and species" (cited by Barker, 2000; 199). That’s why in media today we have different narrations for one single happening. Every media interprets world with its own eyes. This goes back to the media characteristic. I believe media is not and can not be a neutral phenomenon. Basically is profit _oriented, no matter economic, cultural or political.
Media as a tool for forming public opinion is more concerning by politicians and governmental agendas. Governments can stabilize their hegemony over controlling Medias and persuading masses by ideologies. Censorship and articulation of specific news, representing minorities as problems, otherization and racial/ethnic discriminations are policies of media sponsors. I think media has this capability everywhere, it is not specified to particular part of the world but the difference is in amount and degree of interfere.

References:
· Barker, Chris(2000) cultural studies; theory and practice, London, sage
· Benshoff, Harry N & Griffin, Sean ( 2004) America on film; representing race, class, gender and sexuality at the movies, USA, Blackwell publishing
· Jacobs, Ronald D (2000) Media, race and the crisis of the civil
Society from Watt to Rodney king, UK, Cambridge University
Press
· Rojek ,Chris ( 2003) Stuart Hall, London, Blackwell publishing Ltd
· Solomon, Norman ( 2004) The war and racism _ media denial in over drive, Journal of Media beat, USA
· Takaki, Ronald (1939) a different mirror, Congress Caraloging in- publication data, USA.

Internet references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://freepress.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/
http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/