DOCUMENT RESUME ED 473 787 CS 511 772 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (85th, Miami, Florida, August 5-8, 2002). Minorities and Communication Division. PUB DATE 2002-08-00 NOTE 217p.; For other sections of these proceedings, see CS 511 769-787. PUB TYPE Collected Works Proceedings (021) Reports Research (143) EDRS PRICE EDRS Price MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Athletes; Baseball; Content Analysis; Decision Making; *Ethics; Higher Education; Immigration; *Journalism Education; Korean Americans; *Media Coverage; *Minority Groups; Olympic Games; *Racial Attitudes; Racial Factors; Television IDENTIFIERS Black Press; Los Angeles Riots 1992; September 11 Terrorist Attacks 2001 ABSTRACT The Minorities and Communication Division of the proceedings contains the following 7 papers: "The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning: The Importance of Race to Journalistic Decision Making" (Renita Coleman); "Jesse Owens, A Black Pearl Amidst an Ocean of Fury: A Case Study of Press Coverage on The 1936 Berlin Olympic Games" (Pamela C. Laucella); "A Fall from Grace: The Framing of Imam Fawaz Damra by 'The Cleveland Plain Dealer "'_(Yolanda D. Campbell); "Silencing the Voice of the Minority" (Minjeong Kim); "The Black Press and the Integration of Baseball: A Content Analysis of Changes in Coverage" (Brian Carroll); "Media Effect on Race and Immigration: Testing the Link" (Cleo Joffrion Allen); and "Color Blindsided in the Booth: An Examination of the Descriptions of College Athletes During Televised Games" (James A. Rada and K. Tim Wulfemeyer). (RS) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. N 00 en ,7r Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (85th, Miami, FL, August 5-8, 200t): Minorities and Communication Division. PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) 1 U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) This document has been reproduced as received from the person or organization originating it. Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction quality. Points of view or opinions stated in this document do not necessarily represent official OERI position or policy. EST COPY AVAILALE The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning: The Importance of Race to Journalistic Decision Making By Renita Coleman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Manship School of Mass Communication 221 Journalism Building Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 (225) 578-2045 [email protected] Paper submitted for consideration by the Minorities and Communication Division of AEJMC for the 2002 annual conference. The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning: The Importance of Race to Journalistic Decision Making ABSTRACT A controlled experiment is used to investigate the effects ofrace of news subjects on journalists' ethical reasoning. In this study as well as in two previous studies reported here, the race of the people in the dilemmas had a highly significant effecton ethical reasoning. When participants knew the race because they saw photographs, their ethical reasoning scores were higher when the people in the ethical dilemmaswere white than when they were African American. 4 THE RACE CARD AND ETHICAL REASONING: THE IMPORTANCE OF RACE TO JOURNALISTIC DECISION MAKING INTRODUCTION Scholars, journalists, policy makers and the public have long been concerned that the news media portray certain ethnic and racial groups negatively and that results in audiences acquiring and reinforcing negative attitudes and stereotypes. African Americans especially have been negatively stereotyped in the media (Poindexter & Stroman, 1981; Gerbner, 1993; Entman, 1990, 1992, 1994). Researchers interested in exploring the roots of the journalistic decisions that lead to such portrayals, among other things, have examined, among many and myriad variables, the personal characteristics of journalists (Weaver, 1998; Flegel & Chaffee, 1971; Gist, 1993) including their own race (Weaver, 1998) and ethical reasoning (Westbrook, 1995; White & Pearce, 1991; White, 1996; Singletary, Caudill, Caudill & White, 1990). Studies done so far have examined these variables as individual differences of the journalists; no study could be found that connected the race of the people who are the subjects of news stories with journalists' ethical decisions about them. If the race of the journalist matters, then it should also matter as a variable of the people about whom the journalist is making a news judgment. If journalists as well as audiences hold stereotypical ideas about certain racial groups, and those ideas affect attitudes, then the race of the news subjects could also be expected to matter in journalists' attitudes and, therefore, news judgment. If, as Weaver says, "journalists' backgrounds and ideas have some relationship to what is reported" (Weaver, 1998, p. 2), and that news coverage matters in terms of public opinion, then it should be The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning 5 worth exploring the effects of journalists' stereotypes and ideas about the race of the people in news stories on journalists' ethical decision-making. Specifically, it is the purpose of this study to systematically investigate with a controlled experiment the effects of the race of news subjects on journalists' ethical reasoning. LITERATURE REVIEW There is a large body of literature that has shown convincingly that African Americans are significantly more likely than Caucasians to be featured in stories about crime (Entman, 1990, 1992, 1994) and portrayed as lawbreakers on television news (Dixon & Linz, 2001). Studies have also identified other negative stereotypes of African Americans in the news media (Poindexter & Stroman, 1981; Gerbner, 1993; Sheley & Ashkins, 1981; Entman, 1990, 1992, 1994). Many studies have shown the news media's influence in shaping public opinion (Gilliam et al., 1996; Iyengar & Kinder, 1987; Klite et al., 1997), including studies using the cultivation hypothesis and theories of stereotyping that show that negative portrayal of minorities in news is associated with the public's negative images of and attitudes toward minorities (Gerbner, 1969. 1990; Hamilton, Stroessner & Driscoll, 1994; Entman, 1994). For example, whites are more likely to see minorities as criminals (Gordon, Michels & Nelson, 1996; Hurwitz & Peffley, 1997) and be fearful of them (Moeller, 1989; St. John & Heald-Moore, 1996). Scholarship suggests that the media may play a central role in shaping and reinforcing racial attitudes (Entman, 1992, 1994; Jamieson, 1992). The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning 2 6 Theoretical Foundations The major theory in use today that explains the processes by which racial stereotyping occurs is schema theory. The vast field of schema research has shown that people possess stereotypical knowledge about their world. These "scripts" contain information about the actors or elements that make up events and stories (Abbott, Black & Smith, 1985). A schema has been described as "a cognitive structure that represents organized knowledge about a given concept or type of stimulus" abstracted from prior experience (Fiske & Taylor, 1984, p.139). These mental structures consist of sets of expectations about the ways in which stories or events usually unfold, how scenes usually look, or how certain types of people typically behave. Through previous interactions, people either discover or construct mental reflections of common regularities of these events, stories, and people (Mandler, 1984). Research from these areas as well as the field of information processing indicates that people form these schemas, or commonsense, stereotypical models of their world, in order to help them cope with the flood of new information (Lippmann, 1922). They are forced to become "cognitive misers" to cope with this information onslaught (Graber, 1988; Fiske & Taylor, 1984). The main objective in schematic thinking is easy and efficient information handling in the service of everyday human interactions (Cohen, 1981). Schemas are beneficial in that they help us handle information rather than become overwhelmed by it. But schemas can also be harmful when they are overgeneralized and negative, such as the kind about race that lead to stereotyping and prejudice. 7 The Race Card and Ethical Reasoning 7 3 Researchers have identified many different types of schemas including person schemas about the traits and goals of individuals (Fiske & Taylor, 1984; Mandler, 1984), and, recently, more specific schemas about race and gender (Grimes & Drechsel, 1996). Schema theory is germane to this study not only because information about race is schematized, but also because people have been shown to have schemas for ethical problems that they use when making decisions about new ethical dilemmas. Using Kohlberg's (1969) six stages of moral development, which is based on the work of Piaget (1965) and is the most widely used theory of ethical reasoning in use today, James Rest and colleagues devised a quantitative instrument to measure a person's level of ethical development using schema theory as the underlying concept (Rest et al., 1999). In schema theory terms, the questions on the instrument, called the Defining Issues Test or DIT, activate "moral schemas" from long-term memory to help people understand and process new information