Discrimination in the Media

Shannon Chalfant

In the Kentucky Enquirer I found that the front page is where we try our hardest to conceal the issue of discrimination. I didn’t find many stories that I thought differentiated one group of people from the other. There was a story that mentioned the title of a man the same way it mentioned the title of the woman that later followed. There was another story that introduced a Priest visiting Thomas More College the same way that it later introduced a nun visiting Thomas More. However, when I opened up the paper I started to see the separation that the media designates between men and women.
In the Art section of the paper I noticed that this portion was directed mostly towards women similar to the way sports is to men. In the Art section I found articles pertaining mostly to cooking, parenting tips, weekend activities, a coach who assigned his wife as his assistant coach, and even an article on bra sizes. All of the stories were about women or meant to appeal to women, almost to say that these are the subjects we should care about or that we best understand; war and taxes is beyond our comprehension.
On the front page of the sports section there were a few cover stories that were about women’s soccer. This was the only sport that was mentioned for women. Giving the impression that soccer is a women’s sport and the rest were made for men. Every sporting event that was covered outside of women’s soccer was a story about a men’s team. Also I noticed in the sports section that when “College Basketball” is mentioned, they are referring to men’s college basketball; women’s college basketball is mentioned in the paper as “Women’s College Basketball.”
The sports page is where I found most of the discrimination being mentioned. In an article called, “Bengalsline – radio longest 3 hours” the lede said, “Real men follow Mike Brown’s Cincinnati Bengals…” I suppose the reporter only considered the male audience and forgot about the diehard Bengals fans that wear the pink Carson Palmer jerseys. There are plenty of women who enjoy the Bengals and football altogether.
As for the business section I didn’t find many of the common stereotypes I thought I would. I did find several articles that mentioned women holding prominent positions within major business. I also found an article that was about the economy being bad and job opportunities starting to dwindle. The picture for this article was a African American women walking out of a office building. The article was about how lucky this women was to have received a job. I thought this picture could have been taken out of context from some people. Had the reader not went on to read the article and just the title, it could have been interpreted as black women needing jobs as the economy struggles. Overall, I thought the business section maintained a good balance between successful men and women in the business fields.Reviewing the newspapers reinforced the idea that equality has still not been reached when issues of race, gender and class are considered. There are still stereotypes and misconceptions about certain groups of people and they are intensified in the media

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