I wrote this article for my english class where we are to later present our ideas of the media and how it works, being me(anarchism, revolutionary ideals, and mistrust of society fueling my, "different" approach to the project), I decided to show the class how the media should be and give them a miniscule amount of insight into my mind and the propaganda that the gov't uses to control our thinking and behavior. This being a class assignment I did not stray far from the topic, so its not at all a discussion of the systematic mind filling the media uses, or at least not as much as I would like to put in there. So for all who say the media is independent, I have something planned later. 1 more thing check out either myspace.com/yolayislyev or unherd.bandcamp.com and you can see that in my more recent years even my music has been affected by my beliefs, especially check out the myspace page, it shows my old though process in contrast to my new on unherd.bandcamp.com , yes I am a rapper but I make concious music with intelligent lyrics and diversity. Check it out and send me some ideas. Heres my class work.
Malcolm X Portrayed by Various Newspapers
There have been various reports in newspapers of Malcolm X’s assassination and most of them have ranged from being disconnected, or portraying him as a dangerous terrorist, to acknowledging him for his work, and depicting him as a good human being. A good example of four drastically different reports is publications from “The New York Times”, “The New York Post”, “Life”, and “The Associated Press”.
In the “New York Times”, all of the African American’s who were present during his assassination were referred to as Negros, a derogatory term. This may be due to the fact that the majority of these papers readers were upper-class Caucasian’s. They also depicted Malcolm X as a terrorist and made the article seem distant from the real world, as if it had happened in a foreign country. Words used to describe Malcolm X, and his followers such as, “Negros”, “leader”, and “bearded negro extremist” clearly state that the position of the articles writers were against him and his revolutionary movement, and give him an image of an evil terrorist. The voice of the article is clearly speaking from a derogatory viewpoint and persuades the audience that the writer must have been a conservative republican white man, as many of the readers no doubt was at that time.
“The New York Post” spoke of Malcolm X’s death sympathetically, and it could be seen that the writer was passionate and emotional when creating the article. They included quotes from the witness’s that emphasized his death as a tragedy, and increased his image of being human by referring to his appearance in a positive light. The paper gave a clear image of him as being bespekcled and dapper, showing us that he was intelligent and took pride in his appearance and status as an African American. Words used to describe him and his followers were very familiar such as, “them”, “he”, and “brothers”, this builds him a positive image and makes him more familiar to the reader by having them see him as a kind, intelligent, and strong human being. The writer must have either been a Caucasian sympathetic to his cause, or an African American who saw Malcolm X as a positive figure in society whose death was a great loss to the African American community in their quest for reform and human rights.
“Life” gave Malcolm X the appearance of a terrorist monster and simply focused on negative comments aimed at his campaign and cause. They were not very detailed and it seemed that they were simply reporting on him, not out of necessity or personal reason, but so that they wouldn’t miss out on this report and be seen as an incompetent media source. The words they used to describe him and his followers were ones such as, “faithful”, “the hated white man”, “supporters”, and “whitey”. It seems from these words used to describe him and his followers that the writer attempts to absorb the reader into his article. Not surprisingly, the writer fails. The overall article is completely devoid of emotion and seems to have little detail and structure to the article. This leads the reader to believe that the writer was not very interested in the issue, and perhaps rushed his work or didn’t worry about quality information.
The “Associated Press” was geared towards providing the audience with facts and evidence. They did not pick sides or debate about his goals and ideals. Instead they focused on the actual murder and went into a extremely detailed account about how he was killed, with what firearms, and went as far as to provide the address of one of the killers in their article, and provide the information of as to what they had been charged with. We can conclude that by the very nature of this article that the “Associated Press” was not concerned with anything but delivery of the facts. The writer uses words such as “black nationalist leader”, “followers”, and “supporters” to portray Malcolm X and his followers. Supported by intense detail and exact reference, the article carries a sense of omniscience. The voice of the article is similar to a police report or an informative list of facts. The reader can conclude that the writer of the article was very well informed and had help from authorities in verifying and analyzing the facts. The image the writer gives himself by expertly informing the public is that he is intelligent, well connected, and overall neutral in his work. The article advocates for the writer’s image of a professional journalist, with its informative content and the overall ability to state facts without straying to viewpoints, or reporting from a biased perspective.
