An issue often seen in the media is discrimination often targeted towards groups/ people from minorities often due to things like their race, ethnicity etc. This is often portrayed in media products like social media videos (youtube) or News channels.
An example of this, is in the sociological field research video ‘Black and white: room for a night.’ In the video, two men (one white and one black) from around the same age travelled to Bristol and attempted to book a hotel room separately for the night. When approaching the b&b’s in person, the white man was greeted with kindness and respect and often immediately given a room for a fair price. However, when the black man went to the same hotel, spoke in the same manner and tried to book a room, he was quickly turned away with excuses like ‘our rooms are full’ being used despite offering one minutes ago to the white man. They tried this with a large number of hotels and discovered that 33% of the b&b owners showed racial discrimination and denied him a room. The two men were shocked and both harmed mentally by this discovery, as seen on the video which aired globally on platforms like youtube for the public to see along with the hotels shown publicly. The racial discrimination shown here is a clear issue, as the two men treated the owners exactly the same, however the ability to show this to the public online in a way helped to overcome this treatment slightly as b&b owners would be ashamed and less likely to treat people this way in the future. However, this could also have caused discrimination for these B&B’s, as people who were offended by this treatment may have took it upon themselves to start a hate trend against the hotels possibly affecting the business.
Another example of discrimination seen in the media, is after the manchester bombing when a man set a bomb outside of the arena, where a busy concert was playing. Some news outlets used the mans religion (muslim) against him and started a damaging reputation that the man was taught his violent ideas at his local mosque (religious center), blaming the entire religion for one mans actions. This caused a trade of abuse both online and in public for muslim people, who were being called names and attacked simply just fo their religion. This shows that the media is harmful in some circumstances, if not sanctioned in the right way, as it influences many peoples beliefs and can cause harmful effects due to this.
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