The most stunning indictment of the American media’s portrayal of black America came with obvious bias in reporting during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Associated Press published two photos. One showed a group of white people who were wading through the water and pushing some items that they’d taken from a store. The other photo showed a group of black people who were wading through the water and pushing some items that they’d taken from a store. The white people were described as “finding food”. The black people were described as “looting”.

The second most stunning indictment of the media’s portrayal of black America came when “The “Cosby Show” reached it’s peak of popularity. The news media loudly protested that there couldn’t possibly be that many black families with two professionals at their head. The media refused to notice that there were plenty of black graduates from law, medical, and other professional schools long before the 70’s. so of course there were plenty of successful and professional Black families.

But “The Media” gave in to overt prejudice, and was instrumental in causing the Cosby show to be unceremoniously killed while it was still a wildly popular mainstream entertainment.

While Black people are being represented as presidents, FBI agents, judges and doctors, the characters are relegated to sidekick or guest roles on fictional television shows. When “Battlestar Galactica” left Earth, why did they leave the black people behind?  Perhaps the Canadian casting agencies couldn’t find any people of color to populate a couple of those fantastic worlds beyond the Stargate in the subsequent spin offs.

Futures in space have become Black people free. After the original “Star Trek” series and “Stargate” movie, Black characters had to be so deformed or alien that they were not romantic possibilities. Decades after “Hollywood Shuffle”, Black actors still need to learn how to play the funny sidekick, junkie or thug if they expect to get steady work.

Reality competition shows are taking television entertainment media by storm. 

It took the BRAVO network forever to let a black person win a competition. Home and Garden Television had done so. Food Network had done so.The best Black singers can expect a short lived career on “American Idol” and other singing competitions. In front of millions of viewers, Donald Trump attempted to downgrade and dilute the award as an overt insult to the first Black apprentice, who had clearly won.

Even though White Americans living in federal revenue negative “Red states” do not accurately represent the population of America, their call-in votes and complaints seem to dictate the composition of mainstream television, television news, and film. Those biased votes also dictate the outcome of televised competitions.

Some of the judging justifications and the last minute “mistakes” in media competitions are so contrived that a nine year old can see through them. One judge went so far as to bloviate about there being no truffles in Italy in order to justify raving at a Black cooking show contestant for using truffles in a pasta dish. A guest judge of Italian heritage ranted back, confirming that there are truffles in many parts of the world, including Italy.

Black contestants who soar through weeks of competition suddenly have complete melt-downs in the finals. Blacks are relentlessly and through editing, portrayed as not being able to get along with others, to sustain hard work and and to produce quality effort. 

The mainstream news media cannot seem to find any black soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. A calendar from an insurance company that services military personnel showed a mass assembly of real soldiers. One quarter of the soldiers were dark skinned. Another eighth of the soldiers were dark brown skinned. Another eighth of the soldiers were brown skinned. The majority of the soldiers were people of color.

In hiring newsreaders and commentators, America has done the usual trick: to pass over highly qualified Black journalists and commentators for the non Black immigrant of the year. This year, there are more British, Australian, Indian and middle Easterners than there are Native American Black journalists who have already trained for on screen work and who have years of experience behind the scenes.

The news media has never shown the correct proportion of Black and Brown soldiers, as were shown on that insurance company calendar cover. The media never showcases, interviews, or honors soldiers with respect to the proportion of non White soldiers that exists in our real military.

Yet the media will never hesitate to cry “affirmative action” when even a few members of the White audience complain of too much color on their television screen or in print.

Even though the majority of America’s poor are White and Hispanic, not Black, the vast majority of news and other photos accompanying reports on poverty immediately show stock footage of poor black people.

There is more than enough evidence of bias against black people in the mainstream and lesser journalistic media. But the saddest bias of all comes when another blond haired, blue eyed “beauty” has gone missing.The airwaves become dominated by the story. The same events involving Latin, African American, and other women of color do not even merit a comment in the news crawl at the bottom of the screen.

That a missing woman or child has to be blond-haired and blue-eyed to merit the nation’s attention is the most stunning and cold blooded of all of the bias in America’s portrait of Black people.

Racial bias, overt bigotry, outright racism and deception is an historical and permanent fact of mainstream reporting about Black Americans. There are no expectations of any improvement. As a result, there is no decline in the trend of Black and other colors of people getting their news from non mainstream media sources.