"[Politicians] ask whether the media is biased against them. But the question we must ask is more profound: is the media biased against the people?”
Our Quote of the Week, given while Sargent Shriver was running for vice president in 1972, spotlights an issue that continues to be relevant for us today: that our media have a responsibility to adequately represent the actions of our leaders and the state of society. Given the media’s role in safeguarding our democracy, this issue cannot be understated.
In an explosive and sweeping campaign speech to Black broadcasters at the National Association of Radio and Television Announcers, Sargent Shriver raises several issues about the media. He laments the fact that TV and other platforms do not accurately depict the diversity of Americans. He lists a number of examples:
- “Too often the eye that guides the television camera represents the world of the middle class whites. It represents the sights and sounds of a life far more homogeneous as it appears in the media than it is in reality.”
- “I never saw the reality on television that I have seen in Bedford-Stuyvesant and South Chicago -- the reality that people live.”
- “I never felt the reality on television that I first felt among migrant workers in California. I never saw the reality on television that I saw with my own eyes on Indian reservations in Montana. I never saw the reality on television that I saw four days ago in a foundry in Wheeling, West Virginia... there in the heat of open furnaces amid the thin, black dust of the cooling pits I saw the unfair, unsafe, tedious, youth-stealing work that the American laborer shoulders every day.”
Shriver also cites the example of biased coverage of the Attica uprising, which, for him, didn’t accurately represent any of the people involved: “Some have said that the coverage of the Attica riots was neither sensitive nor comprehensive to either side -- the townspeople or the prisoners.”
Importantly, Shriver makes the point throughout the speech that the media do not adequately hold political leaders accountable for their damaging decisions, citing the ongoing war in Vietman and the failure of the Nixon administration to end the conflict.
All of Shriver’s examples remind us that there are many negative ramifications to keeping underserved communities invisible and political leaders’ failures unexpressed, for if a society is not well-informed about its vulnerabilities, it cannot know nor address its needs.
Whether we’re dealing with traditional media sources (television, radio, print newspapers) or with digital media, our society relies on sound communications sources to inform the population and to keep politicians and other public figures accountable. We need media reports that are thorough, well-researched, and placed in their proper context. And it is up to all of us to demand these things from our media channels, with our voices and with our choices.
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