Boko Haram, Journalism, Agenda Setting and Gatekeeping

Journalists are the gatekeepers of the media, meaning that they are the ones who filter all the information that is broadcast to the public. They are also the agenda setters, which means that they have the ability, as the media, to decide what is important enough to be pushed to the public. If a particular topic is covered more often and more notable in the media, then the viewers will begin to think that it is more important. 

Take for example the lack of news coverage of the terrorist group Boko Haram's attack that killed 2,000 people in Nigeria. It was about the same time as the Paris terrorist attack at a French magazine, but the Boko Haram attack received much less media attention from the states as well as in Africa. Simon Allison, a journalist for the Daily Maverick who covers African news wrote an article about the attack and stated that, "It may be the 21st century, but African lives are still deemed less newsworthy - and, by implication, less valuable - than western lives."

12,000 Nigerians flee to Chad after Boko Haram attacks in January 2015.  - Credit: Turkish Weekly

There are discussions in the newsroom about what is newsworthy and what should or shouldn’t be covered. If the personal biases of people get in the way of that line of thinking, then the news is skewed. Another example of this is the fact that Black bodies are disproportionately represented in the media when it comes to issues of welfare and crime. I briefly mentioned this in a previous post about the show "Shameless". We always see black faces juxtaposed with those stories, and that leads to people thinking that all crime is done by people of color and that the only people on welfare are people of color. But that’s completely incorrect. We hardly see white people portrayed as poor or working class, but there certainly are white people in such situations. There are more white drug dealers than black, and yet we rarely see that represented. The lack of wide media coverage misleads the public and therefore when people shape their ideologies, they are again skewed. A study done by Travis Dixon showed that there are harmful psychological effects of overrepresenting white victims and black perpetrators in the TV news.

As gatekeepers, the editors and journalists have the power to change the way groups of people are represented in the media and the way stories are shaped. Many of those editors and those in the power positions are white and are affected by stereotypes so they may not realize the harm they are doing. They subconsciously portray people of color as criminals because they are the "other", outside of their privileged group. There needs to be more diversity in the newsroom and more discussion of how crime stories are presented and how not to racialize them.

Overall, I believe the bias lies in the individual, whether they are in the audience, the journalist, editor, or whatever they may be, it all comes down to each individual and their perspective that shapes their ideologies. As a journalist, you still have the duty to do your best at being impartial. And as consumers of the media we have to be critical of what we read and recognize our own biases.