To Cover or Not to Cover: Race

     This week and last week's reading have raised many questions within my mind.  I find that the way the book covers both gender and race in the media to be confusing.  First, in the chapters about sexism, the book expresses how women in the media are often covered only in certain topics.  It goes on to explain that women are rarely pictured as professionals in their field, especially politics and economics, which poses problems to how people view women.  However, the book then includes a quote on page 46 that says electing a woman means getting a "leader who will be paying more attention to education, to quality of life."  I was a bit frustrated and confused by this quote because while it supports powerful women it continues to follow the trend that women are best suited and strongest at supporting only certain topics.  Health and education can be seen as "women's" topics and I found that this quote distracted me from the good points made in the chapter about the lack of women professionals in the media.

      Then continuing on to the readings about racism and racial balance in the media, I found myself still questioning some points made.  As a woman who is half Asian and half White people most often view me as Asian.  However, I primarily see myself as an American.  It does not bother me that more news stories don't focus on Asian people. This is because I tend to feel that news stories focus more on events and issues that are affecting the world and America which includes people of all cultures and races.  I do understand that the specifically African American focused stories are covering specific issues as opposed to addressing how these stories impact and reflect the African American community. However, I do not understand the counting of  how many stories directly relate to a certain race, because as I said earlier, many other stories are covering America as a whole with all its races.  Because of this I feel that covering specifically one race more can actually have a negative impact because it shows separation and inequality from the other stories. Overall I believe this book points out many unacknowledged biases, but there are still points covered that I disagree with or have yet to understand completely.