Whitewashing Diversity

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between conservative discourse, racial politics, and broadcasting policy in the United States. It explores how conservative media personalities, pundits, and activists in 2009 claimed that efforts to increase broadcast diversity were, in actuality, attempts by liberals to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine-a policy that had required broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues-through "the backdoor." Reframing media diversity policies as masquerades to silence conservative voices, conservatives both denied the existence of barriers to participation for people of color and extended a narrative of conservative victimization. In contextualizing and analyzing the crusade against the "stealth Fairness Doctrine," this article demonstrates how media policy discourse has operated as a site where conservative claims of injury occlude the continued existence of structural barriers to people of color and deny the importance of racial difference in the United States.

Use of immunology in news and YouTube videos in the context of COVID-19: politicisation and information bubbles

“…This is interesting if we consider that the press in Italy is regulated by a professional board (journalists need to be licenced by the Ordine dei Giornalisti) as are UK journalists (by the Independent Press Standards Organisation). In the US journalism is largely unregulated, in accordance with the First Amendment to the US Constitution and after the Federal Communications Commission, under the Reagan administration, repealed the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987 (53). The higher proportion of anti-vaccine information in Italian (three times that of videos in English; four times in Italian news compared to the US) raises the question of their impact since, as of 14/9/2022 -end date in our search, the share of the population who were fully vaccinated was not lower in Italy (81%) compared to the United Kingdom (75%), Australia (83%) or the United States (68%) (54).…”

Use of immunology in news and YouTube videos in the context of COVID-19: politicization and information bubbles

“…This is interesting if we consider that the press in Italy is regulated by a professional board (journalists need to be licensed by the Ordine dei Giornalisti) as are UK journalists (by the Independent Press Standards Organisation). In the US journalism is largely unregulated, in accordance with the First Amendment to the US Constitution and after the Federal Communications Commission, under the Reagan administration, repealed the "Fairness Doctrine" in 1987 (Perlman 2012).…”