News media privilege white elite sources and downgrade minority claims to allegations

Evidence

News reports also have an important intertextual dimension. Newsmaking is largely based on the processing of a large number of source texts, such as other news reports, press conferences, interviews, scholarly studies, and so on. Such intertextuality in news reports shows in various forms of citation and other references to other discourses. Thus, it comes as no surprise that newspapers will generally take (white) elite source texts (e.g., of government, scholars, or the police) as being more credible and newsworthy than source texts of minority group members. Indeed, minority groups have little direct access to the media. If they are cited, they are always accompanied by declarations of credible majority group members. Statements about discrimination and racism will often be downgraded to the dubious status of allegations. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1101

Categorization

• XREF: Directly parallels the earlier Library-recorded claim that crime statistics and mugging were socially constructed via elite discursive practices (Essential Essays, Hall), and connects to the vault’s Islamophobia corpus on media denial preceding violence. — connects to: Journalists systematically favor economic-anxiety explanations for racist voting — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 769; Media coverage of mass surveillance depended on who was surveilled — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 570; News headlines systematically frame minority agency negatively while favoring the ingroup — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1090
• DEEPTHINKING: The downgrade of minority testimony to ‘allegations’ unless vouched for by majority members is a genuinely structural account of epistemic racism operating through media form, not just content.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1101