Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Media Images Of Boston's Black Community, Kirk A. Johnson

William Monroe Trotter Institute Publications

In their efforts to report on the forces that affect Boston's racial climate, the local media have typically focused on the more obvious institutional actors: businesses, city hall, school boards, churches, the courts, neighborhood groups. Rarely have the media themselves been subjected to the same scrutiny. This study represents one such effort It is an analysis of the images of Boston's black community that are conveyed through the local news media. It asks the question: If a Bostonian relied solely on the local news for information about local blacks, 1) what impressions would he or she be left with, and …

Covering The Plague Years: Four Approaches To The Aids Beat, James Kinsella

New England Journal of Public Policy

AIDS reporting has changed dramatically since 1981. But it was not until mid-1985, when Rock Hudson was diagnosed with the disease, that media outlets began playing the epidemic as a story of major proportions.

Because almost no major media institution embraced the AIDS story as an important issue, coverage of the epidemic was often the result of a reporter's initiative. Consequently, the connection the individual journalist had with the epidemic became a much stronger influence on what appeared in the news and on what Americans knew about the crisis than in any other recent major health story. This article examines …