Stereotypes In Media Essay

Stereotypes and America’s Mainstream Media

Mainstream media is a force that has the ability to alter people’s ways of thinking. Media delivers the world’s news, as well as entertainment, but it is not always used for the better. In many cases, mainstream media presents one-sided information that encourages it’s consumers to accept stereotypes and to allow them to not only spread, but continue through generations. In the United States, millions of people are stereotyped and seen only from a certain angle because of the representation of their race or ethnicity by the media. Muslim-Americans, Italian-Americans, and Mexican-Americans are all groups of individuals who have been affected by the mainstream media’s biased representations.

Stereotypes of Muslim-Americans have long been present in American society. These stereotypes stem from fears brought on by Islamic extremists in the Middle East. The brutality that has occurred and continues to occur at the hands of these extremist groups becomes the initial image that many think of when hearing the word “Muslim”. Muslim-Americans face harmful stereotypes because people tend to generalize Islamic extremists, applying their beliefs to the rest of the Muslim population.

Such stereotypes differ between Muslim men and women- portraying men as brutal and barbaric,

On one occasion, the internationally popular magazine, was released containing a story accompanied by a photo of “an Afghan man beating a woman during Taliban rule”1. This instance emphasizes the belief that Muslim men are violent. This magazine emphasizes the same stereotype again, but bringing male children into the picture, allowing many to believe that “Muslim boys are eager to follow in the ‘evil’ footsteps of their fathers”2. The Newsweek cover on October 15, 2001 pictures a “serious little boy, his finger on the trigger of a toy gun, at an anti-American rally in Islamabad,