It’s About What You Do With Your Place At The Table – Dr. Mae Jemison

The media does not always accurately portray what our communities in the best of light. There are numerous negative misconceptions and stereotypes displayed by the media that cause some to have a negative attitude towards Blacks in America and African countries. We currently live in a society where good news itself is not in short supply; the broadcasting of it is. There is a saying that goes, “If it bleeds, it leads,” and unfortunately this is a fairly accurate statement. In 2014, a Russian news site, City Reporter, decided to spend a day only reporting good news no matter what. They ended up losing two-thirds of their normal readership. A study around why this tends to be the case can be found here.

In the summer of 2016, a man did a search for three black teens and the only images returned on Google were teens that had been in trouble with the law. When he did a similar search for three white teens, it showed stock images of smiling teens having fun. Although there was a lot of backlash towards Google, the fact of the matter is the algorithm returned the images that are most commonly associated and accepted by people using those keywords.

To change the narrative, we have to share more positive images that are often overlooked by mainstream media and move those negative images out of the top search results. Our goal here is to help shine the spotlight on the positive news from our communities.