
Television and the media has played a large role in the spread of today’s Black Lives Matter(BLM) movement. The media’s selective approach to covering BLM creates bias and skews perception in the public eye. The way the subject is reported creates an invisible link between violence and the BLM platform. The true philosophy of BLM is to bring awareness to the discrimination and unequal treatment within the governed system against an entire race. By associating all protesters with violent acts, the true meaning of BLM is discredited and forgotten, obscured by the selective coverage of the few protesters who choose to retaliate with violence. The bias created by the media has in turn sparked anti-BLM movements, which is inimical to any progress we want to make in society. Since the 1960’s, Black Power movements have been diminished by groups that don’t have a full understanding of the issues, just like the anti-BLM groups are doing today. The disturbing parallels found between the past and present should create a holistic view of the topic, and readers should learn that sometimes they need to look past what the media is reporting. Although there are many people with many different opinions about BLM, one thing remains true; selective reporting skews the viewer’s perception of the movement, obscuring its true purpose.

           Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding” gives readers a closer look into the relationship between media and viewers, and how information is produced and interpreted. The points Hall makes are especially relevant to the misconceptions of the Black Lives Matter movement when it comes to the media encryption of information. The media encodes their message for what they believe the reader will get out of it (Hall 231). What the viewer actually interprets is what matters. Even though the media is trying to shine the light on the BLM movement and why it is important the viewer is only decoding the violence and the ties to BLM. The most important aspect of the BLM movement is its true meaning. The way the media portrays the movements eliminates any room for the public to process and interpret the meaning on their own, and as Hall said, “If the meaning is not articulated in practice, it has no effect (Hall 232).” This explains how the media is at fault for distorting the encryption through selective reporting on the issues at hand. Instead of the companies that own these media outlets pushing for the distribution of raw important facts, they push a heavily mutated “programme”. This is due to their greedy want to push capital gain and reporting with biases in a morally unsound manner. News outlets such as NBC, CNN, and Fox News differ in “agendas”, “social”, “cultural”, and “political structure,” tapping into their assumed audiences, presenting their own political views in the stories they are reporting, thus changing the actual facts to better fit their desired outcome.

           Even in the 1960’s there was controversy over what Black Power meant and why they were protesting. The images that came linked to the movement weren’t always good and most thought of violence when they heard the phrase Black Power. Penial E. Joseph looks into how Americans viewed the movement in varying ways. Joseph shows how a select few who caused disruptions within the movements can create a massive black hole that eats movements from the inside by allowing politicians to pump fear into their supporters by showing images of violence and telling stories of it (Joseph 752). Even though these instances may be small and only a select few activists actually commit these acts the people that hear these messages of discourse decode this that all Black Power activists are violent and they are out to ruin the country. Joseph is arguing that the Black Power movement was powered by violence during the 1960’s and on which is supported by evidence such as Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. He doesn’t argue that being violent is good but shows how being violent is just a retaliation on the slow speed of change in the country. He continues to point out that violence may not have been the best route for the activists to take while ignoring King’s calls for peace in some areas; but these acts of retaliation may have been the fuel that actually created results during the time period (Joseph 760). The act of violence is never preferable, but when the outcome is better than the actions being performed it can be viewed as necessary for the movement. People of America wouldn’t take the movement seriously until they did something drastic to grab people’s attention and let them know it’s no joke. Joseph shows the importance of these groups, “networks of neighborhood activists that concentrated on pragmatic issues related to police brutality, good schools, tenants and welfare rights, and expanded social services” (Joseph 768). The Black Panther Party may have used violence to create progress but they were pushing for progress for social change. The violence wasn’t over drugs or gang affiliation but for their youth to have a better education, a fair chance at life, fair treatment in the justice system, and fair social values. Although these instances of violence may have cast a negative shadow over the movements, their voices were heard and message received nonetheless.

           Protests can become violent quickly and change the entire atmosphere surrounding a subject, but it is always important not to lose sight of what is truly important, the goal. BLM is a movement with goals to address all of the things that detriment African American communities, from economic struggles to injustice in police relations. Alex Altman explains the reasoning for specific protesting strategies, “causing discomfort is designed to make society feel the pain and frustration of living as a black person in America” (Altman 121). A majority of viewers won’t look beyond what they see in the news, so they never get the chance to truly understand the methods behind the madness. All they see? The madness. I remember watching the news clips of protesters blocking traffic and thinking how counterproductive it was to stop working people from getting to where they needed to be. After realizing the actual platform BLM is trying to achieve the reasoning and strategy behind the protests began to make sense. Media outlets tend to glance over any true meanings behind the protests, and simply report what they think will grab the viewer’s attention.  The main goal of all the protesters is to spread the word using today’s modern technology like social media. These tools have been used to spark movements all over targeting places like college campuses to pinpoint racism and weed it out. With success come critics, there are a handful of political figures, such as Governor Chris Christie, who claim “the movement’s anti police rhetoric has put lives at risk” (Altman 125). This is an instance of someone only paying attention to what is shown on the media and not being able to see the big picture. They are not anti-police and they don’t only focus on injustice. Black Lives Matter continues to spread messages of change throughout the nation and still sparks controversy but it doesn’t come without progress and support from important figures such as our President.

           The Black Lives Matter movement has a number of planks in their platform including diversity, globalism, restorative justice, and the collective value of black lives. But the overarching value of the organization spans much more than just current issues at hand, it is an “affirmation of Black folks’ contributions to this society, our humanity, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression” (blacklivesmatter.com). What we are seeing now in the media is just a resurgence of issues that have surfaced in the past. In the modern day, groups such as BLM have the ways and means to communicate their message in more ways than just protesting (although that seems to remain the most effective method in engaging an audience’s attention). In order to get a holistic view of the BLM movement, there is a lot to be considered, in fact much more than what is represented in national rebellions, court cases, and under the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag. The purpose is to “go beyond the narrow nationalism that can be prevalent within Black Communities,” which generalizes the beneficiaries of the movement to Blacks. The purpose is to “affirm the lives of Black queer and trans folks, disabled folks, black-undocumented folks, folks with records, women and all Black lives along the gender spectrum,” shattering the predisposition that Black people can only be seen as the color of their skin(blacklivesmatter.com).

The media will always put their own twist on a story to grab the viewer's eye. In one certain instance Jon Stewart points out how the media gets it all wrong and doesn't even notice what they are saying. The media covered a controversial video released about the fraternity Sigma Alpha Epsilon and their racist bus chant. Another video surfaced of Eric Striker cussing out the fraternity for their racist comments. The backlash was stronger for Striker even though he was responding to racist remarks and was forced to do an apology before the group of frat kids. On top of the media forcing Strikers hand, when the frat kids apologized the media began finding excuses for their behavior. For example, they said a combination of alcohol and the constant rap they hear is the reason for their actions. Stewart pointed out that this couldn't even be considered an excuse because the chant was made up by their fraternity. Then removing the accused from the equation they start debating if racism is still alive in America. You can see the obvious bias in the conservative media here as they won’t address the obvious problems with our society. Stewart explains how the far right media loves to generalize an isolated instance and make it appear the whole country is affected, but won't do the same for a problem that actually affects the nation. This one example clearly points out the selective media encoding the message they want their viewers to find (Stewart).

           Throughout Stuart Hall’s “Encoding/Decoding”, he gives solid examples of media outlets manipulating hard facts into something that will “sell”. These manipulations misrepresent the BLM movements along with many other social movements. Instead of transmitting the raw facts for the viewer to take in and interpret on their own, the story is altered as it passes through the media, creating biases for or against opinions. Until this essay, like myself, I didn’t even know the true platform for BLM.  I looked it up myself on their website. The average person won’t research further because if they see it on an accredited website or media outlet one would automatically believe that it is legitimate. When you see a riot on T.V. you don’t receive a message about equal rights and justice for Blacks across America, you get a false sense of fear and hate for the very same movement that is trying to stop the spread of fear and hate across the world.

The “rules” for language are vague and often ignored by the media. In order for the message to be interpreted by the viewer it must pass through these standards of language in order to be recognized. Hall tries to explain that in order for the message to actually have effect on the people, it must be appropriated as “meaningful”. When the message becomes meaningful that is when it can be used to persuade with a complex set of means, using perception and emotions to structure the message (Hall 233). This helps explain the process in which a story like BLM protesting in a major city goes through an invisible structure before anyone actually views what is going on. The raw data is processed by the encoder (news outlet) and then decrypted for us to interpret. The problem with this structure is the media already has a message in mind that they want you to interpret in the end game. The news doesn’t exist to convey opinion on the matter, opinions should be left up to the viewer to decide on their own. The viewers believe they are decoding the message themselves but in reality it has already been done for them. That is not the sole problem with encoded messages. The messages are dependent on the audience being able to understand what is being broadcasted to them. For example, for BLM the first thing that most people were exposed to when it came to BLM was the violent or destructive protests going on in major cities like Baltimore. When I was first exposed I was like many others that had started to see it for the first time because it hit so close to my home. The problem with this instance is that BLM had been around for many years before this. I was never shown how the BLM movement was really protesting and calling for change in our local communities, because this was not broadcasted like the national news as the violence was. I can say truthfully that I misinterpreted the message. The news and video I saw was an overhead view of downtown Baltimore being engulfed by flames, people throwing trash bins into windows, riot police, and listening to people argue if this “thuggish” behavior is acceptable or not. Not one time was I informed what the reason for protests were, what the platform was, or see the protesting before it became violent. Like many others I was ill informed by the media, they focused on selling capital, not dispersing facts, only unethical headlines that grab someone’s attention long enough for them to want to share their rapid reactions on Facebook and Twitter.

           The media stuck to covering BLM due to the massive attention that was walking side by side with it. They knew the reasons for this was the massive controversy over whether or not the behavior of the few protestors was okay or not. Is the media supposed to be sparking a debate over how orthodox the protestors are, or should they really be asking Americans if the treatment of blacks is going to be tolerated any longer? Stuart Hall shows how symbolic images can be and the effect they have on people. He says, “The dog in the film can bark but it cannot bite!” (Hall 235). He shows the people associate an image with an action, even if that action may not be able to actually have an effect on them in real life. Hall also explains the twist people can put on the image through language. For example, if the dog is barking playfully versus barking aggressively pulling on a metal chain. This can give the viewer two different symbols or feelings linked to that image. Much like the BLM protests the language being associated along with the images created a symbol of fear, destruction, and “thuggery”. This links together the concepts that language is decoded by the viewer and that the symbols and images being shown to them are decoded too. In this case the icons are already decrypted for the viewer just like the messages. Why isn’t the symbol of a fist raised or the reading “Black Lives Matter” met with acceptance by our fellow Americans and our politicians? Instead these powerful symbols are counteracted with the conflicting “All Lives Matter” slogan because our media has divided our nation. Our media still hasn’t learned their lesson from this either. Just recently they played their audience showing selected content from certain candidates, dividing the country, and tapping into people’s emotions with opinion and not fact. This shaped what developed in our country and did not change anything for the better. The difference in media biases during the election verse in BLM coverage was that they apologized for one. The only reason I can think of for their admittance of wrongdoing is that not only minorities were affected by their bias this time.

           Throughout the years the media has altered the way our country views the BLM movement through bias in selective reporting. We as a nation have completely overlooked the true motive for the BLM protestors and what they are trying to change. The platform is pushing for reform, a revolution that would create equal treatment and opportunities for the black community. We should all learn that this issue at hand cannot be put off any longer. The issues our nation faces must be dealt with as they will only continue to return and divide us all. History will continue to repeat itself; as we look at the occurrences of the current BLM movement, there are obvious parallels to the black power movement in the 1960’s. Our media has deceived us through their encoded messages. Showing the violence that haunts the movement instead of spreading the call for change. The news only reports a story with their own twists to sell capital gain instead of spreading raw facts. Even though most of us have different opinions of the BLM movement, we must realize the hard truth that we need to address the unequal treatment that happens right in front of us every day, and the media needs to stop manipulating what we see and hear and let us face the harsh reality.
