(December 17, 2015) If
you want to get a real feel for what was happening during a certain period in
history, how people really felt about the issues of the day, take a look at the
media coverage.
For example, a recent study of how historically black
newspapers covered the landmark 1967 Supreme Court case that legalized
interracial marriage, Loving v. Virginia, found their coverage not that much
different from their mainstream counterparts.
The team of researchers, including a journalism professor
from Michigan State University, was surprised by the findings, as they
hypothesized that black newspapers would be more sympathetic to the racially
mixed couple who challenged the Virginia law.
Historically, said MSU’s Geri Alumit Zeldes, the
African-American press is an advocate for civil rights.
“Just knowing how the ethnic press operates, we thought they
were going to be very one-sided in favor of the Lovings,” she said. “But they
followed the same pattern as the mainstream media such as the New York Times
and others.”
Zeldes said one of the lessons learned from this, something
that hasn’t changed since the first newspaper was printed, is that news is a cultural
mirror of what is going on in society at that point in time.
“If you take a look at the newspapers at the time they were
published, they will give you hints as to what the times were like,” she said.
“So if we look at the black press at that time period, you can get a sense of
what the black community was thinking because those reporters were part of that
community.”
Zeldes said that by reviewing the newspapers’ stances on the
issue, it gives us a clue to the political and cultural mood of the time.