NPR Journalist Gene Demby Teaches Students to Challenge Assumptions

              

NPR Blogger Gene Demby speaks with students on stereotypes at
 American University on October 9th, 2014 (Photo by Tori Tropiano)

            Gene Demby works to break assumptions. As the lead blogger of NPR's Code Switch team, a blog dedicated to examining stereotypes, Demby has covered many stories about bias in the media. Demby gave a lecture to students at American University last Thursday. He spoke about a story he covered on the racial makeup of the NBA.

              

               

            Demby explained he got the idea for the blog after learning about Jeremy Lin. Lin is one of the few Asian-Americans in professional basketball. In fact, Demby said out of the thousands of players drafted for the 2012-2013 season, only 15 were Asian-American. . After learning about Lin, Demby decided to research why there are so few Asian-Americans in professional basketball.  Through his research he came to realize that many of the assumptions people had about why so few Asian-Americans play basketball were wrong. For instance, he explained that basketball was very central to the assimilation of Asian immigrants on the West Coast. He said that, “Asian-Americans aren’t left out of the NBA due to a lack of ability. We simply aren’t looking for them.”            

                  However, Demby told students it can be hard to be completely balanced because no one is truly sure what balanced means. He said that in some cases such as the debate on global warming and vaccines, the other side is most likely wrong. However both sides have to be reported on for the sake of staying unbiased. He said that it was important for students to, “challenge assumptions and what people tell you. History was not written objectively.”

              After Demby's lecture, I decided to look for examples of bias in the media. One example of bias I found was this headline from Myrtle Beach Online. This article makes several references, including in the headline to “illegals”. As Demby mentioned, the term “illegals” is usually used by people who are against immigration legislation. This means that using the term “illegals” may make a story biased. In fact, the term “illegal immigrant” is no longer accepted by the AP Style Guide. In order to make the story more neutral, the author could replace the term “illegals” with “unauthorized immigrants” which is more impartial. The new headline could read, “Husband and Wife get jail time for hiring undocumented immigrants in Charleston Restaurant.” Another example of bias journalism would be this article from the Emirates 24/7 which repeatedly refers to a female flight attendant as a “stewardess”. In today’s reporting, it is better to use words that are gender neutral such as mail carrier, firefighters and in this case flight attendant. If the article had used something like, ”Ex-Flight Attendant threatens to shoot crew” than it would be a less biased article.