Mass media ownership and it’s effects on the production and coverage of content has been the subject of many studies as of late. Professional sports has been in the spotlight a lot recently, from Kaepernick’s silent protest to the LeBron James ‘shut up and dribble’ comments. Media framing and media convergence subtly changed the narrative behind an amazing protest that then changed the career and life of an incredible football player.
Media convergence has changed the gathering and distribution of news. The main aspect of this is the technological advances we’ve made. More people are getting their news from social media which has no fact checkers or credible news sources that anything can be said and broadcast to any and everyone that anything can sadly become news.
During a pre-season football game, Colin Kaepernick silently knelt during the national anthem. He made it very clear from the beginning what he was protesting. He was protesting the racial inequality and the mistreatment of African-Americans in the United States. President Trump criticism of the protest and the NFL players that had joined Kaepernick for ‘disrespecting the country, the flag, and the anthem itself’, changed the narrative as a whole.
The original message has been lost, and thematic media framing is to blame. Because of that change in narrative, the protest was slowly making its way out of the news cycle, even in the middle of the multiple police killings taking place in America at the time. After the presidents criticism more NFL players joined the protest but not to back Kaepernick’s original issue but as a response to President Trump.
The media’s coverage of the now negative connotation of the protest, continued to drive the country into an uproar and farther and farther away from bringing everyone together to change the pressing issues in America. An incredible example of the media’s distorted view and framing is from a column in The Washington Post written by Mark A. Thiessen, ‘Disrespecting the flag, is a disrespectful way to protest Trump’. Since it was never about the flag or the military, that is a fabricated narrative, made up all by the media framing.
The medias convergence also helped with the changing of the narrative of the protest. Since most people were getting the news from social media do they didn’t get a chance to see the true meaning of his protest. All they were seeing was the news about the negatives of his protest. They didn’t even get a chance to choose their own narrative for the protest.
By steering all discussions about the protest away from the original message set by Kaepernick, the media content given to audiences gave them the preconceived notion of what to think about the protest instead of letting them gather their own opinions about it.
