The film "Marshall" focuses on how a young black lawyer from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Thurgood Marshall, goes through one of his tougher trials in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he defends Joseph Spell, a black man accused of raping his white employer, Eleanor Strubing. Barred from speaking, Marshall guides inexperienced insurance lawyer Sam Friedman through the process. This essay will show how racism is fueled by the media as people do not speak out even if they do not agree with what is portrayed in the media, further allowing racism to be internalized even though the media may publish or omit content that give rise to distorted or distorted beliefs about racism. .Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay First, due to the deep roots of racism in society, minorities fear speaking out about it despite the injustice they may feel. This can be seen from the scene where Spell, a black man, had been too afraid to tell the truth and instead pleaded guilty to a crime he had not committed. He had feared the reaction he might receive for being with a white woman. This is linked to the theory of the spiral of silence, defined by the assumption that in an anonymous society cohesion must be continuously guaranteed through a sufficient degree of agreement on values ​​and objectives. If people believe that their opinion shares the public consensus, they have the confidence to speak out in private and public discussions. Conversely, when people feel in the minority, they become cautious and silent, thus reinforcing the public impression of their side's weakness. In this case the minority are blacks and the majority are whites. Spell, a minority, chose not to speak out as the impression of the majority of black people was that they were bestial, uncultured people and fully capable of committing criminal acts such as rape, where if he spoke out, he could suffer worse. consequences. However, Rothman also states that the majority becomes a silent majority if the influential media supports the minority. When supported by the media, the minority is more willing to speak out than the majority because it is strengthened by the public authority of the influential media (Rothman, 1992). With the NAACP supporting Spell in the trial, people of color were more likely to be seen outside the courthouse seeking justice than before, where only whites were seen. A real life example might include people's opinions on the drug, marijuana. The majority opinion publicized in the media then was that marijuana is harmful and should be avoided, while the minority opinion is that marijuana has medical benefits. Big news companies feared reporting on anything “pro-pot” as there could be damaging consequences for their reputation. However, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's medical correspondent, had publicly announced his support for the drug, and that's when a shift in perspective occurred. A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans support marijuana. So, this example shows how influential media, in this case CNN, a news source with a huge number of viewers, could potentially break the spiral of silence. Next, newspaper editors choose what they include or exclude in their stories and headlines, limiting what their audiences read anda certain perspective on blacks is formed. This can be seen from the scene where Friedman had an outburst, saying that newspapers should have no place in the trial, but Marshall responded that blacks were losing their jobs because of this news. Headlines like "Wife Attacked by Negro Driver" and the portrayal of Spell as a bestial, ignorant black man, fully capable of rape due to his criminal past, and Strubing as an educated, blonde socialite as a defenseless victim led whites to believing that blacks are evil criminals who cannot be trusted in their homes, resulting in them firing blacks out of fear. Such headlines were created to influence readers to think that crimes are only committed by people of color and that people should be afraid. Furthermore, when initially asked about the case, Friedman's interpretation of the case was, "The boy who attacked the Greenwich girl?" This shows that Friedman was under the impression that Spell was the culprit. By definition, agenda-setting theory suggests how the media organizes and presents information, influencing how people are likely to understand the story. The media's organization of a story can involve everything from verbal or visual cues to the inclusion or exclusion of facts and the order in which journalists tell the story (Croteau and Hoynes, 2019). In this case, the portrayal of blacks as criminal and evil in the eyes of the media through framing led whites to see them as untrustworthy, resulting in innocent blacks losing their jobs even if they did nothing wrong. A real life example would include the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s, which includes the false accusation of nine young black men on the lesser charge of raping two white women while aboard the train. Although the young men were innocent, the spread of the alleged rape had resulted in an angry white mob surrounding the prison, eager to lynch them. An example of the headlines used in the newspapers had been: “Death Penalty Aptly Called for in Diabolical Crime of Nine Burly Negroes,” where the content of the articles included “…those hellish criminals,” “This was a heinous and unspeakable crime , unthinkable in its scope." deplorable, jungle-flavored conduct, a return to the dark ages of the meanest African corruption” and “…the white man will not tolerate such acts.” The content and headlines used in reporting the story would lead readers to believe that the Scottsboro Boys were actually guilty of the crime, and would also result in further prejudice against blacks, especially by whites as the content of the published articles promotes whites . supremacy. Finally, if an audience is constantly exposed to the defense of black inferiority and white supremacy in the media, they will begin to internalize racism and treat it as the norm as they will begin to believe that this is how the real world works. This can be seen from the scenes in which newspapers ran accusatory headlines against blacks and also during jury selection, in which one of the judges, Mr. Wright, had said: “I'll be honest with you, I don't like colored. I feel like they're always getting into trouble." These scenes highlight how, due to the way blacks are portrayed in the media, the mostly white public begins to form a negative impression of them and begins to see blacks as a whole as people who cannot be trusted and capable of committing crimes. By definition, cultivation theory is concerned with the totality of the pattern communicated cumulatively over a long period of exposure rather than.