Ethnicity

Sarita Malik (1998): The word 'race' in the cultural and political terrain has almost universally been aligned with black and Asian people, as though they are the only racial groups that 'own' and ethnicity. 'Whiteness' has been naturalised, as though it is an invisible norm. When it is of course an ethnic group like any other.

1) Examination:
- The relationship between audiences of the media and the messages they transmit.
- Theorists focus on issues around 'textuality' and context' by analysing how various media forms choose to select and present information on different racial groups.

2) Investigation:
- Possible connections between the consumers of media images and those in control of its output.
- Dynamics between ownership, control and content.
- Focuses on the process of media production and considers wider social, political and economic implications of the media.
- It is considered with issues of authorship and examines whether those in control of output (largely white, middle class men) affects the type of images the media produces.

Functionalist View & The Marxist View:
1) The functionalist view argues that program makers 'cater for what the public wants' and simply reflects attitudes, tastes and opines on ethnicity.
2) The other (the Marxist view) is that those in control of media output shape how audiences view race.

Equal Opportunities:
1) BBC Charter (1977): Following viewer complaints and general criticism, this concept was taken seriously by the BBC in 1977 when the committee ruled that 'liberal pluralism' must be the ethos behind programming in order to ensure 'good broadcasting would reflect the competing demands of society which was increasingly multiracial and pluralist.'
2) Liberal pluralism: A philosophy and political principal that argues for the universality (sameness) of humanity.

In media theory the following usually applies:
- Black: African Caribbean and South Asian decent
- Asian: Those from the Indian Subcontinent
- Diaspora: A group of dispersed people e.g. black and Asian people within a British context.