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Youngstown native battles negative perceptions of blacks in media
By Bruce Walton
Youngstown
Hubbard native Betty Dopson helped found the Committee to Eliminate Media Offensive To African People 30 years ago nearly to this day in New York City.
Through it she was able to have a significant impact in changing the focus of tone on race in local media.
“We see ourselves as grass-roots activists, but our focus is to develop an understanding and an appreciation for who we are and not just all the negative aspects of our lives,” she said.
Dopson returned to Youngstown last year after her husband died and she could no longer afford the cost of living in New York. Now she hopes to spend more time making a similar impact on Youngstown area media, which she believes is vastly imbalanced.
According to the U.S. 2010 Census, Youngstown has a demographic of 53 percent nonwhite residents. Compared with minorities covered in news or of employees in the media, Dopson said she sees “little evidence in the local news media” of equal representation.
In 1986, Dopson said she wanted to help bring a forum together to combat the negative perception of black people in the media, which often covered a disproportionate amount of black people as criminals.
“We didn’t say we were not involved in criminal activity, but not always,” she said. “As we discovered in our research, we were only covered in three areas: sports, crime and entertainment.”
Looking back, she said her organization has made some progress, though limited, in the way black people are viewed in media in the New York and New Jersey areas.
“I think that part of our success is the fact of our longevity,” she said. “We didn’t just pop up and disappear; we’ve been around.”
That success has also come from a diverse membership from various careers and specialities, she noted.
For all of its effort and change over the last 30 years, its message can’t be more relative than today with the Black Lives Matter Movement, which criticizes the treatment of black people by law enforcement, as well as in the media and the rest of society. Though CEMOTAP has not been extremely involved with Black Lives Matter Movement, Dopson said it is in complete support.
She already has a small following in the Valley, and is organizing a small focus group to get an understanding of the political climate in the area. In the near future, she said she’d like to have the organization speak on issues and keep Youngstown residents informed.