Television News and the (mis)representation of cocaine and opioid users: a systematic study of NBC Nightly News reports

Voiceover

Presenter(s)

Sharmila Suresh, Jerome Hamilton Jr., Anel Robinson

Abstract or Description

It has become something of a cliché to assert that today’s opioid users are depicted more sympathetically by the American media than were the users of cocaine, particularly in the form of crack, during the 1980s. The modern users of opioids, especially drugs like OxyContin® or synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, are widely said to be characterized as the unfortunate victims of a public health crisis while the users of cocaine in the 1980s were demonized as dangerous criminals who warranted harsh policing and incarceration. This project seeks to ascertain whether or not there is a factual basis for this widespread perception. We also evaluate the hypothesis that a differential framing of drug use can be at least partially explained by the association of cocaine use with African Americans in the 1980s and the association of opioid misuse with whites in the present. In order to evaluate these claims, we have coded online databases of NBC Nightly News broadcasts over two seven-year periods using a carefully-designed set of criteria. We provide compelling evidence that (a) depictions of cocaine use in the 1980s were significantly more negative and condemnatory than those of opioids in the 2010s; (b) Black use of cocaine in the 1980s was grossly exaggerated; and (c) the lack of sympathy for cocaine users expressed by NBC in the 1980s is to some extent explicable in terms of pervasive racist attitudes. 

Mentor

John Waller