We walk around with assumptions about other people in our heads, and those can differ greatly from person to person. Especially when the people are of different skin colors.
How news media present words and images of people can have a big effect on how viewers, readers, and listeners think of people of races other than their own.
Dr. Dana Mastro at the University of California-Santa Barbara has studied this effect for years now. She finds differences in how journalists describe black people and white people, especially when it comes to athletest and suspects in criminal cases.
We visit with the professor to unpack some of her findings.