Naya Gros
Age: 18-24
Main source of information: Television and Social Media
Television outlet mostly consumed: FOX and ABC
A student-athlete at the University of Minnesota, Naya Gros believes news is important because it gives the public a variety of information they should be aware of.
“The news keeps me up to date with current events going on in the world. It also expands my own personal knowledge with things I am not familiar with,” Gros said.
However, she said that watching television news tends to damper her mood.
“Sometimes I do take a break from television news because it makes me sad,” she said.
Gros talked about how the news tends to overreport about bad events and lacks reporting joyful stories. When discussing the representation of Black women in television news, she thought long and hard. After deep thought, she said it wasn’t often that she saw a Black woman on television news.
“I do not feel like Black women are shown in the news often. I think we don’t see Black women in the news often because they are underrated and overlooked as people,” she said.
Along with a lack of representation of Black women in television news, Gros added that when there is an occasion where a Black woman is in the news, the storyline is typically negative.
“I rarely see any positive stories about the Black community. And if there is a bad story, then we should have some backstory, so judgements don’t form,” she said.
Gros described negative portrayal as a message that distorts the reality of a Black individual. She stated that negative imaging is something that reinforces stereotypes of the Black community being thugs, criminalized, poor and uneducated.
She believes the biggest problem isn't the negative portrayal, but the fact that there needs to be more Black women in the news.
“I would say Black women aren’t always shown in a terrible light, but it also isn’t the best either. There has been an improvement, but still a lot more to be done. Representation is important because we need diversity, and it connects different perspectives,” she said.
Gros's statement:
"As a Black woman in television news, I feel overlooked and underrated in television news."