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About That Popular 'Black Films Don't Sell ...Color Of Change Launches Petition To Force Fox To Cancel 'Cops' - Cites Racial Bias, More...
Their petition got more than 40,000 signatures and Oxygen eventually did kill the reality TV show.
Will Color Of Change be able to work their magic again with another TV show - although one with a long, steady broadcast history?
The organization has asked Fox not to renew Cops for another season, launching yet another petition, which was sent out to its supporters via email today, requesting that they sign the petition.
So what's Color Of Change's beef with the show? Take a guess...
Here's the letter to Fox that's on their website currently:
Bad Boys, Bad Boys: Put an end to the show COPS
Here's the letter we'll send to corporate advertisers of COPS and FOX executives like Gaude Lydia Paez, VP of Corporate Communications, Nicole Bernard, Senior VP for FOX Audience Strategy, and Tony Tompson, Manager of Current Programming at FOX Broadcasting (you can add a personal comment using the box in the form):
Well, they've got a point right? Although, as I said in my Jada Pinkett Smith post earlier today, there's a much larger issue that needs to be addressed here, and forcing the end of one TV show isn't going to do a lot to bring about the desired widespread effect. We have to tackle the central issue head-on, otherwise it won't go away.Dear Sir or Madam,
For years, media corporations like FOX, the producers of COPS and corporate advertisers have built a profit model around the fiction of so-called “reality” television. Although marketed as unbiased, COPS actually offers a highly filtered version of crime and the criminal justice system — a “reality” where the police are always competent, crime-solving heroes and where the bad boys always get caught.
When COPS launched in 1989, it quickly came under criticism for its intentional focus on Black, Latino and low income neighborhoods and its highly selective portrayal of race. Content analysis performed in the mid-nineties revealed that “reality” crime programs like COPS tend to over-represent whites as police officers and under-represent Blacks and Latinos as authority figures, while also under-representing whites and over-representing people of color as criminals.
Research shows that these images linger in the subconscious of viewers, creating “unconscious attitudes” and “implicit biases” about both race and class, influencing public support for more punitive approaches to problems. Against the real-world backdrop of an American culture that views young men like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Russell Davis with suspicion — and places like New York where in 2011 there were more than 700,000 incidents of "stop and frisk" targeting Black and Latino males — the stakes couldn't be higher for our families and communities.
Twenty-five years in primetime is enough. I urge your company to take this opportunity to reconsider your continued support of this dangerous show.
But one step at a time I suppose...
"We're sending the message to Fox and to advertisers that Cops is not worth saving," says Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorOfChange.
With the season finale of Cops scheduled for May 4th, Fox has yet to decide on whether it's going to renew the series for another season. The network also hasn't commented on the petition.
Now in its 25th season (that's a long time for any TV series to be on the air), Cops has been a ratings hit for the network, considering how cheap it is to produce, like most reality TV shows. In fact, we could say that it was actually one of the first reality TV shows, if not the first, years before Real Housewives Of Atlanta, another one of those series that I think contributes to popular stereotypes about black people - specifically black women in this case.
Will Color Of Change launch a petition to force cancellation of that too? What about Love And Hip-Hop, which I think is actually worse than the Real Housewives franchise?
If you'd like to sign the petition, click HERE to do so.
9 Comments
Igwell | May 6, 2013 5:08 PM
Congratulations. I think this was the final boot, after its falling ratings and the rise of FOX Sports Saturday made its cancellation inevitable.
jon | April 11, 2013 3:55 PM
Maybe they should try to cancel reality
getthesenets | March 21, 2013 9:47 PM
real damage done by these American shows is that the are syndicated worldwide
never looked it up but having seen dubbed versions of other Fox shows when I've gone abroad...fairly certain that Cops has been broadcated across the globe in a lot of languages......
Yes, we all know that the crime stats don't lie and that there are Black criminals...but Cops isn't the ONLY show on tv showing African Americans.
Go to other places, and outside of american hip hop and pop artists....Cops is probably the only image of (american)Black people that they see.....pre-Obama, that is.
.....
Miles Ellison | March 21, 2013 9:23 PM
If there were no black criminals, they would be created out of burnt cork.
ScriptTease | March 21, 2013 8:21 PM
Maybe black folks should stop giving them material needed for this reality show that has been airing for over 20-25 years. Just a thought.
ALM | March 20, 2013 9:15 PM
Knowing Fox, they'll probably cancel "Cops" and create a reality show that is ten times worse.
Aswilliams | March 20, 2013 2:01 PM
@Tambay you cetainly bring up some great points when it comes to other reality shows that points out negative stereotypes of Afro-Americans. I too wonder will the organization call out the filth that caters to negative stereotypes of people of color from both the black man and woman. Cops isn't the big issue here there are other degrading and humiliating reality shows that are worse than Cops that need a signed petition to go off the air immediately. Where were they when shows like Basketball Wives, Love & Hip Hop, and other filth on Vh1. It is more broader than a show like Cops. There are other issues to tackle in other reality shows.