Depictions of intense conflict between African-Americans and whites have framed the news media's coverage of the public debate over affirmative action. The conflict frame doubly misleads. First, it does not describe the complicated, ambivalent state of white opinion as registered by the (admittedly imperfect) mechanism of sample surveys. Second, it misrepresents any substantive clash of interests created by affirmative action policies—a clash of interests that does not arise exclusively or even mainly between whites and African-Americans and that in the long run may not exist at all. This article documents the emphases and shortcomings of the news coverage and explores its implications for race relations and media theory.
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