Mass Media and Racial Crisis: A Study of the New Bethel Church Incident in Detroit1

An exchange of gunfire between Detroit police and persons in the proximity of a meeting of black separatists provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of the mass media in creating, supporting, or reducing racial polarization. Based on responses from 1130 interviews in black and white neighborhoods, perceptions of what occurred outside of the New Bethel Church were linked to reported mass media and primary‐group sources of information. In terms both of immediate and of long‐term effects, different media combinations were associated differently with how whites and blacks relying on these sources perceived the incident. Where newspapers were relied on more than other media, the original perspective projected in the mass media underwent extinction. Where television was the more important information source, persistence of the original view by whites and increased polarization were the patterns of impact.