"Hashtag Discrimination: Is The Media Fueling The Fires Of Hate?

African-American athletes find themselves in the scandalous side of the media world far more frequently than Caucasian athletes, and their stories are usually circulated far longer than their counterparts. In addition to the longterm circulation of these articles, the content almost always emphasizes a past flaw about the athlete, instead of the athlete themselves.

In cases such as New Jersey Nets' Jason Collins, the NBA player who had just outed himself as a homosexual, every headline or opening sentence of an article about him begins with "Openly gay NBA player", and in the case of NY Knicks' point guard Raymond Felton, every article concludes with a link or association to the five-year-old incident of accidental self-shooting by the Pittsburgh Steelers' wide receiver Plaxico Burress. Has frequent media-scandal flyers such as Robert Downey, Jr. received such longterm mentions?

The media is known to do "anything to get the story". However, is this front-page scandal approach simply a much-expected media attention-grabbing tactic, or is this yet another attempt to degrade African-Americans?