In each season the African American males have some conflict with the housemates, in either a sexual or violent way. In the Real World Seattle, Stephen, an African American male throws another cast members stuffed dog off of a peir, later he hits this same cast member in the face when she is leaving the show. If the African American males were not being abusive on The Real World, they were womanizing. In 1998 an in-depth look at MTV's The Real World was done by Mark Orge, a writer for the Southern Communications Journal. The most crucial element, however, in terms of how realistic viewers perceive The Real World lies in the viewers desire for it to be real.
Television viewers can get such contrived mediated images from countless other types of programming.
Gong one step further towards the reality of everyday life is the form of television news broadcasting. African Americans have also not always been depicted fairly on our evening news. An analysis of sources of all SoundBits in a three network sample in 1997 found that in the category of electoral politics seventy nine white people were given SoundBits, but zero African Americans were given sound bites. Some authors believe that this was a case in the media not just about domestic violence but also about race. The Simpson case, moreover, demonstrates that popular understandings of domestic violence are not only about gender.