whiteout

• white-out

white +‎ out

whiteout (countable and uncountable, plural whiteouts)

1. A heavy snowstorm; a blizzard.
2. Any weather condition in which visibility and contrast are severely reduced by snow or sand causing the horizon and physical features of the terrain to disappear.
3. Correction fluid (from the brand name Wite-Out).
4. (sports, slang) A sporting event where all in attendance are urged to wear white apparel.
5. (computing) The simulated erasure of a file, etc. on a read-only volume.
6. The suppression of a story by the media, analogously to deleting information with correction fluid.
   • 1986, Atlantis - Volume 12, page 174:

     Despite the media whiteout, we believe our weapon flashing had communicated the important political message that the nuclear mentality and the masculine mentality are intimately connected.

   • 1992, Mid-American Review - Volume 13, page 97:

     The slightest reference to national security is accepted as excuse enough for a news whiteout.

   • 1998, Ian Loveland, Importing the First Amendment:

     What, for example, have the protagonists of the First Amendment to say about the media whiteout in the United States on the work of such a distinguished radical as Noam Chomsky?

   • 1998, Extra!: The Newsletter of FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)., page 8:

     "Who Put the Black Face on Poverty," the show asked. Well, the mainstream media "whiteout" of the story provides a clue.

7. The silencing of voices and perspectives other than those of white men.
   • 2012, H. Samy Alim, ‎Geneva Smitherman, Articulate While Black: Barack Obama, Language, and Race in the U.S., →ISBN:

     While it represented a symbolic break from the “whiteout” on the US presidency, it was also, obviously, the most racialized campaign in American history.

   • 2013, Beretta E. Smith-Shomade, Watching While Black: Centering the Television of Black Audiences, →ISBN:

     Closer to home, I thought about how that same “whiteout” existed in U.S. scholarship on television production and viewership and their cultural flows.

   • 2015, Niinana Kweku, Whiteout, →ISBN:

     We must return to a time where whiteout will no longer exist in our thinking process, and remember, black is not just a color but a totally different way of being.

• blackout
• brownout

• withoute