March 18, 2002

A window on society

Neither the growth in non-white ethnic populations nor a heightened awareness of diversity has altered the behavior of most people, who tend to associate almost exclusively with others from the same ethnic or racial backgrounds. Lacking direct exposure to people from different backgrounds, most people look to the media for information about them, trusting the news media in particular to provide an accurate window on American society. People are generally confident about their perceptions of people they've never met and communities they've never visited. This has tremendous implications for the making of social policy, the state of racial relations and the well-being of society as a whole.

...with a limited view

In 1968, a former journalist, Prof. Ben Bagdikian, showed that newspapers had historically avoided the inner cities because there was no financial motivation to cover them. With the recent growth of media conglomerates and their emphasis on the bottom line, the ethical obligation to cover low-income neighborhoods and disenfranchised people who fall outside the advertising demographic has been even further compromised.

A 1995 poll commissioned by Harvard University, the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Washington Post found that Americans across every racial group had a distorted sense of the population demographics, which in turn colored their views on social policy. Contrary to actual U.S. Census statistical data, the poll found that the majority of whites believed that the average black person had a job, education and health care as good as, if not better than, the average white persons. Whites further believed that whites made up less than 50 percent of the U.S. population when they in fact comprised 74 percent. Severely overestimating the percentages of African Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos, whites also overestimated the impact of immigration. Not surprisingly, the study also found a very dramatic correlation with those wanting to cut food stamps, aid to cities and affirmative action.

Positive portrayals of people of color are limited, and they are often excluded from discussions of everyday community issues leading some readers and viewers to conclude that they advocate only for their own causes. It is also a common practice for reporters to create a dichotomy between two opposing groups, and to hope for balance in the clash of ideas. Too often, communities of color are pitted against whites or against each other. As research by media scholars Lawrence Bobo, Frank Gilliam and Robert Entman has revealed, when people of color are represented in news reports, they are most commonly shown in stories involving conflict, controversy or those contributing to social problems.

The tenth annual Women, Men and Media Study," released in October 1998 by the Freedom Forum and ADT Research, found that 92 percent of expert" sound bites featured whites. When these network news stories turned to the person on the street" interviews, they still managed to depict people of color only 14 percent of the time.

Negative images

Children Nowís national poll of 1,200 children, aged 10-17, in March 1998 found that 71 percent of white children see people of their own race depicted very often, compared with only 42 percent of African-American children, 22 percent of Latinos and 16 percent of Asian American. When asked about racial characterizations in the news, over one-third of children of every race believed that Latinos and African Americans were shown doing bad things like crime, drugs or some other problem."

North Carolina State Professor Robert Entmans 1990 analysis of local TV news stories illustrated that black suspects were more likely to be in handcuffs or grasped by police, less likely to be seen well-dressed and less likely to be identified by name than white suspects. All of these factors served to dehumanize black suspects and create a public image of African-American males as violent and threatening.

The Tomas Rivera Policy Institute surveyed over 1,000 Hispanic and 400 Caucasian households in August 1998 and found that nearly 60 percent of Hispanics felt that the most prevalent images of Latino men in English-language news reports were as either criminals or illegal immigrants." Nearly 70 percent of Hispanic viewers said that having a Hispanic anchor or newscaster on the program improved coverage of the Hispanic community.

A June 1998 study of 1997 network news stories conducted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists found that only 112 of 12,000 stories focused on Latinos or Latino issues and that was a 25 percent drop from the previous year. While Latinos comprised over 10 percent of the nations population, they were featured in less than one percent of news stories, and 64 percent of this coverage centered on crime, affirmative action and immigration.

It should be noted that polls and studies of ethnic and racial demographics frequently do not include, count or sample the Native American population or include Native American perspectives.

Diversity in the newsroom

However suspect the biological arguments may be for differences based on what we term race" or skin color, its social meaning and the racial identity assumed because of others perceptions are very influential factors in peoples lives.

And whereas journalists could once use black" and minority" interchangeably, the non-white category has expanded and diversified. Asian Americans and Latinos are by far the fastest growing segments of the population and this trend seems likely to continue. Within the next few years, the population of Latino Americans is expected to surpass that of African Americans. The Native American population is growing too. Thus it is important, in stories where race is an issue, for journalists to seek out these often-neglected populations.

Diversity in the newsroom means diversity of thought, perspective and ideas, which can have a tremendous impact on the way a story gets covered. The values of a disproportionately white, male, middle-class press corps tend to be embodied in the news coverage for example, in race-related stories focused on statistics rather than a human angle.

One major reason for this is that few journalists come from, or have ties to, the neighborhoods they cover.

Looking ahead...

By the year 2050, the Census Bureau projects that people of color will comprise nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population. Yet according to the ASNE Annual Survey data, 42 percent of all newspapers do not have even a single journalist of color in their newsrooms. (Most of these are in small and non-urban markets.) And almost half of all departures by people of color from the industry occur within the first year of employment. Only one-third of whites who leave journalism do so during their first year.

In the last five years (93-98), the percentage of journalists of color in the industry has nearly leveled off. The rate of growth has dropped dramatically after the tremendous progress made in the previous five years.

Percentages of People of Color in Print Journalism Industry*

*Based on American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) Annual Newsroom Census>

Most problematic are the even thinner ranks of people of color in decision-making and leadership roles. In 1998, 91 percent of supervisors and 89.8 percent of copy/layout editors were white. Even if the numbers of reporters of color were to dramatically increase, the lack of diversity within the ranks of editors, news directors, producers and other news gatekeepers would continue to decide the content of the news, whose faces are shown and whose stories are told.

Percentages of People of Color in the Broadcast News Workforce*

*Based on Radio-Television News Directors Associations (RTNDA)/Ball State Annual Survey

In radio and television, news directors of color are most likely to be found in the largest markets but at the smallest stations.