News Media and Crime
In 2003, Serafín Méndez-Méndez and Diane Alverio of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists reported the following findings:
- Latino-related stories make up less than 1% of all the stories that appear on network newscasts, even though Latinos make up more than 13% of the U.S. population.
- Crime, terrorism, poverty and welfare, and illegal immigration accounted for 66% of all network stories about Latinos in 2001.
- The arrest of suspected terrorist Jose Padilla, for allegedly plotting to detonate a "dirty bomb", occupied a central role in the coverage of Latinos in 2002, with 21 network stories or 18% of all stories that aired on Latinos.
- "The number of Latino-related crime and youth gang stories in 2002 was grossly excessive when compared to statistics on crimes involving Latinos."
- "Illegal immigration continues to be an important focus of network news coverage of Latinos."
EthnicMajority.com, a minority empowerment organization, states: "Who we see, hear, and read on television, radio, newspapers, and in movies has a great deal of influence on shaping the attitudes of all Americans. How African, Hispanic (Latino), and Asian Americans are portrayed in these mediums often stereotypes and reinforces negative images of each ethnic group."
Progressive media watch group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) points out that in contrast to the media's over-representation of minorities as criminals and drug users is their under representation as experts and analysts. FAIR's studies in the late 1980s and early 1990s documented that 92% of Nightline's U.S. guests were white, 90% of the NewsHour's guests were white, and 26 out of 27 repeat commentators on National Public Radio over a four-month period were white.
Read more about this topic: Stereotypes Of Mestizos
Famous quotes containing the words news, media and/or crime:
“The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates—the inhabitants of marketing zones in the consumer goods society, television audiences and news magazine readerships... vote with money at the cash counter rather than with the ballot paper at the polling booth.”
—J.G. (James Graham)
“Today the discredit of words is very great. Most of the time the media transmit lies. In the face of an intolerable world, words appear to change very little. State power has become congenitally deaf, which is why—but the editorialists forget it—terrorists are reduced to bombs and hijacking.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)
“Give a scientist a problem and he will probably provide a solution; historians and sociologists, by contrast, can offer only opinions. Ask a dozen chemists the composition of an organic compound such as methane, and within a short time all twelve will have come up with the same solution of CH4. Ask, however, a dozen economists or sociologists to provide policies to reduce unemployment or the level of crime and twelve widely differing opinions are likely to be offered.”
—Derek Gjertsen, British scientist, author. Science and Philosophy: Past and Present, ch. 3, Penguin (1989)