Majority of blacks distrust mainstream media
It appears that decades of skewed representations have left many black and Latino consumers weary of the mainstream media. According to a study conducted by The Media Insight Project, three-fourths of African-American news consumers and two-thirds of Latinos are giving the side-eye to mainstream outlets.
Those stats are disheartening, considering African-Americans and Latinos currently make up a third of the U.S population – with the U.S Census Bureau expecting them to ultimately eclipse the number of non-Hispanic whites by 2043.
Tia C. M. Tyree, a Howard University professor and the assistant chair of the university’s department of Strategic, Legal and Management Communications, is not surprised by the data.
“Many will believe there is embedded racism in many of America’s systems: the media system, the legal system, the educational system,” she said. “Many will believe that minorities aren’t treated fairly in those systems, and because of that, any products that come out of it will be problematic.”
What’s also problematic is the paltry number of African-Americans and Latinos being given a chance to present the news. “It matters who the owners are, it matters who the producers are, it matters who the editors are, because that’s often the agenda or the slant of the media and the news coverage,” she continued.
While both African-Americans and Latinos have a growing distrust in what they are seeing on their screens, Latinos still have a sizable amount of Spanish-language media on television, including Univision, as well as media from other countries. Unfortunately, there are no longer any African-American daily newspapers and few cable channels aimed at providing them with the same alternatives.
Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, thinks news providers are overlooking a gold mine. “Hispanic media has sort of adapted and grown. There isn’t an analogous, what you might call ‘ethnic’ press [for blacks].” he said. “They’re affluent, they’re attractive to advertisers, there’s a market there.”
Perhaps the results of this study and more like it will prompt advertisers to figure out a way to reconnect with this untapped market. Until then, more and more disenchanted African Americans are getting their news from local television and on cellphones — where the people sharing the stories actually reflect and acknowledge who they are.
The Media Insight Project is an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
NORC, at the University of Chicago, conducted the survey Jan. 9 through Feb. 17, 2014. It involved landline and cellphone interviews in English or Spanish with 1,492 adults nationwide, including 358 Hispanic adults and 318 African American adults. Results from the full survey have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points; For Hispanics, the margin was 8.5 percentage points, and for African American, 7.9 percentage points.
For more on this study, check out The Media Insight Project website: http://www.MediaInsight.org
