Life
African Americans, do not trust the media to tell their stories accurately
Tyree also pointed at the small number of African Americans and Hispanics in the media, saying that affects the viewpoint of the product. “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 said.
Part of the reason for the differing levels of skepticism between Hispanics and African Americans, the survey said, is that Hispanics have access to a sizable amount of Spanish-language media on television, including Univision, as well as media from other countries. There are no longer any African American daily newspapers, and few cable channels aimed at African Americans offer daily news programs.
African American consumers felt they could find the largest amount of news about their communities on local media. Twenty-three percent named a local television station as providing the most news about their communities, 15 percent named the black press, and 9 percent named newspapers. Hispanics by far — 41 percent — view Hispanic-specific news sources as the most frequent providers of information about their communities, 10 percent named 24-hour news stations 7 percent named a local news station.
“There isn’t an analogous, what you might call ‘ethnic’ press for African Americans that has evolved as the Internet has evolved — it’s been more of a disruptive medium — while the Hispanic media has sort of adapted and grown,” Rosenstiel said.
More African Americans get their news from television and on cellphones than non-Hispanic whites or Hispanics: 95 percent of African Americans said they got their news from television versus 87 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 86 percent of Hispanics; and 75 percent of African Americans said they got news on their cellphone versus 64 percent of Hispanics and 53 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
The news industry needs to figure out how to reach these consumers of color, Rosenstiel said. “They arre affluent, they are attractive to advertisers, there is a market there,” he said.
The Media Insight Project is an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
