Life
African Americans, do not trust the media to tell their stories accurately
A new study shows a large majority of African American and Hispanic news consumers do not fully trust the media to portray their communities accurately, a statistic that could be troubling for the news industry as the minority population of the United States grows.
Three-fourths of African American news consumers and two-thirds of Hispanics have doubts about what mainstream media report about their communities, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Media Insight Project. And while most say it has become easier to get news generally in the last 5 years, few feel the same way about news regarding their own community, the survey said.
African Americans and Latinos currently make up a third of the U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. By 2043, the number of minorities is expected to eclipse the number of non-Hispanic whites, with the total minority population reaching 57 percent by 2060.
People of color who are “seeking out news about their communities, they cannot find it. And what they see, they don’t think is accurate,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, which teamed with The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on the project. The survey was funded by the American Press Institute and the McCormick Foundation.
When asked whether they thought news about their communities was accurate, 75 percent of African Americans said only “moderately” or “slightly/not at all.” When Hispanics were asked the same question, 66 percent replied “moderately” or “slightly/not at all.”
According to Tia C. M. Tyree, a Howard University professor and the assistant chair of the university’s department of Strategic, Legal and Management Communications, the stereotyping of African Americans and Hispanics in the media, and a distrust of systems in the United States that used to be rife with racism contribute to the distrust.
“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.”
