COURTESY NAHJ Cover of NAHJ's survey of top magazines.

‘Brownout’ report raps
top magazines for bias

U.S. mainstream news magazines present Latinos in an unfair and unbalanced way, according to a report released on Wednesday by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“Latinos are being seen as a destructive force in the coverage,” said Joseph Torres, director of NAHJ since 1998. “There’s also a general lack of stories and framing of the issues that concern Latinos in the United States.”

The study, done in collaboration with Arizona State University, examined 1,547 magazine stories published in Time, Newsweek and U.S News & World Report and found that 18 stories (1.2 percent) were predominantly about Latinos; 12 out of the 18 stories focused on immigration and five of the more than 1,500 significantly included Latinos in non-Latino stories.

The report is one in a series of yearly “Brownout” studies released in the past 10 years by the Washington-based journalists association with a membership of more than 2,000. The report concluded that the majority of stories written about Latinos were about immigration which portrayed Latinos as a “negative and disruptive force on U.S. society” or as a “problem” or menace.”

“Immigration is the only lens Latinos are being seen through,” Torres said.

At a time when Latinos are the fastest growing minority in the United States, stereotypes remain among journalists and a lack of diversity in the newsroom may still account for the superficial treatment of Latino stories, according to Torres.

The American Society of Newspaper Editors’ annual census of newsrooms released in April of this year shows only 13.87 percent of the newsroom workforce was made up of journalists of color, compared to 13.42 percent the year before. But reporters don’t have to be people of color to give more depth to stories about Latinos, Torres said.

“It’s not rocket science,” said Torres. “(Covering Latino issues) is about willingness in news organizations to change and implement the diversity they talk about. I would tell white reporters to not be afraid to cover diversity or go beyond the same stories being told.”

But not all the results from the report proved to be bad news. It revealed that more stories referenced Latinos, even if they did not stress the individual’s ethnicity. Are these quick references a sign of the changing times in the coverage of Latino issues?

“Next year we’ll look at why that’s significant,” Torres said.