Pease: “Still the Invisible People” Ch 9: Redefining America’s News

“Still the Invisible People”
Job Satisfaction of Minority Journalists at U.S. Daily Newspapers
By Edward C. Pease (©1991)

Doctoral Dissertation
E.W Scripps School of Journalism
Ohio University • Athens, Ohio

CHAPTER 9—New Perspectives Redefine America’s News

“Any news that is race-neutral can be covered well by any good team of journalists.
A fire is a fire. Where the problem begins is with interpretation of events and issues, and selection of what receives attention and what is ignored.”

– Black male GA reporter, 30s
Mid-sized Southern daily

The whole point of increasing and retaining diversity in the newsroom is to make newspapers better equipped to cover a changing American society. Even though what often happens is that newcomers are expected to adopt the perspectives and values of the old guard, the object of a multicultural newsroom is to help newspapers redefine what’s news in a changing marketplace that in many instances in the 1990s no longer resembles the one many journalists are accustomed to.

A discussion of how ethnicity contributes to the job of newspaper journalism is appropriate here. Many newspapers seem to view the hiring of minority journalists as so many notches on their guns for the consumption of corporate overseers or industry critics. What’s too often lost in such evaluation is an appreciation for what people of color can bring to the news product. While they are changing the overall skin tone of the newsroom, journalists of color also are changing the way their newspapers cover society, just as the Kerner and Hutchins reports envisioned.

For one thing, the new perspectives minority journalists bring to the newsroom enable newspapers to cover segments within the community they’ve never reached, a major economic consideration in a time when minority populations are outstripping whites. That is not to say that minority journalists’ only value is as reporters in a minority affairs pigeonhole. Different perspectives on the news desk and the copy desk can help find new angles on stories, and can help well-meaning but monocultural reporters and news managers avoid inadvertent offense or embarrassment through ignorance. For the most part, as an Asian American journalist from New York City writes, “News people still are Eurocentric,” and journalists of color can help.

The different perspective on the news, the non-Eurocentric way of looking at events, can mean that an ethnically diverse newsroom can generate new and different kinds of stories from events that white journalists may have seen 100 times and view as routine. “It’s a question of perspective,” wrote a white male reporter from Houston, describing how a black colleague’s viewpoint on a bridge contract made it more than routine. “A big story in Texas over the past two years has been a controversy over the use of South African steel to build a state highway bridge in Houston,” he said. “The story was there and obvious to for all reporters, but it was a black reporter who saw its significance and turned it into a major story.”

In an effort to explore this question of defining and redefining news, this survey asked respondents to comment on this statement: “News is news. Racial background has nothing to do with how well a good journalist can cover a news story.” It is not a simple question, respondents said. Many filled the questionnaire margins and back with thoughtful discussions on how perspective helps – and hurts – journalists as they define the news.

Responses generally fell in four areas: 1) The importance of perceptions and how they affect the way journalists approach news; 2) Redefinitions of news; 3) Journalistic objectivity and professionalism; and 4) Ethnicity as both a tool and a barrier in reporting.

The thoughtful and detailed comments of two journalists – one a woman Asian American business reporter from the Pacific Northwest and the other a black male general news reporter from the South – summarize the parameters of the issue. The question is complex, as these journalists and their colleagues explain. At issue are traditional, predominantly white, male ways of covering communities and viewing the larger world; for some from the old “Front Page” mold, suggestions that things might be done differently carry implicit threats and implicit criticisms. In some ways, these journalists agree, news is news, but only in a very limited sense. The Asian American business writer commented:

Sure, anyone can cover a fire or handle a council meeting, but most newspapers have a history of ignoring news that doesn’t occur in the traditional, white male middle-class background. That’s because newsrooms traditionally have been dominated by white, middle-class males. A lot of people bemoan the end of the good old news days, where newsrooms were smoky joints always rattling in deadline frenzy. They forget that much of today’s journalistic workforce – women and people of color – would not have been welcome in that environment.

For the Southern black male reporter, those definitions of news and how to interpret it and transmit it to what kind of audience are at the core of the question of how newspapers perform in an increasingly pluralistic society. He agrees that the problems of perception begin after the breaking news event. The issue is not professional tools, but attitudinal equipment. He wrote:

Any news that is race-neutral can be covered well by any good team of journalists. A fire is a fire. Where the problem begins is with interpretation of events and issues, and selection of what receives attention and what is ignored. I believe the race of a journalist plays an important role in how that journalist interprets events, and in what that journalist considers important and unimportant.

“The problem is compounded when an issue is directly related to race,” he added. “Compare the coverage of affirmative action or alleged police misconduct by a black-owned newspaper with that of a white-owned newspaper you will find two very different views.”

1. Objectivity and Professionalism

“All people carry with them wherever they go all the cultural baggage
– including biases – that they have accumulated over a lifetime.
Objectivity does not exist. Fairness can.”
– Male Latino desk editor, late 30s

Phoenix

Predictably, some respondents found this question of the influence of personal characteristics such as race a violation of the journalism they had learned. “News is news,” a Southern white state reporter wrote. “Race is not important in news judgment.” Like the desk editor who said he wishes we could stop worrying over issues of race and just do the job and go home, these respondents say the good journalist is neutral, objective and even-handed. A good journalist, they said, can cover anything.

“A good reporter has no race during working hours,” wrote a white male Midwestern reporter in his early 40s, speaking for many of his colleagues. Alternatively, a white female features writer from Michigan said, “a good journalist should see beyond color.”

Others acknowledged that background influence perceptions, but “an open, agile mind has no skin color,” as a white male copy editor wrote from Texas. “What we are may affect how we cover a story,” a white male manager from Michigan agreed. “A good journalist is a good journalist, however, and should be able to cover a news story with objectivity.”

This is the key to good journalism for many of these respondents. “The key word is ‘good’ – someone who can write accurately despite personal filters (which we all have) and who is hired for skill, not skin,” wrote a Midwestern white male reporter in his late 40s.

Further, said others, sensitivity and adaptability is what journalism is all about, reacting to circumstances and thinking on your feet. A male Hispanic manager from Chicago wrote, “If you are good, you will learn the cultures of other racial/ethnic groups.” A white male AME from the West Coast agreed: “A good reporter can learn the sensitivity to cover any story,” he said. And a white female reporter from Texas added, “Any journalist should be able to cover any ethnic community if they do sufficient research and apply some empathy.”

Finally, some respondents were offended by the implication that some people may be better equipped than others to cover some kinds of stories because of their backgrounds. A journalist is, after all, a journalist, they said, or should be. “I am insulted by the notion that only minorities can adequately cover minority news,” a female Asian American section editor from Los Angeles wrote. “A good journalist, regardless of racial background, brings a racial sensitivity to the story. A good journalist is capable of a breadth of reportage.”

A white male features writer from the Upper Midwest agreed. “It is true that minorities have special insights into minority problems, but a good black journalist should be about to cover a meeting of white folks, and a good white journalist should be able to cover a meeting of black folks,” he said, concluding, “And somebody who has never collected stamps should be able to cover a philatelists’ convention.”

2. Definitions of News

“News is defined by a forty-something white male.”
– Black female bureau reporter,
30-something, New York

What those arguments miss, say other respondents, is the degree to which individual background colors, filters and ultimately skews news coverage, if everyone deciding what news is comes from the same mold. “People of different backgrounds bring different perspectives to newsrooms that are necessary if papers are going to present a full spectrum of news instead of only a middle-class white perspective,” a black female metro editor from the East Coast wrote. The issue, she and others say, is not training, professionalism or even empathy and sensitivity, but diluting the selective perceptions that traditionally have defined news with some different perspectives.

“A mix of race, background, gender, etc., is critical in deciding what is news,” wrote a white female East Coast reporter. Further, a black male reporter from Philadelphia added, “No journalist is objective. Everyone brings his or her own biases to the business. The more people with more perspectives and sensitivities in the newsroom, the more the news will be all the news there is.”

That exactly has been the problem, these journalists are saying; what appears in American newspapers as, presumedly, “all the news that’s fit to print” has not been all the news there is – much information about events that are intensely important to segments out of the white mainstream does not see print. In fact, they say, the perceptual blinders of newsroom gatekeepers and decision-makers have meant that newspaper readers see only a narrow slice of what news there is. “News is what we say it is, and who we are defines what we think to be news,” a white male desk editor in the Pacific Northwest wrote. And, says a black male city desk editor, “Newspapers routinely fail to include minorities and people who are poor or working class from the mainstream of their coverage. News is what a white, middle-class male says it is.”

It’s not that there isn’t other news of consequence out there, these journalists say; it’s that the gatekeepers don’t recognize its importance in the lives of people who aren’t like them. “The more important question is whether the story will ever be assigned at all if it deals with minority matters,” wrote a white male arts reporter for a mid-sized Western daily. That’s the real problem, agreed a Latino reporter in Houston: “The way news is judged for importance largely has to do with what newsroom people are familiar with,” he said. “We write more about the white middle class, in my estimation, because newsrooms are largely filled with white middle-class people.”
Taylor Branch, the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63, writes in his preface that, as a white man, he had to come to grips with this question of limited perception. “Almost as color defines vision itself, race shapes the cultural eye – what we do and do not notice, the reach of empathy and the alignment of response.”1
Some of the traditional gatekeepers in question are becoming increasingly aware of the perceptual blinders resulting from their backgrounds and upbringing. “I can’t help but admit that I’m a middle-aged, middle-class white male and I may not be as sensitive to some issues as someone of a different race or gender,” a copy editor for a Southern mid-sized daily wrote. “Our society is changing; newspapers must reflect that change or become obsolete.”
In an increasingly diverse America, where most people are not white, middle-class men, a new definition of news is needed. That’s the true value of increasing ethnicity in newspaper newsrooms, these journalists say. “News is made by people of all colors,” a black female editorial writer said. “It takes people of all colors to convey the issues.”
Newsroom attitudes need retooling if newspapers are to keep pace with the changes in society, an Asian American assistant city editor from San Francisco said. In order for newspapers to redefine news to fit American reality, newspaper people have to re-educate themselves and re-examine their perspectives. “Being well intentioned is not enough,” she said. “If reporters and editors spent as much time educating themselves about people of color as they do about domestic politics and sports, there’d be fewer shallow, insensitive and offensive stories about matters of race or ethnicity in newspapers.
“Ideally, there’d be news stories that help all segments of the community better understand each other and one another’s needs and concerns,” she concluded.


3. Perspectives and Perceptions of the News

“Journalists are also human beings, and humans bring to their work
the racial baggage of their upbringing and prior perceptions. This is why
we need diverse newsrooms, to gain a diverse level of understanding for the communities we cover. We do not always reach this in day-to-day coverage.”

– Black male assistant managing editor, mid-40s
Eastern metro

One of the functions of the new generation of journalists of color is their re-education of white colleagues in the newsroom. Working side-by-side with someone who isn’t just like you can yield a wider perspective on the world and forces a reassessment of traditional norms that always had been accepted as truths, journalists say. It’s not that traditional news definitions are being discarded, they say, but expanded to become more inclusive of a broad society.
“What’s most important is how the minority community perceives the news product, minority hiring commitment and coverage of their community,” a Southern white male editorial writer said. Such perceptions of the product and clear commitment to ethnically diverse staff in positions of responsibility may help determine many newspapers’ future. “Newspapers have perpetuated a white, male, middle-class, liberal slant that may be contributing to decline in readership,” a male Asian American business reporter commented. “A reporter/editor/publisher from an ethnic background would bring diverse perspectives that may be problematic to deal with, but better reflect society.”
White journalists say they may have a lot to learn. This comment from a white reporter in her late 30s who works in a diverse metropolitan area is typical: “We need people of various racial and ethnic backgrounds to ensure complete coverage of a diverse community,” she said. “We need more than WASP perspectives.”
“Black, brown, yellow and red perspectives are quite different from my white one, I have found out, just as it is with different religions and sex lives,” a white male reporter wrote from Houston. From Minneapolis, a white male reporter in his 30s reflected, “Race has nothing to do with one’s competence as a journalist; it may have a great deal to do with one’s perspective, however.”
A white sports copy editor for one of the country’s largest dailies said she sees part of her job as being a watchdog on the male gatekeepers. “Sure, a good reporter/editor can handle any story,” she said. “But women and minorities in the newsroom can help assure that biases don’t creep in, and they can raise issues not apparent to white males.” An Asian American reporter for a Western daily says she also performs that function, since she is the only minority reporter at her paper. “As a minority, I know I see the world from a different perspective than mainstream society,” she said. “Some stories need that insight.”
This question of perspective strikes at the heart of how newspapers must change to serve society and survive as vendors in the information marketplace. “People of different backgrounds bring different perspectives to newsrooms that are necessary if papers are going to present a full spectrum of news instead of only a middle-class white perspective,” a black metro reporter from the East Coast said. There are plenty of jobs for all kinds of people in newspapers, she added, because there are so many stories out there not now being covered. “Reporting the news is one thing,” a Latino metro reporter from Washington, D.C., said. “Interpreting the news is better served by a racially and culturally diverse staff.”
Diverse individual experience should be seen in the newsroom as the asset it is, other journalists say. Different perspectives are needed “for the same reason that a wealthy person may find it difficult to empathize with someone receiving food stamps,” a black female columnist from Philadelphia wrote. “The majority race never confronts the wholesale obstacles minorities face, so how can they automatically know what issues to consider, sources to tap?”
A white newsroom manager from California said knowledge of such issues only helps the newspaper. “A good newsroom needs people of many different interests and backgrounds – that’s always been what newspapers were all about,” he said. “Such people make the newspaper more ‘whole’ by suggesting and pursuing different stories and angles others wouldn’t have thought of.”
An Asian metro reporter for a mid-sized Southeastern daily says she doesn’t think her paper’s managers have considered how one-dimensional the newspaper has become, in part because of the lack of newsroom perspective. “Most of the reporters and editors are isolated from the minority community,” she said. “They live in non-integrated neighborhoods; their social circles are non-integrated. How can you see all sides if you look through only one window? One view doesn’t mean you see the whole picture.”
Lack of such breadth of experience frequently results in insensitivity in coverage that can only alienate readers. “I’ve seen how badly a white journalist with no experience or sensitivity can handle minority-oriented issues,” a black Cleveland copy editor wrote. “The ignorance is appalling.” A Latino business reporter from Southern California agreed: “I’m sick and tired of these ‘white bread’ reporters,” she complained. “They come from nowhere and don’t know much about anything except what they know from school. It’s like they have no ethnic or cultural background at all.”
A Hispanic reporter from Southern California agreed: “Sensitivity has everything to do with how well a good journalist can cover a story,” he said. “Sensitivity to racial issues should be part of a good journalist’s tools.”

4. Ethnicity as a Journalistic Tool

“Race doesn’t dictate how well a journalist covers a story,
but it can influence how he/she covers it. Also, how the story is played.
We need those different approaches and appreciations.”

– White female copy editor, late 20s
300,000-circulation Midwest metro

Another of the journalists’ themes concerned how much different ethnic perspectives may benefit a newspaper. As American culture becomes more multicultural, they point out, people who understand the various new, non-Eurocentric cultures and speak their languages – both literally and figuratively – will not only be useful, but essential. “I know that my race allows me greater access to minority communities as opposed to my white counterparts,” a black female reporter from New York said. From the West Coast, an Asian American general assignment reporter added, “I speak Mandarin Chinese, and that extra skill gives me a HUGE edge in covering Asian stories.”
In the 1990s and beyond, these journalists say, multiculturalism in the newsroom is as much a journalist’s tool and skill as typing, note-taking or interviewing. “Multicultural awareness greatly enhances one’s ability to establish rapport, interpret verbal and non-verbal signals, gain access to and report the story as the people involved experience it,” a Phoenix copy editor commented. “Those without multicultural awareness are imprisoned in their own perceptions and can report nothing else.”
“Some stories require special knowledge or sensitivity,” an Asian American reporter in her early 30s said. “Just as some reporters are trained for some tasks, some reporters who have different cultural backgrounds can share a better perspective.” Enlightened newsroom managers should view multicultural training and sensitivity as assets to be developed, not only in minority journalists, but among all newsroom personnel.
“A white reporter might fail miserably covering a black issues, just as a black reporter might be stonewalled in a racist small town city council story,” a white female reporter from a major Midwestern city wrote. “What is important to a thriving newspaper is that we have all voices on board and learn to employ those with special insights and experiences appropriately.”
To cover the various cultures in a community, reporters need to have been there, these journalists say. “Unless you’ve been there – been poor, been minority, your family denied advancement based on ethnicity, etc., how can you possibly cover a story or be emphathetic to those views, to what some people have been through?” a female Latino makeup editor asked.
Having been there means not just speaking the language, although that’s part of it, but knowing the culture and developing sources. Wrote a white female desk editor from Southern California, “Several of our minority reporters and editors have produced excellent stories generated by close contacts with the minority communities. Those contacts are nearly impossible to cultivate for an outsider.”
“Access is often critical,” a male Hispanic reporter agreed. “Access across racial and cultural barriers is difficult and can lead to an inaccurate or misinformed story. It’s the newspaper’s job to help a community communicate across those barriers, and a culturally diverse news staff can help accomplish that.”
Interpreting the news, understanding the news and knowing who to talk to outside of city hall – all these are supposed to be basic functions of a “good” journalist. Many of these journalists say, however, that those basics are getting more complicated in a more diverse society. “Accessibility and empathy play a major role in the gathering of information to present the reader a full picture,” a white male photographer from Texas. “It is a rare journalist that can cross completely the racial and social barriers associated with so many issues. The human element cannot be ignored, and to provide a balanced picture, a newsroom must be balanced.”
Finally, some minority journalists warned that balancing the newsroom should not mean another newspaper industry quick fix – hiring minorities to cover minorities while the rest of the paper goes on as before. One of the issues that raises the greatest resentment among some minority journalists is the assumption that because they are black or Asian or Latino, they are fit only to cover ethnic issues. “So why do they always send minority reporters to cover urban riots?” one black woman from Cleveland asked pointedly.
“I am insulted by the notion that only minorities can adequately cover minority news,” a female Asian American wrote from Los Angeles. “You don’t have to be black to cover poverty in the ghetto; you don’t have to be Asian to cover immigration problems; you don’t have to be Latino to cover gang violence. And you also don’t have to be white to cover major city, state and national stories.”
It is not uncommon for newsroom managers to assume that minorities are interested in covering ethnic communities. Some are. Other minority reporters sometimes are suspected of having gotten too cozy, too invested in the minority communities and issues they cover. Newsroom managers should take care not to make assumptions in either direction. “I have seen minority reporters assigned to certain stories because of language or serious cultural reasons,” an Asian woman from New York wrote. “Sometimes this can be helpful, as long as the reporter is not pigeon-holed. Caucasian reporters are not usually questioned about their objectivity, and minority reporters – if good journalists – should not be questioned about their ability to be fair just because of their race.”
From this discussion of the value of ethnicity in the newsroom from many of those closest to the subject, some conclusions and concerns should be clear. The rapidly and radically changing American demography requires that American newspapers, if they are to retain audience, must just as quickly and radically change in their definitions of news, audience and coverage. Hiring journalists of color has more benefit for newspapers than simply as a line on the newsroom manager’s end-of-year MBO form. Not only are minority journalists people, too, they are journalists, too, and potentially invaluable assets in newspapers’ efforts to remain relevant and useful to the evolving communities and society they serve.

Coverage Questions: “Those who don’t see themselves reflected”
A variety of studies of minority coverage and content in newspapers over the past several decades has made the following points:
1. That in sheer volume, general news content about people of color in this country tends to account for between 3 percent and 6 percent of the total newshole;2
2. That much of what coverage there is about minorities in newspapers is negative – drugs, crimes, arrests and failures; some studies have made the point that the media serve to perpetuate failure by showing minorities predominantly in a very negative light;3
3. When the news media do portray people of color in positive circumstances, it tends to be as an anomaly, a minority who made something positive of his or her life out of a sea of negatives, thus reinforcing the idea that most minorities fail.4
Other content studies have shown generally that, in the years since the Kerner Commission placed a large part of the blame for the urban violence of 1967 at the door of the newspaper business, newspaper coverage of minorities is still very much separate and unequal.5
Respondents to this survey were asked to assess their own newspapers’ performance in this area, on the premise that those who cover the news in a community may have some thought about its emphasis and direction. Although these results don’t amount to any kind of scientific evaluation of the performance of the newspapers for whom these 1,328 journalists work, it may be taken as an in-house referendum.
In the previous section, both white and nonwhite respondents discussed the importance of reaching out to the community. This question asked them simply, “How well do you think your newspaper covers minority communities and issues within your coverage area?”
The respondents broke along racial lines, as Table 53 indicates, with whites generally thinking their papers’ local coverage of minorities was pretty good and nonwhites finding it pretty bad. Most whites – about 41 percent – said they think their papers cover minorities “pretty well,” while most minority journalists – about 48 percent – say the coverage is “marginal”; nearly a quarter of minority respondents said their papers’ coverage was poor. That is

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TABLE 53: Journalists’ judgment of their papers’ coverage of minority issues, by race, in percentages

Q. How well do you think your newspaper covers minority communities and issues within your coverage area?

W M All
Very Well 9.6 3.8 7.6
Pretty Well 40.7 25.2 35.5
Marginally 39.3 47.7 42.2
Poorly 10.4 23.2 14.7

Composite responses
Very/Pretty Well 50.3 29.0 43.1
Marginally/Poorly 49.7 70.9 56.9

N=1311; X2=70.265; d.f.=3; p=.0000; Missing = 17
________________________________________________________________________
not to say that whites think their newspapers’ are going a great job in this area; in the composite responses, about half of whites said coverage was marginal or poor, compared to almost 71 percent of minorities. Whites were, however, about three times as likely as their nonwhite co-workers to say they thought their papers covered minority communities and concerns “very well.”
One black male reporter from the Southeast explained white perceptions of coverage issues this way: “Whites sometimes don’t see this [coverage] as important because their subconscious sees their reflection – white males – often in the paper,” he said. “It becomes a problem to those who don’t see themselves reflected.”
A black reporter for one of the country’s largest papers said coverage is a priory upstairs, but not in the trenches. “The top managers seem to be sensitive to coverage issues, but there are many middle managers who push coverage just to satisfy their bosses, not because it’s the right thing to do,” she said.
Table 54 indicates the break-down of responses on newspaper content and coverage of minority issues by both race and gender. Overall, there is a slight (4-point) gender gap, the product entirely of some disagreement between minority men and women over just how poor or marginal newspaper performance is. White men and women agree; in the composite responses, about half say their papers’ coverage is very or pretty good and half say it’s marginal or poor. A gender gap does exist among Latinos and African Americans, with women in both groups saying they think coverage is 8 percent to 10 percent worse than men in those groups. Although between two-thirds and three-quarters of all minority journalists in the study rated



Table 54
their newspapers’ coverage of minority issues marginal or poor, black men were most outspoken; almost one-third said coverage was poor.
A Native American desk editor, working for mid-sized Southwestern daily in a major urban area with large Latino and black populations, commented, “African Americans, who are regularly shut out from newspapers, rightfully demand more coverage. Our paper, like so many others, is 99% white bread.”
In examining responses to this question by circulation size, a pattern develops in white assessment of newspaper coverage of minority issues, as Table 55 shows. White journalists’ assessment of press performance rises by nearly 50 percent from the smallest circulation category to the largest, from a 43 percent very/pretty good rating to about 65 percent. Does this indicate white judgment that larger papers really do a better job of covering minorities? Their nonwhite colleagues don’t think so; across all four circulation categories, two-thirds to three-quarters of minority respondents say coverage is marginal or poor. At the two middle circulation levels, minorities’ assessment is worse than at the largest or smallest circulation levels, while white journalists at the 100,000-250,000 level seem to think their papers’ coverage somewhat better than than white colleagues at the 250,000 to 500,000 level.
Commented an Asian male photographer from the Midwest, “I talk about this often with co-workers in the newsroom. Sometimes it feels like talking to a rock – they just don’t understand what I saying.
“We have a long way to go at this paper before the news really reflects what’s happening in the community,” he said.

TABLE 55

CHAPTER 9 – REDEFINING AMERICA’S NEWS
NOTES

1. Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), p. xi.
2. See, for example, Carolyn Martindale, “Coverage of Black Americans in Four Major Newspapers, 1950-1989,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 96-112; Carolyn Martindale, The White Press in Black America. (Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 1986); Carolyn Martindale, “Changes in Newspaper Images of Black Americans, Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (1): 40-50, Winter 1990; Carolyn Martindale, “Coverage of Black Americans in Five Newspapers Since 1950,” Journalism Quarterly, 62:324-325 (Summer 1985); Edward C. Pease, “Kerner Plus 20: Minority News Coverage in the Columbus Dispatch,” Newspaper Research Journal, 10 (3): 17-37, (Spring 1989); Michael Ryan and Dorothea Owen, “A Content Analysis of Metropolitan Newspaper Coverage of Social Issues,” Journalism Quarterly, 53:4 (Winter 1976), pp. 634-647; Paula B. Johnson, David O. Sears and John B. McConahay, “Black Invisibility: The Press and the Los Angeles Riot,” American Journal of Sociology, 76:4, p. 707, 712; Thom Lieb, “Protest at the POST: Coverage of Blacks in the Washington Post Sunday Magazine,” presented to the Minorities in Communication Division of AEJMC, 1988 National Convention, Portland, July 1988.
3. Ibid; Marilyn E. Gist, “Minorities in Media Imagery: A social cognitive perspective on journalistic bias,” Newspaper Research Journal, 11 (3): 52-62 (Summer 1990).
4. Gist, ibid.
5. For example, see a report from the Multicultural Management Program, “Analyzing Multicultural Content,” 1989. (University of Missouri); David Shaw, “Negative News and Little Else,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1990, p. 1; David Shaw, “Newspapers Struggling to Raise Minority Coverage,” Los Angeles Times, December 12, 1990. (Four-part series December 11-14, 1990.)