Reading Red: Report finds lack of coverage
By Cindy Yurth
Navajo
Times, June 21, 2007
DENVER - The good news is, not many
negative stories about Native Americans appeared in
U.S. major daily newspapers last year.
The bad news is, not many stories of
any kind about Native Americans appeared. And when they
were written, they hardly used Natives as sources.
This year's Reading Red Report, sponsored
by the Native American Journalists Association, looked
at 1,700 news stories in cities with high Native populations
(a notable no-show was the Arizona Republic, which isn't
on Lexus Nexus and was difficult to cross-reference).
While stereotypical phrases like "on
the warpath" and "smoking the peace pipe"
showed a decline since the last Reading Red Report in
2002, coverage of Indians and their issues remained
about the same - low.
"We still have a long way to go,"
said Cristina Azocar, Upper Mattaponi, NAJA president
and director of the Center for Integration and Improvement
of Journalism, who presented the report at NAJA's national
conference in Denver earlier this month.
In what could be perceived as an illustration
of her point, neither the Rocky Mountain News nor the
Denver Post covered the convention, which drew about
200 Native journalists from across the country.
Azocar said she enlisted her journalism
students at San Francisco State University, where she
is an associate professor, to help collect and analyze
data for the report.
As an index of whether stories are "positive"
or "negative," Azocar told her students, "If
you hate Indians after you read the story, it's a negative
story. If you don't feel any different about Indians,
it's neutral. If you want to be an Indian, it's a positive
story."
The group labeled 75 percent of the
stories as neutral, 19 percent as positive, and 6 percent
as negative. The negative stories centered around alcohol
abuse, crime, social problems, tobacco, tribal politics
and the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
In the five years since the last study,
the topics being reported have changed, Azocar said.
In 2001, the top Native American topics were reservation
life, casinos and mascots. Last year they were arts
and entertainment, education and casinos.
Of the 4,684 sources quoted in the stories,
just over a quarter were Native American, even in cities
that have a high Native
population. In fact, having a high Native population
didn't necessarily correlate with thorough coverage
of Natives.
The Albuquerque Journal, as one might
expect, was at the top of the list in the number of
stories about Natives (326), but fourth on the list
(with 274) was the New York Times, the major newspaper
in a city where Natives comprise only 0.06 percent of
the population.
While stereotypical language in general
was down, Azocar's students found copy editors couldn't
resist making puns on the word "reservation."
Stories were headlined "Without
reservations" and "No reservations" even
when the story had nothing to do with reservations,
Azocar observed.
"It's like writing a story about
Black people and titling it, 'No ghetto here,'"
she noted.
An enduring stereotype Azocar found
was one she calls "the Indian as spiritual creature."
Even in stories that had nothing to
do with religion, reporters seemed to assign Native
sources an aura of mysticism. For example, Native singing
was often described as "chanting" - "and
it's always 'ancient,'" pointed out an audience
member.
One story described a Native elder as
having "appeared out of nowhere," "because,
you know, we can all do that," Azocar said wryly.
What's the cure for low and stereotypical
coverage of Natives?
"More Native reporters," Azocar
said. "We need to put ourselves out there, because
if we don't tell our stories, somebody else will."
Which is not to say non-Native journalists
aren't trainable.
"I'm reasonably certain that when
my students who participated in this project get out
into the world, they will be a lot more sensitive to
reporting accurately on Native American issues,"
she said.
The Reading Red Report can be downloaded
from the Web at www.naja.com/news/najanews/070607_reading-red/
|