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/