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Web Fails Blacks, Latinos on Coverage

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“Their Communities Not Paid Much Attention in the News”

New Washington Post Blog Focuses on Visual Narratives

Whites Catching Ebola Virus Give Disease Visibility

Fareed Zakaria Denies Accusation of Serial Plagiarism

Younger Latinos Said to Be Less Assimilationist in Mindset

Too Many Sports Writers Too Cozy With the NFL?

Fan of Black Papers Creates Only Site Linking to Them

Short Takes

“Their Communities Not Paid Much Attention in the News”

“The predicted digital divide, in which people of color would be left behind in the use of technology, is not playing out as many of those forecasting the digital future anticipated, at least not when it comes to news, according to a new survey released today,” the Media Insight Project, an initiative of the American Press Institute and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, said on Tuesday.

“The two largest minority groups in the United States — African Americans and Hispanics — are in many ways using digital technology for news at similar rates as the American population overall. Yet these Americans do not believe that the growth of web and mobile media has fulfilled the promise of more coverage, and more accurate coverage, of underserved ethnic communities. . . .”

The new survey — the second to be released by the Media Insight Project — was produced in collaboration with the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, New America Media and the McCormick Foundation.

The study also reported, “African American and Hispanic American adults have come to rely on a variety of technologies and devices to get their news today, and in rates similar to adults in the United States generally. At least two-thirds of American adults across all racial and ethnic groups, for instance, are now online and own a smartphone, and African Americans and Hispanics use new technologies at similar rates for news. The average American across these different groups uses about four different technologies to get news every week.

“If anything, African Americans and Hispanics are adapting to mobile technology at even higher rates than non-Hispanic whites (with the exception of Hispanics acquiring tablet computers). Both African Americans and Hispanics also agree with the majority of adult Americans that it is easier to follow news in general today than it was five years ago.

“Far fewer African Americans and Hispanics, however, believe that the changes in the news landscape have made it easier to learn about their own racial or ethnic community.

“For instance, relatively few African Americans and Hispanics — which combined make up approximately 30 percent of the U.S. population — believe they see in the media an accurate portrayal of their own communities. Only a third of Hispanics and a quarter of African Americans believe their communities are accurately portrayed in the media, and a major reason for this may be that they feel their communities are not paid much attention in the news. Only half of adults in either group believe their communities are covered regularly in the media today.

“The perception that, even in the networked age, it is difficult to see regular or accurate coverage of African American and Hispanic communities may also be inhibiting these Americans from being more avid news consumers. While large majorities of African Americans and Hispanics are daily news consumers, and while pluralities access the news throughout the day, those with concerns about the accuracy of the media’s coverage of their communities attend to the news much less often.

“These findings contradict two theories about the web that have been prominent for much of the last decade. One is that racial and ethnic minorities might lag in digital access and adoption. The advent of wireless technology, among other things, may have confounded that expectation. The other is that as barriers to entry for publishing fell, reporting on more diverse topics would emerge, thus better serving historically underrepresented communities. The survey reveals that those communities are not finding that to be the case. . . .”

Meanwhile, a Gallup poll released Wednesday indicated that trust in the news media is not high among whites, either — even lower than nonwhites.

“After registering slightly higher trust last year, Americans’ confidence in the media’s ability to report ‘the news fully, accurately, and fairly’ has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%, Justin McCarthy reported for the Gallup Organization. Americans’ trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s.” 

Gallup asked 1,017 adults by telephone, “In general, how much trust and confidence do you have in the mass media such as newspapers, T.V., and radio when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately and fairly — a great deal, a fair amount, not very much or none at all?”

Seven percent of whites and 19 percent of nonwhites said “a great deal”, 28 percent of whites and 34 percent of nonwhites said a “fair amount”; 40 percent of whites and 26 percent of nonwhites said “not very much” and 25 percent of whites and 22 percent of nonwhites said “none at all.”

New Washington Post Blog Focuses on Visual Narratives

The Washington Post on Wednesday launched In Sight, a new blog showcasing photography with a focus on visual narratives. “The blog will be a platform for rich and diverse imagery from staff, outside contributors, news services, and archives,” the Post announced, accompanying the notice with a video from Nicole Crowder, the Post’s digital photo editor. 

Wednesday’s page featured a photo from an exhibition “nearly 60 years in the making,” the Post said. From London, it “put the fashionable gents of Jamaican subculture known as ‘Rudeboys’ front and center in an exhibition at Somerset House called ‘Return of the Rudeboy.’ . . .”

The Lens blog at the New York Times, a national competitor of the Post, has earned a reputation for diversity. Co-editor David Gonzalez was honored last year by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. 

“When the Lens blog made its debut in 2009, the newspaper industry was in free fall , the outlets for serious photojournalism rapidly disappearing,” Michael Winerip wrote for the Times blog in January. ” ‘There was a need to help promote photographers and photography in whatever way possible,’ said James Estrin, the blog’s co-founder. ‘We wanted to write about the photographers; photos don’t happen by themselves.’ . . .”

Whites Catching Ebola Virus Give Disease Visibility

Dr. Kent Brantly, a white American missionary who caught the Ebola virus in Liberia, where he was treating patients, was asked Wednesday on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” “What does it say that the Ebola virus by and large, only got global attention after two white Americans came down with the disease?“

Brantly told host Melissa Block, “I spoke to the Congress about that very issue and commented that I’m very thankful for the media attention that is focused on West Africa, but it really is a shame that the thousands of African lives and deaths did not merit the same amount of attention from the world.”

Block asked why that might be. “I think the only thing you can chalk it up to — I don’t know if ignorance is the right word — you know, out of sight, out of mind. (Unless) you have a human face on it — a human connection — it’s just some people far away. But when it becomes one of your own, when it happens to somebody close to you, it makes it very real. . . .”

President Obama announced on Tuesday he is sending 3,000 troops to West Africa to help contain the virus and prevent it from spreading to the United States and across the globe, as David Jackson and Liz Szabo reported for USA Today.

Fareed Zakaria Denies Accusation of Serial Plagiarism

“For the past month, two anonymous media watchdogs have been accusing the journalist Fareed Zakaria of serial plagiarism,” Dylan Byers reported Wednesday for Politico. 

“Across multiple reports, the authors at Our Bad Media have cited at least three dozen instances in which the CNN host and Washington Post columnist appeared to have lifted passages from various publications and websites for unattributed reuse in his books and magazine articles and on his television program. Their most recent report, focusing on 24 instances of plagiarism on his CNN show, is the most damning to date.

“This week, I conducted a review of the reports to determine whether the instances they cited truly qualified as plagiarism. I also asked two journalism ethics experts — Robert Drechsel, the James E. Burgess chair and director of the Center for Journalism Ethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Kelly McBride, the vice president for academic programs of The Poynter Institute — to review the reports. They came to the same conclusion I did: Fareed Zakaria plagiarized. . . .”

Byers also wrote, “Zakaria did not respond to a request for comment regarding the most recent accusations. In the wake of Our Bad Media’s initial report, he sent an email to POLITICO rebutting the charges. ‘These are all facts, not someone else’s writing or opinions or expressions,’ he wrote. He also referred to the majority of instances as ‘cases in my writing where I have cited a statistic that also appeared somewhere else,’ suggesting that he had merely repeated readily available information.

“Both The Washington Post and CNN, which suspended Zakaria for one instance of plagiarism in 2012 (he called it a ‘mistake’), also dismissed the initial allegations from Our Bad Media. Fred Hiatt, the Post’s editorial page editor, said ‘it was so far from a case of plagiarism that it made me question the entire enterprise.’ A CNN spokesperson said the network ‘found nothing that gives us cause for concern.’ . . .”

Younger Latinos Said to Be Less Assimilationist in Mindset

“Whether it’s during the annual Hispanic Heritage Month, election season, or conversations about marketing’s new target demographic, it’s easy to talk about ‘Hispanics’ or ‘Latinos,’ ” Andres T. Tapia wrote Monday for HuffPost LatinoVoices. “These terms get thrown around and everyone nods as if there is a common understanding of who we are talking about.

“To begin with, people put a lot of energy into trying to figure out the difference between ‘Hispanics’ and ‘Latinos.’ The very fact that these terms are often used interchangeably in the media but have meaningful but not-so-simple-to-explain differences in their origins, who uses them and how is telling in itself. But which term to use is only the tip of the iceberg.

“When we say ‘Latino’ or ‘Hispanic,’ are we referring to the first-, second-, third-, or fourth-generation Latino? The baby boomer, generation X, or millennial Latino? The English-, Spanish-, or Spanglish-dominant Hispanic? The Peruvian immigrant or the Honduran American born in Wichita? Or any of the other hyphenated Latinos coming from 27 different national heritages?

“So when the media zero in on the 11 million undocumented immigrants, and when marketers focus on the 34 million Spanish speakers (including the undocumented immigrants), they are looking at important segments under the ‘Latino’ umbrella but not the whole. For example, they most often overlook the 26 million English-dominant Latino millennials, who paradoxically also tend to identify with the heritage of their parents’ country of origin (Colombian, Costa Rican, Argentinian, etc.), according to the Pew Hispanic Center.

“In fact, according to that same study, only 16 percent of them see themselves as white, whereas twice as many older Latinos identify as white. This means that younger Latinos are less likely to be assimilationist in mindset than were their first-generation parents, who — facing discrimination due to their limited or accented English — often chose not to teach their kids Spanish. . . .”

Brian Williams reports on “NBC Nightly News” on Wednesday that Arizona Cardinals running back Jonathan Dwyer has been arrested on assault charges, including aggravated assault and preventing someone from calling 911. ( video)

Too Many Sports Writers Too Cozy With the NFL?

“The purchase and sale of news reporters by powerful institutions and influential people are hardly a new phenomenon,” Michael Hiltzik, a Los Angeles Times business columnist, wrote on Tuesday. “But like all manifestations of disproportionate wealth, it’s been raised to glorious new heights during the early 21st century.

“Not only are journalists suborned by ‘access’ into seeing things their bidders’ way — access to company CEOs, access to entertainment and sports stars, advance access to the next Apple product — but increasingly they’re directly employed by the companies they’re supposed to be covering objectively.

“The folly of these arrangements is now vividly on display, thanks to the travails of the National Football League. As Stefan Fatsis documents in a superb piece at Slate.com, some of the nation’s most experienced and dedicated football reporters have downplayed the Ray Rice scandal in their work. Why? Because they work for NFL.com.

“Others, like Peter King of Sports Illustrated and Adam Schefter of ESPN, have been accused of uncritically taking the NFL’s side in a case in which the league’s actions continue to look worse. (Schefter after Rice’s two-game suspension: ‘Was the commissioner lenient enough?’) They don’t work directly for the league, but their careers are highly dependent on their image as NFL ‘insiders.’

“The risk for reporters of relying on access to the mighty is that they can get played, ruthlessly. The risk to their readers and viewers is that important information, defined loosely as anything the subject doesn’t want the public to know, gets suppressed. . . .”

Short Takes

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