Immigration Reform News: News Shows Fail to Feature Latino Experts and Perspectives on Issues Beyond Immigration
A new study reveals that Hispanic Americans and their views are being grossly underrepresented on top English-speaking Sunday morning news shows.
Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media criticism group, analyzed seven prominent English-language Sunday TV news shows, as well as two popular Spanish-language Sunday shows from Aug. 31, 2014, to Dec. 28, 2014. Included in the study was ABC's "This Week," CBS' "Face the Nation," "Fox News Sunday," NBC's "Meet the Press," CNN's "State of the Union" and MSNBC's "Up with Steve Kornacki" and "Melissa Harris-Perry." The study also examined two important Spanish-language Sunday shows, "Enfoque" on Telemundo and "Al Punto" on Univision.
The results from their analysis reveal that Sunday shows in both English and Spanish have failed to represent Latinos' interests and perspectives on issues outside of immigration. Instead, the shows are treating Hispanics as a "single-issue constituency," states the study.
"On English-language shows, Hispanic guests are treated as experts in only one subject, rarely invited to discuss issues other than immigration, and the Spanish-language shows prioritize immigration coverage over discussions of other issues that Latinos have identified as important to them," states Media Matters.
According to Media Matters, immigration is just one of many issues that Latino Americans find important. However, Hispanic experts made up only 7 percent of guests on English-language Sunday shows, and 46 percent of time they were featured on the shows to specifically talk about immigration.
Meanwhile, Spanish-language Sunday shows devoted a majority of their time on immigration, while giving significantly less attention to issues of similar importance to the Latino community.
"This report speaks to Latinos who watch the Sunday shows and very rarely see anyone that looks like them or speaks for them, or who find themselves wondering about the state of other critical political issues besides immigration. News media coverage is big enough and diverse enough to include Latinos in more than one issue," said Kristian Ramos, Media Matters' Hispanic media spokesman, to NBC News.
While Ramos agrees that immigration is a key issue to the Latino community, he pointed out that the study was done around the 2014 Midterm Election and there were ongoing debates on health care, unemployment, education and political candidates. Therefore, the amount of time Spanish-language shows dedicated to immigration "cannot be explained away by their substantive focus on immigration."
As far as English-language shows go, Ramos noted, "If the shows were not covering immigration, these Hispanic guests may not have been invited to speak on any other issue."
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