By Michael Lund, Bigmedia.org

In this election year where Colorado factors heavily as a swing state with a large and growing population of Hispanic swing voters, we’ve been looking at local TV news broadcasts in major media markets to identify strengths and weaknesses in their coverage of Hispanic issues and representation.

Following our analysis of the Denver market, we’ve turned our attention to southern Colorado and the local TV news broadcasts of KRDO Channel 13, KOAA Channel 5, FOX Channel 21, and KKTV Channel 11.

Our findings show a vacuum of coverage of Hispanics and the issues important to them.  While we’d hoped to find these news stations reaching out to a growing market demographic to garner their ratings, and an attempt to broaden the discussion around issues important to the Hispanic sector of the voting public, instead there seemed to be indifference.

Our analysis was a snapshot of news coverage, where we monitored two evening telecasts of all four news broadcasts from the same two days in April.   All the stories in the newscast were logged by their length and topic.  Stories that included subjects identified by Hispanic surnames or Latin-American or Spanish geographical origin were categorized by the type of reporting (news, sports, weather, etc.).  News stories with Hispanic related content were identified by topic (crime, commerce, government, legislation, accident, disaster, etc.), and when Hispanics were identified in the story we noted whether or not they were pictured.

Here’s what we found.

Overall, out of nearly four hours of collective broadcast time, only fourteen minutes (or 6.4% of air time) contained material that fell into our criteria of Hispanic-related – a relatively low representation in Colorado where Hispanics comprise 20.7% of the overall population. Our assumption is that Hispanic viewers would be more likely to view a broadcast where they are fairly and proportionally represented.  And at the same time, the general audience benefits in getting more representational and comprehensive coverage, with diverse perspectives on the issues which affect our communities.

So, since the Hispanic community is under-represented in news coverage, how they are portrayed in southern Colorado news broadcasts becomes even more important.

Establishing familiarity, credibility, and loyalty with the viewing audience depends on the viewers’ recognizing themselves and their values in the news broadcast.  Inclusion and visibility of Hispanics on the news staff provide that connection to a large portion of the audience.  However, in the small sample we observed, there was an obvious absence of Hispanic reporters and anchors among the four channels news programs, with the one notable exception from KOAA Channel 5, David Ortiviz.    

In the past, television news broadcasts have received criticism for misrepresenting minority communities in their coverage of crime stories; the need for balanced portrayal of these groups is a sensitive point of critique.  Of course, on any given day the stories will vary with the specific incidences of crime, but what we observed in the southern Colorado broadcasts isn’t encouraging:

• Half of the stories involving Hispanic-related content were crime related with the majority of Hispanics portrayed being perpetrators.
• Approximately one-third of the time allocated to news stories involving Hispanics (four minutes of a total eleven and-a-half) was reporting on crime.
• Six of the seven crime stories involved a suspect identified as Hispanic (by surname).
• In three of the stories, photos of the perpetrators were shown, as compared with eight identified Hispanics pictured throughout all the broadcasts and among all of the news stories reported.

Balance can be achieved no matter which crimes or criminals present themselves by expanding coverage to issues with specific interest or importance to Hispanics.  Fox21 can be commended in their early coverage of Colorado’s ASSET legislation, which proposed reduced college tuition for qualified children of undocumented immigrants.

Balance also comes from seeking interviews with Hispanics getting their commentary on topics of general interest.  A Pew Research Center poll has identified that the issues rated as most important to Hispanics in this election year closely correlate with the top issues of the general population: jobs and the economy, healthcare, education, etc.  So, when a feature story addresses these topics, it’s an opportunity to get opinions and perspectives representing a wide range of the audience.

As an example, Fox21 featured a story highlighting a street-side sign waver dressed as the Statue of Liberty, which included an interview with the Hispanic proprietor.  This commentary gave depth to the story, affirmed the diversity of the community, and provided an otherwise underrepresented (or misrepresented) group of viewers with a point of positive identification.  Even when the opinions differ widely among Hispanics on a given topic, credibility is established by inviting participation from one among the group.

Similarly, sports stories were surprisingly deficient of Hispanic perspective and topics.  Notable Hispanic athletes in Colorado sports seemed to be eclipsed by larger stories of the day.  And on the whole, Hispanic sports enthusiasts weren’t providing their commentary as much as one might hope.  Again, this could be explained by the small sample of broadcasts monitored, but it certainly raises the question whether reporters are reaching out to Hispanics where it would be logical and easy to do so.

However, KKTV and KRDO provided good examples of reaching beyond the big stories to find the hidden gems of local interest which gave a sense of inclusiveness.  Specifically, KKTV featured a profile on Jordan Pacheco, who moved up to the Rockies line up from the Sky Sox farm team, and KRDO aired a story about a prep league tennis tournament, featuring an Hispanic player.

As a point of comparison, our analysis of Denver TV news identified similar trends and conerns.  The most notable differences in their Hispanic coverage could be seen in the visibility of Hispanic reporters and anchors on the news teams.  Also, there seemed to be a greater degree of direct,on-site coverage of stories, so Hispanic commentary and visual representation were more apparent.  Sports reports included more coverage of mainstream Hispanic athletes, probably due to the accessibility and proximity of professional teams.  However, the same problems existed overall, with issues of balance, and the quantity and quality of Hispanic coverage.

There’s room for improvement, to be sure.  Let’s hope that Colorado’s news organizations can benefit from the widest possible viewing audience this election season, while responsibly providing balanced and informative coverage of the issues affecting all of us.

Click here to view the data (stories, reporters, categories) upon which the snapshot study is based: Hispanics in local TV news coverage: Denver and Southern Colorado

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2012 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Local TV News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.