Genderizing Latino news: An analysis of a local newspaper's coverage of Latino current affairs

A Decade of Research on Health Content in the Media: The Focus on Health Challenges and Sociocultural Context and Attendant Informational and Ideological Problems

“…Research focused on illnesses typically found informational value to be wanting regardless of whether the evaluation was based on the scope of coverage, information provided, or the framing of the topic. First, surveys of journalistic media suggested that the scope of illnesses attended to in the media do not reflect prevalent health threats (e.g., Finnegan et al, 1999;Frost et al, 1997;Subervi-Vélez, 1999;Vargas, 2000;Vargas & dePyssler, 1999). For instance, in various magazine and news media, diabetes and HIV=AIDS received more coverage than cancer and cardiovascular disease (Hoffman-Goetz et al, 2003), reporting on various cancers does not reflect actual mortality rates (Hoffman-Goetz & MacDonald, 1999;5 Changes and processes related to reproductive health could have been included here, but it appears that their gendered nature trumps their status as chronic conditions; thus, they are discussed in the section on health politics.…”

"Emphathetic rejectionism" and inter-ethnic agenda setting: coverage of Latinos by the Black press in the American South

“…Previous research about Latinos and the media has found that Latinos are poorly covered, nearly invisible, consistently portrayed more negatively than other racial or ethnic groups, and rarely constructed as authorities (Benitez, 2003;Vargas, 2000). The findings of this study show that coverage of Latinos in the American South by the Black press is nearly invisible.…”

“…Into the 1990s, press indifference toward Latinos in the American media was the norm (Quiroga, 1994). When coverage was provided, Latinos were portrayed as outsiders, unwilling or unable to assimilate (Vargas and DePyssler, 1998), or as an underclass rarely constructed as authorities (Vargas, 2000). These representations of Latinos and African-Americans in the mass media not only impact their collective identities, but individual and community perceptions as well (DeSipio and Henson, 1997;Rodriguez, 1999).…”

“…Research on the American mainstream media's coverage of ethnic minorities has focused primarily on African-Americans, both in print (e.g., Daley, 1968;Daniel, 1964;Davies, 2001;Lyle, 1968;Martindale, 1986;Weill, 2002) and broadcast (e.g., Bogle, 1989Bogle, , 2001MacDonald, 1983;Mastro and Greenberg, 2000): studies of media reporting of Latinos are less prevalent (DeSipio and Henson, 1997;Greenberg et al, 1983;Quiroga, 1994;Vargas, 2000). The findings are similar, however, in that both groups have been heavily stereotyped by the American media.…”

Race and the News

“…Analyses of mainstream US newspaper coverage of Latinos note that, in addition to being under-represented, Latinos are frequently portrayed as lacking agency*presented as objects rather than authoritative subjects of news (Fregoso, 1993;Lopez, 1991;Taylor and Bang, 1997;Vargas, 2000). Even newspapers that attempt to provide positive coverage of Latinos present a disproportionately high numbers of stories focused on token athletes or entertainers, rather than on everyday people (Fishman and Casiano, 1969;Kraeplin and Subervi-Velez, 2003, p. 119).…”