Magazines say little about Latinos

Wed14Jun2006

Magazines say little about Latinos

Last weekend I noticed that there were no less than 12 Latino-related stories in the New York Times' Sunday edition -- from the Style section, to the Week in Review to just about every part of the paper. Not so the case with weekly news magazines, according to a study by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists:

A study commissioned by a Hispanic journalists' association has found that the three main newsweekly magazines ran very few stories about Hispanics last year despite the growing importance of the Latino population.

The five-month study, due to be released Wednesday, found that only 18, or 1.2 percent, of the 1,547 stories that appeared last year in Time, Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report were predominantly about Latinos.

The study found that the majority of stories focused on the topic of immigration and

In those stories, Latinos were often portrayed as a "disruptive force" to U.S. society, Torres said. "That falls into a stereotypical pattern," he said, and "creates a false impression of the contributions Latinos are making to society."

Torres did say that the study, which was conducted by researchers at Arizona State University, noted that both Time and Newsweek devoted cover stories to Hispanics last year, with Time listing the 25 most influential Hispanics in America and Newsweek chronicling a "Latin Power Surge" following the election of Antonio Villaraigosa as mayor of Los Angeles.

This lack of visibility in mainstream media makes the internet more important in presenting Latino stories and exposing issues affecting the community. VL's mission -- and the mission of many other Latino blogs -- is to fill in the blanks left by mainstream media.

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