Students discuss bias against national Latino news
U-Md. student reads the main campus newspaper, The Diamondback
By Valerie Mickiewicz
Special to La Voz
Latinos make up the largest minority group in the United States, accounting for 15.8 percent of the total population. As the population continues to grow, “substantial coverage” of Latinos in the media does not. Several students at the university agreed that even campus media neglects Latino issues.
Only 1.9 percent of 34,000 articles studied between February and August of 2009 covered Latino news, according to the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism and Pew Hispanic Center. Latinos were even less frequently featured in radio and television.
In the six months studied, over a third of all news coverage that referenced Latinos were about Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination and confirmation as the first Latino to serve on the high court.
The three other most common Latino topics referenced the Mexican drug war, the H1N1 (swine flu) outbreak, and immigration. However, even when immigration was heavily debated in Congress from 2006 through 2008, fewer than one in ten stories involved Latinos.
Sophomore physiology and neurobiology major Carolina Valdes, who was born in Mexico, said campus media seems to also have limited Latino news coverage.
“I don’t indentify much with most campus news,” she said, “but I think [Latino news are] interesting and equally as important.”
Although Valdes was born in Mexico and identifies with Latino issues, she does not actively seek Latino news.
“I know a lot of older people who want to make a difference and I hear about it from them instead of reading about it,” Valdes said. Since she rarely encounters Latino news, Valdes said she thinks it is courageous when Latinos finally speak out.
Senior physiology and neurobiology major and Spanish minor Julian Artunduaga had a similar opinion.
“I don’t think a Latino paper would help because you have to go out of your way to reach that media,” the Colombian native said, “but it would be cool if there were articles in the Diamondback that did cover Latinos.”
However, Artunduaga said he can still identify with campus media because it relates to the university and the community where he lives. The only Latino news he is interested in is bigger political topics such as immigration.
“I don’t look for Latino articles community-wise,” he said. The Latino news he seeks comes from blogs and Google news.
Sophomore animal science major, Spanish minor, and Latin American studies certificate candidate Olivia Cox said she is very interested in Latino news although she is non-Latino. She listens to Spanish radio while driving and watches the Spanish news occasionally.
“I think they should definitely be represented more because this is a campus that has a lot of diversity,” Cox said. “It’s kind of disgusting to have such a large part of our population under-represented, not just in campus news, but national news.”
All in all, Latino news is not prevalent in general media. Three students at U-Md. cannot come to a consensus whether this is a negative aspect of campus media or not. However, they can agree that the Latino exclusion does not go unnoticed, and they believe other students notice the underrepresentation as well.
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