2008 Race & Media Event Series
Media appearances

By Jonathan Gramling

    On April 29, Hemant Shah, a professor in the UW School of Journalism and Mass Communications and one of his students, Ji Hae Kim, presented
their findings of a continuing study into the coverage of people of color in Madison’s two daily papers, the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital
Times, at the Race & Media Event hosted by Center for Democracy in Action at the Zulu Café. Kim, a senior majoring in journalism and Japanese
language, learned a lot about the news coverage of minorities in the Madison area because she had to take the time to analyze what was going on in
the papers.
    “I coded for the local news coverage in The Capital Times for January 31, 2008,” Kim said. “Right after I coded the data, I was really surprised
because I didn’t have any minority sources in my news sources and photos. I had several ‘can’t determine race’ items, which we marked when we weren’t
sure of the person’s race. I didn’t know what to write for my analysis because all I had were White people. After I went back to my readings that I had in
my class, I realized that historically in the U.S., when there weren’t that many minorities in the U.S., many news media outlets were targeting the White
population because they tried to target the main audience to achieve the largest circulation. So I compared my data to the U.S. census data for the
Madison/Dane County area. I realized the White population is predominant in Dane County. So it is pretty obvious that many White stories are coming
out in the media in this area. I also realized that it is possible that people are more interested in ‘their’ stories. People are more interested in White stories
because the White population is so large and media is trying to capture the largest audience.”
    Shah, who has taught this course for a number of years, has seen some progress in the frequency by which people of color appear in the daily papers.
“It seems to be diversifying,” Shah observed. “It is slow, it is glacial we could even say, but it is happening. It is probably because of the economic
imperatives. The community is diversifying, so I think both papers are trying to get a wider range of sources to reflect that. This is one thing we can
conclude. We don’t know for sure. We would have to do some asking around and actually see how the decisions are being made. But just based on the
numbers, it seems that way.”
    Part of the reason for the low level of coverage, in Shah’s view, is the lack of diversity in the newsroom. “Another thing we know is the demographics
of the newsroom itself is very White,” Shah said. “In 2006, both newspapers had fewer than three percent minorities on their staff. The steady rate of low
percentage of minorities, could be as a result of that.”
    But while the study indicates that the frequency is increasing, it doesn’t say anything about the qualitative aspects of that news coverage. For
example, the frequency may be up, but if it were all negative reporting, the benefit to people of color would be detrimental. “The data we collected is
the tip of the iceberg,” Shah said. “That’s what I tell my students. What we need to do beyond this is things like ‘Where are the stories placed in the
paper?’ ‘How big are the pictures?’ ‘Where in the story are the sources of color put?’ ‘Are they referred to first or are they referred to last?’ Who reads to the
end of the story? Not many people. And we haven’t said anything about the usage of headlines and words. How words are used — police action, riot or
rebellion to refer to the same event — are important and we don’t look at that at all. Word choice and language use — for example referring to certain
parts of the city as the ‘inner city,’ in Madison the south side — evoke certain images. If we kept track of that kind of thing too, it gives us a different
dimension that’s below the tip of the iceberg and reflects a lot about the mindset of the reporters.”
    While there is some research being conducted in the area of the impact of race on media, Shah said there is relatively less than other fields such as
political science. Ironically, so little is known about a field which through its coverage influences the way that race is viewed in the United States.
Perhaps there’s a story there.
UW Professor Hemant Shah and his class
(represented by Ji Hae Kim) studied the
frequency of the appearance of people of
color in Madison’s print dailies.