Race and Ethnicity, Coverage of

Sally Lehrman

As the United States has grown increasingly diverse, journalists have recognized the importance of reporting on issues of race and ethnicity. They also realize they must learn to report on multicultural communities and include people from a wide variety of backgrounds as sources and subjects. This task is not as straightforward as it may seem. As with most other U.S. institutions, those in charge of reporting and writing the mainstream news have almost always been white. They have covered the news based on their own attitudes, experiences, and concerns. As a result, U.S. news organizations have an uneven history of equally and fairly covering all the people who participate in civic life. When the penny press first arose in the 1830s, it sought to attract a broad audience by combining a low price with plenty of crime news and human interest stories. At its center was the heterogeneous white audience, ...

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