Blacks, Hispanics have doubts about media accuracy

WASHINGTON — A new study shows a large majority of African-American and Hispanic news consumers don’t fully trust the media to portray their communities accurately, a statistic that could be troubling for the news industry as the minority population of the United States grows. Three-fourths of African-American news consumers and two-thirds of Hispanics have doubts about what mainstream media report about their communities, according to a survey released Tuesday by the Media Insight Project. And what they see, they don’t think is accurate,” said Tom Rosenstiel, executive director of the American Press Institute, which teamed with The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research on the project. When asked whether they thought news about their communities was accurate, 75 percent of blacks said only “moderately” or “slightly/not at all.” When Hispanics were asked the same question, 66 percent replied “moderately” or “slightly/not at all.” Tia C. M. Tyree, a Howard University professor and the assistant chair of the university’s department of Strategic, Legal and Management Communications, said the stereotyping of African-Americans and Hispanics in the media, and a distrust of systems in the United States that used to be rife with racism contribute to the distrust. Hispanics by far — 41 percent — view Hispanic-specific news sources as the most frequent providers of information about their communities, 10 percent named 24-hour news stations 7 percent named a local news station.