Katherine Stapp

NEW YORK, Jun 8 2005 (IPS) — Although largely ignored by advertisers, ethnic radio, television and newspapers in the United States now reach an astonishing 64 million people, about half of whom prefer them to the mainstream press, according to the first ever nationwide assessment of foreign-language and other ethnic media.

”This is a truly groundbreaking study,” said Karen Lawson, executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund, which commissioned the study with New California Media and the Centre for American Progress.

”It quantifies what we all believed to be true – that ethnic media has a great leadership role, even more than we thought,” she said in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.

The poll surveyed 1,850 Hispanic, African American, Asian American, Arab American and Native American adults, representing 64 million ethnic and racial minorities – about a quarter of the entire U.S. adult population. The interviews were conducted in 10 languages: Arabic, Cantonese, English, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog and Vietnamese.

Sandy Close, executive director of New California Media, noted that advertisers spend about 145 billion dollars a year courting U.S. consumers, but just three to four percent goes to the ethnic media.

”This makes a compelling case that it should be upwards of 24 percent,” she said.

Already one in four Californians are foreign-born, and U.S. Census figures show that states like Nevada and Georgia have seen their foreign-born populations grow by over 100 percent in the last 10 years.

Ethnic media also serves about 40 million people in traditional minority communities like African American and Native American.

”This is not just a poll of immigrants but of all people who consider themselves part of these five groups,” said Sergio Bendixen, whose firm conducted the poll.

”It speaks to the need for government officials and political leaders to take ethnic media into consideration when they have press conferences and give access to the media,” he said. ”In many instances, they don’t take ethnic media seriously.”

The poll found that 45 percent of all African American, Hispanic, Asian American, Native American are ”primary consumers” of ethnic media, meaning that 29 million adults, or 13 percent of the entire adult population of the United States, use it as their main news source.

More than half of all Hispanic adults are primary consumers of ethnic media, while two-fifths of African Americans and Arab Americans and a fourth of Asian Americans and Native Americans prefer ethnic media to mainstream media.

”There are two important lessons here,” Bendixen said. ”People tend to utilise the ethnic media to find out about what’s going on in their native country, but when it comes to covering U.S. politics and government, there is a low level of information.”

”The ethnic media needs to make a more aggressive effort to cover U.S. government policies, elections, etc,” he said.

Among Asian Americans, pollsters questioned subgroups of Indians, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Koreans and Vietnamese, while Hispanics were broken down into Central Americans, Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and South Americans.

The study found that the Spanish-language media is especially popular, with 87 percent of all Hispanic adults accessing Spanish-language radio, newspapers and television stations like Univision and Telemundo on a regular basis. Nearly a third of Hispanic adults report that they now prefer Spanish-language newspapers to their English-language counterparts.

While less than a quarter of Hispanics have access to the Internet, Arab Americans have the highest level of connectivity of any group studied, with three-quarters of all Arab American adults having access to the Internet and a majority of them regularly visiting Arabic websites.

”Ethnic groups are not monolithic, they vary in their media consumption,” Lawson said. ”This information will help us more effectively target communities most affected by government policies, and to increase coverage of civil rights and racial justice issues.”

Among African Americans, radio stations that focus on Black themes and content are the most popular medium, although the reach of African American newspapers is also considerable. Even though African Americans read mainstream daily newspapers more often, the Black press reaches 57 percent of all African Americans. Almost half of African American adults have access to the Internet.

Among Asian Americans, about 80 percent of all Korean, Chinese and Vietnamese adults read an ethnic newspaper on a regular basis, while more than half of Asian Indian, Filipino and Japanese adults read an ethnic newspaper a few times a month or more.

Meanwhile, Korean and Chinese television stations are rapidly increasing in popularity, with a quarter of respondents saying they watched Korean and Chinese-language television more often than English-language television. Access to the Internet is very high (67 percent) among all Asian Americans and half of them prefer ethnic websites to mainstream websites.

”This poll is a remarkable portrait of the central role ethnic media now plays in the journalism landscape,” Close concluded.

”However, we need even more national news, commentary and analysis, which requires the ability to cover Sacramento, (the capital of) California or Washington, DC,” she added. ”I’m very aware of the difficulties given the absence of robust advertising, but it’s not the blogs (Internet web logs) that are the cutting edge of journalism, it’s ethnic media.”