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Poll Finds Millions in America Turn to Ethnic Media

More than one in 10 Americans turn to ethnic news media as their primary source for news, and almost one in four used ethnic media in the past month, according to a new poll

By Peter Micek, Pacific News Service

SAN FRANCISCO - June 7, 2005-No one had ever asked Sara Vivar of Stamford, Conn., why she reads Spanish-language media. She said she prefers the local Spanish-language newspaper, which "speaks to us about our home country." She and her children, she said, do not speak English.

Vivar and 1,894 other ethnic Americans took part in a first-ever, nationwide, multilingual poll that mapped the clout of ethnic media -- the print, radio, television and Internet media used by ethnic Americans, including blacks and Native Americans. Fifty-one million people, or 80 percent of the 64 million adults who checked "ethnic" boxes on the last census, the poll said, used ethnic media last month. That's almost 1 in 4 adult Americans.

That popularity demonstrates that the American "melting pot" is more like a "salad" these days, according to pollster Sergio Bendixen of Fla.-based Bendixen and Associates, which conducted the survey.

Bendixen explained that in an age of global communication, ethnic Americans retain a stronger sense of their ethnic identity. As a result, more trust and access media that reflect their origins.

Of the 51 million Americans who turn to ethnic media regularly, 29 million, or 13 percent of the adult public, rely primarily on ethnic media. This figure is "conservative," Bendixen said, because respondents had to name a particular media outlet, say they preferred it over mainstream media and accessed it daily or several times per week.

The poll divided respondents into 14 ethnic categories. The 780 Hispanics interviewed were divided into subcategories based on their culture's regional origin, as were Asian Americans. Three-hundred African Americans, 114 Arab Americans and 100 Native Americans were polled. Sample sizes where kept representative of ethnic populations in the United States.

Most respondents said that ethnic media offer better community and home-country reporting than mainstream media. However, when it comes to coverage of national politics, ethnic Americans still turn to mainstream media, the poll found.

Awilda Cruz of Boynton Beach, Fla., for example, complained to pollsters that health and politics coverage, along with economics, was better in English-language media. She reads the New York Times, she said, and the Palm Beach Post, but preferred to be interviewed in Spanish.

Ethnic media challenge the definition of "culture" reporting, long viewed as light, colorful fare, said Sandy Close, executive director of New California Media, which commissioned the poll. For example, Close said, India-West, a newspaper based in the Bay Area, broke the story about McDonald's using beef fat in its French fries. In the United States, Hindus, who are vegetarians, successfully sued the company. The story went beyond the Indian community and impacted American business.

Without ethnic media, Close said, "We would have no idea."

An association of ethnic media, NCM sponsored the poll in partnership with the Center for American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. A month of telephone interviews in 10 languages ended in late May. NCM is a project of Pacific News Service.

The findings detail a media marketplace with many nuances.

Hispanics, for example, tend to rely on television, African Americans on radio and Chinese on print media. Questions about the Internet revealed that just 24 percent of Hispanics use the Web, compared with 67 percent of Asian Americans and 76 percent of Arab Americans. Nearly half of African Americans access the Internet, but only 17 percent frequent ethnic Web sites. Native Americans showed similar numbers.

Few Filipinos fit into the category of "primary" users of ethnic media, but pollster Bendixen said this was likely due to fact that most Filipino publications are weeklies or monthlies. Though they may not be read every day, the poll showed, that Filipino media are still regularly accessed by more than half of Filipino Americans.

Along with their high level of Internet access, Arab Americans tune in to Arabic television stations in high numbers. Networks like Al Jazeera produce much content in United States bureaus, said NCM's Close.

A quarter of all Native Americans are primary consumers of Native media, which are tribal or national in scope, Bendixen said.

"Just as we know that ethnic groups are not monolithic," said Karen Lawson, director of the LCCREF, "their media habits aren't either. It isn't one-stop shopping."

Wade Henderson, counselor to poll co-sponsor LCCREF and executive director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said his organization will use the poll results to target audiences in the campaign to renew the Voting Rights Act in 2007.

David Lee of the Chinese American Voters Education Committee in San Francisco saw the poll as a benchmark in the relationship between ethnic and mainstream media.  Mainstream media, Lee said, could more frequently follow the lead of the ethnic press, which broke ground covering such stories as the rediscovery of the history of the Japanese "Rape of Nanking."

Nam Nyugen, editor of Cali Today, a San Jose, Calif., Vietnamese newspaper, was not surprised by the poll's findings on ethnic media popularity. "This is what we always knew," he said. "The poll only proves it."

At least one reader, though, respondent Ruben Garcia of Norwalk, Calif., is more interested in the information presented than the paper he reads it in, whether the Los Angeles Times or La Opinión. "One-fourth of Hispanics use the Internet?" he asked -- "Es mucho, o poco?" Is that a lot, or a little?

PNS contributor Peter Micek (pmicek@pacificnews.org) works for NCM, an association of over 700 print, broadcast and online ethnic media organizations founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service and members of ethnic media.