Latino Guests on Evening Cable News Shows are Nearly Nonexistent
By Voxxi
The report, titled “Diversity on Evening Cable News in 13 Charts”, found that women, Latinos and other people of color are underrepresented as guests on evening cable news programs on MSNBC, CNN and Fox News networks.
In the month of April, Media Matters, a non-profit organization, took a look at the guests of 13 evening cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News and found that 33 percent of MSNBC guests, 29 percent of Fox News guests and 24 percent of CNN guests were female.
The number of Latino guests on those networks was much lower: 3 percent of Fox News guests and 2 percent of CNN and MSNBC guests were Latino.
According to the report, CNN had the largest proportion of male guests, 76 percent and women did not make up more than 33 percent of guests on any network.
NHMC reacts to report on Latino guests on evening news
The National Hispanic Media Coalition released a statement Tuesday in which NHMC President and CEO, Alex Nogales said, “This is unacceptable.”
“At a time when Latinos are over 16 percent of the country, a growing bloc of the electorate and with over $1 trillion per year of buying power, it is unimaginable that we be excluded from cable news at such rates. This has a real affect on our community—the way we are perceived is how we are treated, and when our experts are absent from these programs it gives the perception that Latinos are not making meaningful contributions to this country, which couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“I have a long list of Latino experts in my pocket that run the gamut of subjects, be it education, health, safety, immigration, technology, law; you name it, and they are all ready for prime time. I challenge CNN, MSNBC and Fox News to start inviting these expert guests onto their programs at greater rates to turn these terrible numbers around,” Nogales added.
According to the NHMC’s national poll on the impact of media on opinions and attitudes toward Latinos, positive images of Latinos in media positively impacts non-Latinos beliefs and attitudes towards Latinos.
This article was first published in Voxxi.
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