How Media Portrays Latinos Supports Negative Stereotypes

These are some of the results of a national poll released on September, 2012 by The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) showing that media portrayals of Latinos and immigrants are fueling rampant negative stereotypes among the general population that are diminishing perceptions of these groups throughout the United States.

NHMC, through a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, commissioned the polling firm, Latino Decisions, to conduct the research. The two-part poll included a national phone survey with a sample size of 900 non-Latino respondents and an interactive online experiment of 3,000 non-Latino respondents. The overall margin of error for the national telephone poll is +/- 3.3% and for the online media bias experiment is +/- 1.8%. During the phone survey, respondents were asked a series of more than ninety questions about their news and entertainment habits and their opinions about Latinos and immigrants. For the online portion, respondents were exposed to positive and negative short video clips, print articles, and audio clips. Immediately after exposure to the stimuli, respondents were asked their opinions about Latinos and immigrants.

For instance, after viewing just one minute of media content, poll respondents changed the way  they view Latinos. When asked if Latinos were intelligent, those who consumed negative news and entertainment pieces were much more likely to rate Latinos as unintelligent, while those who consumed positive pieces were much more likely to rate Latinos as intelligent.

Alex Nogales, President and CEO of NHMC, called it “disturbing” that the poll found there is a common misperception that Latinos and undocumented immigrants are one in the same, with 17% of survey respondents actually believing that the majority of U.S. Latinos are undocumented.

“The media is doing a disservice with coverage that is misleading the public about Latinos who live in the U.S. It is producing attitudes among non-Latinos that contribute to hate speech and hate crimes. We must demand that the media do a better job with its coverage.”

The poll also found that:

People exposed to negative entertainment or news narratives about Latinos and/or immigrants hold the most unfavorable and hostile views about both groups.

Conservative talk radio and Fox News audiences are less likely to be personally familiar with Latinos yet more likely to hold anti-immigrant and anti-Latino views. Without direct experience with Latinos, media takes on a larger role in establishing these opinions and attitudes.

Even those most disposed to positive opinions about Latinos have less favorable opinions when exposed to negative entertainment or news narratives.

In discussing those in this country without documentation, the he term commonly employed by some media outlets, “illegal aliens,” elicits much more negatives feelings than the term “undocumented immigrants.”

Non-Latinos report seeing Latinos in stereotypically negative or subordinate roles (gardeners, maids, dropouts, and criminals) in television and film.

Furthermore, the poll found that the general public relies heavily on television for news and information, with 66 percent watching major network and cable newscasts and only 30 percent trusting Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks or online-only news sources.

A copy of the full poll results is available at www.nhmc.org/reports.

This article was first published in LIN@R.