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Education
Reading Red: Report finds lack of coverage

By Cindy Yurth
Navajo Times

DENVER, June 21, 2007

The good news is, not many negative stories about Native Americans appeared
in U.S. major daily newspapers last year.

The bad news is, not many stories of any kind about Native Americans
appeared. And when they were written, they hardly used Natives as sources.

This year's Reading Red Report, sponsored by the Native American
Journalists Association, looked at 1,700 news stories in
cities with high Native populations (a notable no-show was the Arizona
Republic, which isn't on Lexus Nexus and was difficult to cross-reference).

While stereotypical phrases like "on the warpath" and "smoking the peace
pipe" showed a decline since the last Reading Red Report in 2002, coverage
of Indians and their issues remained about the same - low.

"We still have a long way to go," said Cristina Azocar, Upper Mattaponi,
NAJA president and director of the Center for Integration and Improvement
of Journalism, who presented the report at NAJA's national conference in
Denver earlier this month.

In what could be perceived as an illustration of her point, neither the
Rocky Mountain News nor the Denver Post covered the convention, which drew
about 200 Native journalists from across the country.

Azocar said she enlisted her journalism students at San Francisco State
University, where she is an associate professor, to help collect and
analyze data for the report.

As an index of whether stories are "positive" or "negative," Azocar told
her students, "If you hate Indians after you read the story, it's a
negative story. If you don't feel any different about Indians, it's
neutral. If you want to be an Indian, it's a positive story."

The group labeled 75 percent of the stories as neutral, 19 percent as
positive, and 6 percent as negative. The negative stories centered around
alcohol abuse, crime, social problems, tobacco, tribal politics and the
Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

In the five years since the last study, the topics being reported have
changed, Azocar said. In 2001, the top Native American topics were
reservation life, casinos and mascots. Last year they were arts and
entertainment, education and casinos.

Of the 4,684 sources quoted in the stories, just over a quarter were Native
American, even in cities that have a high Native
population. In fact, having a high Native population didn't necessarily
correlate with thorough coverage of Natives.

The Albuquerque Journal, as one might expect, was at the top of the list in
the number of stories about Natives (326), but fourth on the list (with
274) was the New York Times, the major newspaper in a city where Natives
comprise only 0.06 percent of the population.

While stereotypical language in general was down, Azocar's students found
copy editors couldn't resist making puns on the word "reservation."

Stories were headlined "Without reservations" and "No reservations" even
when the story had nothing to do with reservations, Azocar observed.

"It's like writing a story about Black people and titling it, 'No ghetto
here,'" she noted.

An enduring stereotype Azocar found was one she calls "the Indian as
spiritual creature."

Even in stories that had nothing to do with religion, reporters seemed to
assign Native sources an aura of mysticism. For example, Native singing was
often described as "chanting" - "and it's always 'ancient,'" pointed out an
audience member.

One story described a Native elder as having "appeared out of nowhere,"
"because, you know, we can all do that," Azocar said wryly.

What's the cure for low and stereotypical coverage of Natives?

"More Native reporters," Azocar said. "We need to put ourselves out there,
because if we don't tell our stories, somebody else will."

Which is not to say non-Native journalists aren't trainable.

"I'm reasonably certain that when my students who participated in this
project get out into the world, they will be a lot more sensitive to
reporting accurately on Native American issues," she said.

The Reading Red Report can be downloaded from the Web at
www.naja.com/news/najanews/070607_reading-red/