Q&A With Ekaterina Petrova

What is the overall picture of the media in the US – how are the mainstream and ethnic media developing?

A: It is very difficult to frame the picture of the US media because we’re in a period of great turmoil. We have cable, DSL, bloggesphere, major, alternative, youth, and ethnic media, just to name a few. More fragmentation is sure to happen as more individuals have the power to be broadcasters and reporters and entertainers than ever before. Major news organziations are losing viewers/listeners/readers while small news providers sometime discover that they can reach far wider audiences than they ever dreamed before. And we’re also in the age of citizen reporters- people who have a mobile phone can tape and take pictures and film events and breaknews before any professional journalist can arrive to the scene. This is happening more frequently than ever before. Mainstream press is shrinking and many are putting thier resources online. This is where it’s still dynamic and vibrant.

Ethnic media, however, is still growing and there’s still room to grow as the US demographic shift is changing very quickly, toward more a pluralistic society. In California, one out of 4 persons is an immigrant and 40 % of California household speak a language other than English. Our news organization have a directory of ethnic media and so far we identified more than 2500 news outlets that serve ethnic communities in the US. And we think the real number may be more than double of what we chronicled. It’s quite extraordinary.

What is the position occupied by the ethnic media in the US and what functions do they serve?

A: Often enough, the general stereotype is ethnic media is that they are poor and lacking in resources. Also, it is often thought that they don’t play very active
role but translate mainstream news into their various languages. While some of that is true, what many don’t know is how crucial ethnic media is for their community. For instance, when Huricane Katrina left hundreds dead in Louisiana and Missippi and almost a million homeless, ethnic media played an absolutely important role. There were more than 100,000 Vietnamese in that region and when they evacuated, they didn’t listen to English language radio but Vietnamese language radio. They were warned not to go to the astrodome (football stadium) where many Americans took shelter. Stories of rapes and murders were being reported from the stadium. The radio station told their Vietnamese listeners to go to Houston where a large Vietnamese population there were also mobilized to come out and help their compatriots. In other word, these folks relied on their own media as first responders and as organizer during the catastrophe. All in all, they fared better than those who didn’t have access to ethnic media.

Another case in point. Hispanic language radio porgams are the favorite mode of media that the Hispanic population prefer. But they do not just inform their listeners. Last year, they were at the forefront of the immigration rights movements. They told their listeners to go out and march for their rights and demanding fair treatment from the US government. A couple of millions took to the street, spurred by their radio disc jockeys as well as by activist groups. It’s true that ethnic media tend to go beyond objectivity in their practice of journalism. On the other hand, they serve a very specific group whose rights often are ignored in the larger society.

Can you briefly explain the role and goals of your organization?

A: New America Media aims to represent as many diverse voices in our society as we possibly can. We recognize that we live now at the crossroads of the global society and we need to practice inclusive journalism. What that means in term of ethnic media is to first of all chronicle and make accounting of their work. Our website, newamericamedia.org aggregates many stories from ethnic media regularly as well as produce original content inspired by ethnic communities events.

We have become the country’s first and largest national collaboration of ethnic news organizations. Founded by the nonprofit Pacific News Service in 1996, NAM is headquartered in California, where ethnic media are the primary source of news and information for over half of the state’s new ethnic majority.
NAM’s goal is to promote the editorial visibility and economic viability of this critical sector of American journalism as a way to build inclusive public discourse in our increasingly diverse, global society. NAM produces and aggregates editorial content from and for the ethnic media sector and develops pioneering marketing services on behalf of corporations, foundations, and non-profits who are targeting ethnic media and ethnic communities.
NAM also distributes multilingual polling to bring the voices of ethnic audiences into national focus and organizes events to give ethnic media direct access to decision makers in government, business, academic and foundation/non profit worlds.

What are possible models of cooperation – between mainstream and ethnic media and the ethnic media themselves?

A: Over the last few years we have been encouraged by more collaboration between ethnic media groups as well as between ethnic and mainstream media groups. For instance, Nguoi Viet, the largest Vietnamese language newspaper in the US, based in Los Angeles, sent a reporter to work with a paper in Florida – Sun Sentinel. Together they went to inteview many Vietnamese owned nail salons (Vietnamese own more than 40% of nail salon industry in the US) to do stories together. They share byline in both papers. The Vietnamese reporter benefited from working with a professional journalist. The professional journalist gained access to a community that he otherwise wouldn’t have.
Another example: India West, a magazine for Indians in Silicon Valley, sent their reporter to India with a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle to cover the devastation of the tsunami. The Chronicle didn’t have access but they paid for the reporter from India West to go to India. In essence, instead of competing, the two media groups gained front row stories by working together. In term of intra-ethnic media, what NAM does is send the various profiled stories to our subscribers and they are free to pick and choose the stories from the ethnic media. We are beginning to see black papers running point of views from Chinese writers. And we see Chinese papers running stories about black youth. This is the horizontal communication that we want to encourage.

What are ways of overcoming bad journalistic practices of mainstream media in their reporting of minorities, such as the use of stereotypes and the employment of incorrect assumptions or offensive terms?

Often enough, we hear from mainstream papers’ editors that they can’t do stories about ethnic communities because these communities are too difficult to access. What we tell them is that these communities are very much part of the society at large and it’s bad journalism to ignore a whole swath of population groups. We tell them to hire more minority journalists, increase diversity in the newsroom, so that it wouldn’t be difficult to do the necessary stories, more in depth and less superficial.

The other thing we do is provide scientific polls. These polls can be very expensive to do but they are guaranteed to generate dialogue. For instance, when we did a poll as to how many American adults access ethnic media, the results were astounding: 51 million American adults access one form of ethnic media or another. That’s about 1/6 of the general population. We did another poll on ethnic groups’ reactions to US invasion of Iraq and that too got a lot of coverage. Polls provide journalists something far more than annedotal evidence: it also gives them ideas as to how to deepen their coverage of ethnic communities. It is estimated that by the year 2050, white population in the US will be under 50% mark. It means that there’ll no longer be a majority. It also means that we should all prepare ourselves to find good viable models for our very pluralistic society.