U.S.News Coverage of Racial Minorities: A Sourcebook, 1934-96

This one-volume sourcebook draws together the scholarly literature assessing news coverage in the U.S. mainstream media of Americans of African, Native, Asian, Hispanic, or Pacific Islander origin. The work covers over 60 years, beginning in 1934, and examines the 50 states and the territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean that are currently under U.S. governance. The categories of racial and cultural groups follow the scheme of the 1990 U.S. Census, which provided the most detailed breakdown of race and ethnicity of the American population in the 200-year history of the census.

This sourcebook gives parallel treatment to each of these five census groups. Every chapter begins with a history of that group as it came under U.S. jurisdiction. Then, each chapter is divided into six periods suggested by pivotal news events and discusses studies of news coverage of that group during that period. Each chapter also contains extensive endnotes and a selected bibliography on a racial or cultural group. Also included are chapters on investigative reporting and federal regulation of broadcasting as they relate to minorities.

BEVERLY ANN DEEPE KEEVER, Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Hawaii, covered the Vietnam War for seven years. Her reporting for the Christian Science Monitor about the embattled outpost of Khe Sanh was nominated in 1969 for a Pulitzer Prize.

CAROLYN MARTINDALE is Professor Emerita at Youngstown State University, where she served as director of the journalism program. A former newspaper reporter, she is the author of The White Press and Black America (Greenwood, 1986) and the editor of Pluralizing Journalism Education: A Multicultural Handbook (Greenwood, 1993).

MARY ANN WESTON is Associate Professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. A former newspaper reporter, she was a member of the Detroit Free Press staff that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1967 Detroit riots. She is the author of Native Americans In the News (Greenwood, 1996).