Network News: The Role of Race in Source Selection and Story Topic

Abstract

The theory of incognizant racism posits that journalists cover the White community differently than communities of color, and the study's results indicate that this difference is also reflected in the choice and use of on-camera sources in network news stories. A quantitative content analysis of network news programs in 2005 revealed that Whites dominated television news coverage, comprising more than three quarters of sources. Nearly 90% of network news reporters were also White. Elite sources such as experts, company spokespeople, and government officials were overwhelmingly White, whereas minority sources appeared most often as private individuals or ordinary citizens. In addition, White sources clearly dominated all story topics, with a majority presence in every case, except for foreign affairs stories in which foreign sources made up the bulk of sound bites. Minority sources were scattered more sparingly across story topics, barely making a showing in some, such as stories about science/technology, foreign affairs, and electoral politics. Black and Hispanic sources appeared most often in stories about accidents/disasters/weather events, in both pre-Hurricane Katrina and post-Hurricane Katrina samples. Results indicated that minority reporters were more likely to use minority sources in their stories than White reporters.