Tenacity of Routine: The Absence of Geo-Ethnic Storytelling in Constructing Immigration News Coverage

Abstract

In 2006, millions of immigrants protested in cities around the United States against H.R. 4437, a new bill in Congress that threatened to criminalize undocumented immigrants and strengthen border enforcement. For this study, I interviewed immigration editors and reporters at California newspapers about the discourse surrounding this bill to determine the presence and/or prevalence of geo-ethnic storytelling, which posits that racial and geographic location of a particular subject community creates a unique network for the way journalists tell and understand stories. This study suggests that although reporters and editors acknowledge the importance of their own sense of race and community in creating reports, the journalistic norms of fairness and objectivity were more influential than geo-ethnic storytelling, suggesting the resilience of news routines and values despite changes in the field and an issue couched in race.