Shah, Hemant & Thornton, Michael C.  Newspaper Coverage of Interethnic Conflict: Competing Visions of America.  Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004.

 

Hemant Shah is a professor of Asian American studies, journalism, and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He recieved his B.A. in sociology and communication from the University of California, San Diego, his M.A. in communication studies from Purdue University, and his doctorate in mass communication from Indiana University.  Currently a professor he teaches courses in subjects such as mass communication development in other countries and mass media. Several of his published works in the Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Critical Studies in Mass Communication and the Howard Journal of Communication address issues pertaining to international communication, media representations of race and ethnicity and mass media in terms of social change.

 

Michael C. Thornton is a professor of Afro-American studies, Asian American studies, and sociology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He recieved his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and he has taught at many universities, including Cornell University and Eastern Michigan University. A lot of his major works deal with topics that examine the relations between people of color and age as well as ethnic and racial identity with particular interest in the examination of ethnic identity between African American and Asian American groups.

 

Shah and Thornton (2004) present research on three case studies to examine how the media not only impact but also amplify this idea of racial formation in the United States. Racial formation examines race as a social construct whereby "racial categories are established and employed to mobilize specific meanings and accomplish certain social and political goals" (Shah & Thornton, 15). While it is racial projects that are key to our understanding of racial formation because they influence how “race will be organized, monitored, and controlled” (p. 219).

 

The essence of what is being argued by Shah and Thornton is power, that media attach themeselves and gravitate themeselves toward power in this idea of racial formation. The authors argue that there are two components to racial power that help to understand this social construct. The first is racial ideology, which according to researcher Hall defines what race is, the meanings and images we tend to associate with the term and the help it provides us in understanding how the world is divided into racial categories (Shah and Thornton, 16). The second component, racial hegemony is based on this idea of racial hierarchy where whites are placed at the top of this social construct and nonwhites; typically people of color, are at the bottom. This habit tends to homogenize non-whites and as was seen in the use of ethnic labeling in the beginning of each chapter, groups diverse cultures and people together by being broadly labeled either "black," "Asian American" or "Latino." Typically whites and blacks are on opposite ends of the racial hierarchical spectrum while other ethnic groups such as Asian Americans and Latinos fall somewhere in between.

 

Throughout the course of the text, Shah and Thornton are primarily concerned with the following themes: factors that have been deemed responsible for the changing social and political-economic landscape in three metropolitan cities; Miami, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles over the past several decades. Such examples have been the result of massive waves of immigration from war torn countries and the implementation of poor U.S. foriegn policy. Other themes  examine tense relations between ethnic groups as a result of limited economic oppurtunities, cultural insensitivity, competition for scarce resources including employment and housing, white fear and anxiety as a result of already established communities (primarily African Americans and whites) feeling threatened by immigrant communities (primarily Asian and Latino) and tense relations between communities of color and key institutions of power such as law enforcement, city government and the media.

 

Newspaper coverage of interethnic conflict: competing visions of America examine both general circulation and ethnic minority coverage of interethnic tensions between several non-white ethnic groups primarily Latinos, Asians and Blacks in three globalized cities; Miami in 1989, Washington D.C. in 1991 and Los Angeles in 1992. Various newspaper circulations were examined, a code sheet was developed and several categories were created. Using news articles, editorials, columns, and letters to the editor, Shah and Thornton searched for any mention of interethnic interactions by comparing mainstream or general circulation and ethnic media sources. They scrutinized the labeling, blaming, and vindicating of the various ethnicities within the media after certain key interethnic conflicts in each of the global cities occured. Comparisons include background information and textual analysis of: ethnic groups, actors and victims, themes (most commonly conflict, fear, and outrage expressed), heroes and villains, causes of conflict at the individual, institutional, and structural level, implications of conflict and race and nation. The consistent organizational framework repeated and compared in each chapter allows the reader to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each newspaper that is focused on appealing to a specific ethnic community and is helpful in determining if newspaper sources convey events that are biased or loaded with facts intended to reflect poorly on a specific ethnic group. For example, it is crucial to ask oneself, if the Miami Times is geared towards the African American community does it cover other ethnic groups in more or less the same light as it does African Americans? Why or Why not?

 

In 1989, three days of rioting in Miami ensued after a police officer of Columbian descent shot a Black motorcyclist in Miami. Shah and Thornton (2004) analyzed 55 articles from mainstream, 24 from Black, and 38 from Latino newspapers. The Washington, D.C. riots happened in 1991 when a Black police officer shot a Salvadoran immigrant, resulting in rioting by Latinos, Blacks, and Whites. Fifty-one articles from mainstream, 7 from Black, and 12 from Latino papers were analyzed. The Los Angeles riots occurred in 1992 after the acquittal of four White police officers in the beating of Rodney King. Rioting by Blacks, Whites, Latinos, and Asians shortly followed causing major damage, primarily to Korean-owned businesses. The analysis of this event included 83 articles from mainstream, 43 from Black, 127 from Latino, and 135 from Asian American papers.

 

The book is divided into two main parts; the first examines the three specific riots; Miami, Washington D.C. and Los Angeles covered by both general circulation and ethnic news media. The second half, which takes up a significant portion of the book is dedicated to coverage of the Los Angeles Riots, examining how various papers dedicated to different ethnic audiences including the Los Angeles Times, La Opinion, the African American Press and Asian American Press covered the Los Angeles Riots.

 

Through the course of this research it was found that both general circulation and ethnic media coverage tend to reinforce racial ideologies. However ethnic minority media provide more of an oppositional stance, countering the hegemonic view of race relations in the United States and challenging the racial status quo. While the general circulation media tends to reinforce the status quo and perpetuate the dominant ideology, meaning they will choose stories that reinforce white power and priviledge many of the ethnic newspapers accused white priviledge of being the stimulus for much of the interethnic conflicts, even though most of those conflicts excluded whites as the main participants.

 

Both general circulation and the ethnic minority press presented race in terms of conflict and as a binary construction, which helped to reinforce notions of racial hegemony. This meant that when looking at media coverage, conflict was noted but not contexualized and further explained to help understand why there was conflict amongst various racial groups. When there was conflict between racial groups, only two main ethnic groups were stressed. This is no the fault of the authors but tends to be a common practice among journalists where an event is usually marked as a conflict between two domiant groups. For example, although the Asian American press provided an exstensive overview of the Los Angeles riots, attention was strictly placed on African Americans and Korean Americans and not so much on Latinos. Ignoring the role of other ethnic minorities downplays the complex nature of examining interethnic conflicts to begin with.

 

In addition to conflict being the dominant theme found in a lot of the news coverage between ethnic groups, there were three patterns of coverage that examined how general circulation and ethnic media framed racial conflict. These three patterns included establishing problems and solutions, characterizing heroes and villains and the last category established debated the idea of America-ness.

 

In terms of problems and solutions of news coverage, often the general circulation press focused on the individual actions of people, community leaders and police officers as the cause and solution to problems. For example the Los Angeles Times depicted the riots between two ethnic groups; African American rioters and Korean storeowners. While the ethnic minority news coverage examined the problems and solutions at the institutional and structural level; conflict was seen as the result of several factors including economic inequality, lack of resources, unemployment and white institutions of social control (Shah & Thornton, 221). In terms of heroes and villains, by having the Los Angeles Times present good samaritans, firefighters and National Guards helping out during the riots or El Nuevo Herald depicting blacks as villains we see that the media tend to perpeturate and solidify certain racial ideologies for mass consumption that are rarely broken but rather reinforced time and time again. The last pattern that emerged, the debate over american-ness is critical. Shah and Thornton argue that American-ness is associated with whiteness. In Miami, the Miami Herlad and El Nuevo Herald deemed Cubans and Nicaraguans anti-communist, more willing to find work and therefore more American then Miami blacks who were seen to not posses any of those "positive" traits. Yet in the case of Washington D.C. many Latinos were deemed culturally unfit because they refused to assimilate into the domiant society. This shows us that typically whites are used to draw comparisons with other groups (mainly people of color) to determine thier degree of American-ness.

 

Examining the ethnic minority press in comparison to general circulation papers provides readers with information that not only contexualize the events and their impact at the institutional and structural level but also what was missing from the uncritical coverage of the mainstream press. We come to understand that racial hierarchy is further strengthened when both the mainstream and ethnic minority media fail to distinguish between non-whites. As was mentioned earlier, ethnic labeling done by both general circulation and the ethnic minority press tends to homogenize racial groups into broad categories; either black, Asian or Latino which further strengthens this whole process of racial formation. Racial hierarchy is also strengthened by news media. News media "generally "operate in the public sphere and present thier opinions on racial issues in ways that limit and shape discussion" (Shah & Thornton, 19). In this sense news media not only perpetuate these racial ideologies repeatedly that homogenize ethnic groups but also reinforce racial ideologies that play an important role in this entire process of racial formation.

 

The results indicate that both the general circulation and the ethnic minority press posses unique values that convey news coverage in a different manner. General circulation media tend to follow the traditional model of news reporting; focusing on factual accounts and relying more on official sources while the ethnic news media tend to follow an alternative approach focusing on interpretations, members of the community and contexualizing the event or story (Shah & Thornton, 233). Shah and Thornton believe using the alternative model (that ethnic minority media follow) is important in challenging racial hegemony that the traditional model supports. That is why ethnic media serves to provide a voice to the ethnic communities and challenge the white, male dominated media system.

 

In terms of strengths and weaknesses, I found that the book was articulated very well and was structured in a manner that was comprehensive. Categories were established, conclusions were drawn, a brief overview of the newspapers were provided, an examination of the political economy and the cities before and after the riots and an analysis of the newspaper coverage that followed provided readers with the oppurtunity to understand what was happening even if they were without knowledge of these events beforehand. This book was organized very well; readers were introduced to this idea of how competing visions in america continuously bring to question the meaning of race and nation, how ethnic media serve in not only providing for the ethnic communities but also contributing to the public sphere as a whole and lastly, readers are provided the relevance of news coverage in this process of racial formation. I do think it would have been interesting to look at interethnic tensions from events and communities that haven't been publicized as much in both general circulation and ethnic news coverage. Also in terms of categories developed, I think it would have been interesting to develop a specific category that looked at what papers thought specifically caused the riots because I find there would have been a huge difference to compare in terms of content between ethnic and general news coverage as far as who was responsible, who was to blame and what the repercussions were.

 

The value of this research is in its emphasis on interethnic conflicts, as opposed to just focusing on the comparisons between Whites and one single minority group which the authors argue in the introduction is one of the strengths of this book. Newspaper coverage of interethnic conflict: competing visions of America focuses on how whitenes is an underlying factor in all interethnic conflicts; even if a specific conflict occurs between two minority groups. This book focused on interethnic conflict between ethnic groups meaning there was little mention of white economic power and control and the fact that this wasn't stressed reinforces this idea of white priviledge. To analyze this idea of whiteness would pose a challenge to racial hegemony (Shah & Thornton, 227). Even though white privildege wasn't directly acknowledged, it was still one of the underlying causes for interethnic tensions. For example, in the case of the Los Angeles riots, general circulation media magnified relations bwtween Koreans and African Americans before the riots even broke out. Shah and Thornton are clear in thier objective and suucessful in thier research methods when conveying all of these ideas.

 

Lastly, it was interesting to note what was argued by one author when discussing this idea of the American Dream. He wrote that "the american dream only works in the United States but the United States cannot work without it" (Shah & Thornton, 156). This means that the United States wouldn't be what most people see it as today if it wasn't for its big oppurtunities as far as " fair employment, educational, political and religious freedoms." People from different cultural and socio-ecnomic backgrounds venture to this land of oppurtunity however in many ways this "American dream" is reserved for whites. According to this author, the main idea is that certain people in America "will prosper socially and economically or be completely marginalized depending on thier race and ethnicity" (Shah & Thornton, 157).

 

Reviewed by Hadas Amar

April 23, 2009