Tag: media bias

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The Invisible Minority: Why Creating Myths About Asian Americans Is So Easy

Early in October, the surprisingly high percentage (1 in 3) of undecided Asian voters popped up in the media. It took about a minute for that story to cycle through and then, poof! No further discussion.

Pundits and political analysts have talked about Jewish voters, Black voters, Latino Voters, White Voters, young voters, older voters, low-income voters, gay voters, and voting veterans, ex-felons, and independents. But Asian voters? Almost not at all. Or at least that was my theory.

To test that theory, my firm, ChangeLab, conducted a study. We pulled the transcripts of seven weekly political commentary programs televised … Read more “The Invisible Minority: Why Creating Myths About Asian Americans Is So Easy”

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Not Vanquished

I started Race Files after screening 24 hours of political commentary programs. I screened them to test a hunch. That hunch was that if these programs were your only window on the U.S., you’d conclude that people of color are a barely present and politically insignificant part of America.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that my hunch proved correct. To political pundits, people of color are usually (in fact, in the case of white commentators, almost exclusively) mentioned to make points relevant to white people.

But, no matter how minimizing or misleading the rap was on African … Read more “Not Vanquished”

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Appalachian Voters

Thanks to a great article by Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Atlantic, I came across this quote by Steve Kornacki concerning Obama’s lack of popularity in Appalachia:

A majority of Kentucky’s 120 counties voted against Obama in the state’s Democratic presidential primary, opting instead for “uncommitted.” Big margins in Louisville and Lexington saved the president from the supreme embarrassment of actually losing the state, not that his overall 57.9 to 42.1 percent victory is anything to write home about…

Chalking this up only to race may be an oversimplification, although there was exit poll data in 2008 that indicated it was … Read more “Appalachian Voters”