THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT

U.S. media lags in covering Latin America

By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER

If you think that Latin America is getting a short shrift in the U.S. media, you are right: a new study shows that the percentage of news from the region in mainstream U.S. media is pathetic.

The study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism, which examined more than 70,000 stories in 48 mainstream U.S. media over the past 12 months, shows that coverage of foreign news other than Iraq, Iran and Pakistan was minuscule: the rest of the world accounted for less than 6 percent of the overall coverage.

According to the study, which included television, radio, newspapers and Internet outlets, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict accounted for 0.5 percent of the total U.S. news hole, violence in Darfur 0.2 percent and U.S. relations with Russia 0.2 percent.

Latin America was not measured as a separate category, but it is safe to assume that it accounted for less than the 0.5 percent devoted to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The study's authors told me that even some of the most dramatic events in Latin America got very little coverage in the mainstream U.S. media.

Consider:

• During the week of March 3-9, when Colombia attacked a FARC guerrilla camp inside Ecuador, killing rebel leader Raúl Reyes and triggering threats of war from Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, the story accounted for 1 percent of the total U.S. news coverage. By comparison, the U.S. presidential campaign accounted for 52 percent, and the U.S.-Palestinian conflict for 4 percent.

• During the week of Feb. 18-24, when Cuban President Fidel Castro announced his resignation after nearly 50 years in power and endless confrontations with the United States, the story accounted for 6 percent of total U.S. news coverage. By comparison, the story about Kosovo's independence got 7 percent.

• During the week of Dec. 2-7, 2007, the Venezuelan referendum in which Chávez suffered his first major electoral defeat, amounted to 2 percent of the U.S. news hole. Comparatively, news from Iran got 7 percent.

• During the week of April 8-13, 2007, the 6.0-magnitude earthquake that shook Mexico City and Acapulco got 0.3 percent of the U.S. media's attention. It was no match for the scandal about radio talk show host Don Imus' racial remarks, which consumed 26 percent of the news hole.

Interestingly, the study found that people looking for foreign news are most likely migrating to the Internet. Non-U.S.-related foreign stories accounted for 25 percent of online coverage, compared with 13 percent in newspapers, and 4 percent in radio, the study shows.

Tom Rosenstiel, head of the Project, told me that part of the reason for the little attention to Latin America, apart from news organizations' budget cuts, is that the region lies low in the White House's list of priorities.

''If Latin America is not a major part of the administration's agenda, it becomes a smaller part of the media's agenda,'' he said.

My opinion: I agree, but I would add that the people who run the mainstream U.S. media are guilty of being too driven by the White House agenda, and too out of touch with their own country's ethnic diversity.

While U.S. news organizations may be right in making Iraq, Iran and Pakistan their top foreign affairs priorities, they forget that Latin America is the world's region that most affects Americans' daily lives, whether it's on immigration, trade, the environment or energy issues (yes, we import more oil from our neighbors than from Saudi Arabia).

Most importantly, most U.S. news organizations -- and I have to give credit to The Miami Herald here for being a notable exception -- are oblivious to the fact that there are more than 45 million Hispanics in the United States, and millions of other Americans who because of business or family reasons are interested in the region. The very fact that this study only measured English-language media reflects the mind-set of most U.S. media organizations, which forget that Spanish-language television stations in cities such as Miami and Los Angeles often have a bigger audience than their English-language counterparts, or that millions of Hispanics are getting their news from their native countries' newspaper websites, because they can't find it in their local newspapers.

In other words, the United States is changing, but the people who report the news are the last ones to find out about it.