Ethnic Media's Coverage of Immigration Goes Beyond U.S. Borders Posted by Bob at 06/29/07 07:05 PM

(This is guest blog from Joel Kelsey, a grassroots organizer for Consumers Union, the sponsor of this blog. He is attending the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta this week. He can be reached at kelsjo@consumer.org.)

Thousands have flooded Atlanta this week for the first annual US Social Forum. Participants have come from all over the world to share insights on the many problems facing communities throughout the world, and what’s being done on a local and global scale to address them. Media reform and media justice issues have carved out a special niche among the hundreds of workshops offered each day.

As the migration debate heats up in our nation’s capitol, this advocate was particularly interested in the ethnic media’s take on the mainstream coverage of the lightning-rod immigration bill. As the population of documented and undocumented immigrants grows in America, so too has the size, scope and number of ethnic media outlets aimed at our country’s increasingly diverse communities. This vital niche in American journalism has recently been filling the void left by consolidated media’s cutbacks on global news coverage and has arguably produced the most diverse assembly of voices and opinions in media today. So, I headed over to a workshop moderated by New America Media to get a fresh perspective.

What became clearly evident, was that once again our consolidated media outlets missed the mark by simply scratching the surface of one of this nation’s most complex and intricate issues, affecting the lives of so many. Regardless of which side of the debate you fall on, migration to this country is an intricate issue that spans not only borders, but also labor and international trade policy. While many mainstream media outlets have been focusing on the very domestic, “should they stay or should they go” angle, our country’s ethnic media outlets have been tackling the issues from both sides of the border to understand the policies that cause migration as well as the policies that regulate it.

While Larry King’s interview of Paris Hilton dominates airwaves and newspaper inches, the ethnic media is using the old standby of quality journalism to attract an ever increasing number of eyeballs

comments (0)