Minority Rights

Historically stereotyped, diminished, or overlooked by the media, women and members of cultural minorities are pushing to heighten their own visibility, identities, and causes in myriad ways, from staging roadside dramas in isolated villages to demanding clearer voices in news outlets around the globe. Social media, where technologically accessible, have emerged as powerhouses to connect the disadvantaged or repressed in common causes, notably in the wave of “Arab Spring” uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011. Television images shown around the world depicted women joining or even leading protests against some Arab regimes, showcasing tensions between an age-old subordination of women and a 21st-century drive for fairer treatment. Regional and global organizations are systematically monitoring the progress of women as news gatherers and news makers, with the twin goals of promoting gender parity for women within the news industry and advancing women as the subjects of important stories.

Relevant to the intersection of personal rights and media attention was the mob attack on Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) network correspondent Lara Logan in February 2011 in Cairo's Tahrir Square, where she was covering a massive rally by Egyptians who were, for the most part, celebrating the ouster of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Logan's landmark recounting of the prolonged sexual assault against her on the CBS news program 60 Minutes focused new attention on the dangers to women reporters, especially in covering conflict.

A rich history of ethnic media has long given voice to those who are culturally marginalized, underscoring the enduring role of media messages in raising the consciousness of both the oppressed and their oppressors. In the United States, the first African American newspaper, Freedom's Journal, was founded in 1827, and the first Latino newspaper, El Misisipi, dates from 1808, report Clint C. Wilson II and his colleagues. They write that Freedom's Journal in its first issue declared, on the front page, that it sought to overcome misrepresentations of black Americans conveyed by the dominant press. In 1911, the researchers report, a Spanish-language weekly, La Cronica of Laredo, Texas, campaigned against movies shown across Texas that it believed demeaned Mexicans and Native Americans. The first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, was launched in 1828 to counter the federal government's plan to remove the people of the Cherokee Nation from their own lands. The Golden Hills' News, established in San Francisco in 1854 as the first Asian Pacific American newspaper, published news for Chinese immigrants as well as English-language editorials seeking improved treatment of Chinese workers in California.

Moroccan citizens participate in demonstrations calling for political change during the “Arab Spring” uprisings in 2011. The press-monitoring organization Freedom House reported that 95 percent of people in North Africa and the Middle East reside in areas where media are tightly controlled.

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