By Jalen Brown, CNN
(CNN) – Latinos remain vastly underrepresented in the media industry and are far more likely to work in service roles, according to the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) latest report on Latino representation in film, television and other publishing entities.
The The 2021 GAO Study found that Latinos make up 12% of the media workforce and 4% of industry executives, despite making up 18% of the overall workforce in the United States.
This latest report, released Wednesday, provides a more comprehensive analysis of data on Latino representation in the media industry over the past decade and solutions federal agencies could take to help increase diversity in the industry. . The population of Latinos in the media industry increased by 1% from 2010 to 2019, compared to the slightly larger 3% increase in representation in all other sectors, according to the report.
“This invisibility means Americans don’t know who Latinos are or how we’ve contributed to our nation’s success. This year’s report will be a call to action to achieve greater Latin American representation in the media and allow the Latin American narrative to finally become part of the larger American narrative,” said Representative Joaquin Castro, a Democrat from Texas, who led an effort in Congress. investigate the state of diversity in the media.
The findings released Wednesday are part of the second part of the GAO report. Last year, the agency released its first report, in which researchers analyzed Hispanic representation by media industry and profession. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus had asked the GAO to investigate the matter in 2020.
The initial report, Castro said in a statement, “brought national light to the industry’s failure to recruit and retain talented Latinos.”
The media industry is responsible for informing the American public and influencing the way we think about the world and others, which is why it is essential for society to represent these diverse perspectives from the top down, according to the report. .
Media companies also have a financial incentive to promote representative parity.
A Nielsen report revealed last month that Latino viewers are spending more time watching shows that include Latino representation behind and in front of the camera.
When Latinos get jobs in the media industry, they are often segregated into service roles. 19% of Latinos who work in media are service workers, compared to 3% in management positions, according to the report.
Latinas have even starker disparities in industry representation. The only roles where they are more represented than men are analysts/journalists and writers/authors, beating men by just 1% in both sectors, according to the report.
A small group of researchers and representatives of industry groups, union members, and Hispanic members of nonprofit organizations identified in the report several different challenges that Latinos face in obtaining jobs in industry – such as financial and educational barriers – but most of these stakeholders said limited access to professional networks, in particular, had adverse effects.
Part of the blame could also lie in how the federal government enforces anti-discrimination and equal employment opportunity rules, the researchers say. The report provides recommendations that some federal agencies could take to alleviate this disparity, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sharing discrimination filing reports with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which can carry out audits and cancel sanctions on companies previously flagged by the old agency.
The-CNN-Wire
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