“Más Información”
We asked hundreds of Latino immigrants in Oakland what they want in local news. This is what they told us.
In a church hall on an autumn weeknight, 14 residents and a half dozen public officials sit in folding chairs arranged in a circle. The meeting starts with a prayer, before launching into the issue at hand: the consistent build-up of trash on residential streets. One by one, in Spanish and English, residents describe the large piles of detritus they have passed when walking their children to school; the Saturday mornings they have spent cleaning their block, only to see it turn into a dump within a week. Oakland’s Director of Public Works explains what his department is doing about the issue, and the challenges it faces in making a dent in the problem. A long conversation ensues, with residents proposing alternative solutions, and a city council member chiming in to explain the difficulty in prosecuting illegal dumpers. It is well past dinnertime when the meeting ends, but residents leave with answers to some of their questions, and the feeling that their concerns were at least heard by those in power.
This may not be what you think of as journalism. But here in East Oakland, there are no local news outlets that consistently cover these issues. No journalists that ask residents for their stories and opinions, that offer a way for public officials to gauge the pulse of the community. No outlets to answer residents’ questions about how their tax dollars are getting used. Occasionally, the region’s TV stations, newspapers, or radio stations cover this part of town, but for the Latino immigrants who make up half of East Oakland’s population, options for Spanish-language media are limited. Which is why residents who want their voice heard, or who have questions for public officials, spend many a weeknight at small community meetings, where they can exchange information firsthand.
As part of an effort to understand how Oakland’s Spanish-speaking residents get news and information and participate in local civic conversations, El Tímpano embarked on a 9-month collaborative research process. I, along with a handful of colleagues attended church meetings and town halls, sat down with community leaders, and spoke with hundreds of residents to listen to how they get news and information, and what they want to see in local media.
This week, in collaboration with the Listening Post Collective and its parent organization, Internews, we are proud to launch a report outlining what we found. Sink your teeth into the full report, or read on to learn what residents told us they would put at the top of their wish list for local journalism.
5 Things Residents Want to See in Local Media
#1: Más Información
“Más” — or “more” — was the prevailing word written on surveys and voiced in group workshops when we asked residents what they want to see in local media. It’s not surprising, given the paucity of options for Spanish-language news.
The main news outlets for Oakland’s Latino immigrants are the two Spanish-language commercial television stations: Univision and Telemundo. But with each putting out daily half-hour newscasts to cover a 9-county metropolitan area, there’s only so much local news they can squeeze in. For residents of any one of the Bay Area’s more than 100 municipalities, that leaves a whole lot of local news uncovered.
So for many residents, simply more local news was their number one desire. Others were more explicit in what they want to see more of:
“Sometimes they don’t give complete information. They hide some of it. So, [they should give us] more information.”
“More relevant information, and less irrelevant information.”
“[They should] get more involved in the problems of the community.”
A common request was more details in the news that is provided. As one church pastor described Spanish-language news, “It’s like they give headlines, but nothing more.” A community advocate said that she sometimes goes to the trouble of translating articles from English-language newspapers into Spanish so that her monolingual Spanish-speaking peers have a more comprehensive understanding of policy proposals than they can find in Spanish-language newscasts.
#2: Less News that Sparks Fear
“It’s like the media silences people instead of giving them a voice,” said community organizer, Emma Paulino, explaining that the news broadcasts one negative story after another without equipping viewers with information they can use to take action.
Numerous residents we spoke to say they have begun to avoid the news because it leaves them feeling afraid and disempowered. As a woman stated during a group workshop, “The news gives information that causes panic.”
In fact, a few community advocates voiced their concern about the potential negative impact that the news can have on the immigrants they work with. “Sometimes I think it does more harm than good to get news from the Spanish-language news services there are,” said Lourdes Martinez of Mujeres Unidas y Activas. She explained that news stories usually focus on immigrants as victims, while “the more important piece of the story is missing, such as who is resisting, and how to take action.”
#3: News & Information They Can Use
As Lourdes articulated, the answer to negative news is not necessarily positive news, but empowering news — resources or information that residents can use to make decisions or take action.
In group workshops, participants discussed the issues that were most important to them. Education, health, housing, employment, and illegal dumping were always at the top of that list. Participants said they wanted resources and information that would allow them to better engage on those issues. Such information could include detailed outlines of policy proposals, guidance on how to sign their children up for summer classes, and what to do if they are injured at work. More than just, “what happened?” they want the local media to address, “what can we do about it?”
#4: News They Can Trust
Trust — or lack thereof — was a common theme in discussions about existing news outlets. Several survey respondents called the news “amarilla,” or sensationalistic “yellow journalism.” Many attributed that to the fact that the two main Spanish-language outlets are commercial, and are thus more concerned with attracting viewers and ad revenue than with providing information as a public service, or with even getting their facts right.
Two community organizers recalled experiences of the news media sharing false information, such as when someone who presented himself as a lawyer on TV gave incorrect information about immigration policy.
These are some answers we received in response to the question, “How you would change the local news media?”:
“[I wish] they were more realistic and that they would focus more on the facts and not on lies.”
“[I wish] they were more truthful!”
“It’s not very useful. It’s more entertainment.”
“You know it’s not real information.”
#5: Opportunities to Share their Stories
Despite the growth of Oakland’s Latino immigrant community over the past decade, there are few opportunities for them to exert their voices in local civic conversations. Local English-language news outlets rarely cover this community — some lack Spanish speakers in their newsrooms — and Univision and Telemundo are based elsewhere in the Bay Area. Furthermore, many public forums organized to provide a space for residents to voice their concerns fail to include Latino immigrants.
One thing residents told us they want is for their stories, their perspectives and concerns, to cross linguistic divides and reach power-brokers and their English-speaking neighbors. “We know what our issues are,” one community member told me. “What we want is for our stories to go farther.”
You can read the entire report, “An Information Needs Assessment of Oakland’s Latino Immigrant Community” by following this link. This is the third in a series documenting El Tímpano’s efforts to map the information needs of Oakland’s Latino immigrants. Click here for the first post on the climate of fear, misinformation and mistrust in media that we found in initial conversations with community leaders, and here to learn about our 9-month listening process.
