The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) released a report last week which shows that Latino-owned media outlets are low in numbers, with Latinos owning only 2.9% of full power commercial television stations.
“I commend the FCC for releasing this data, but it is a day late and a dollar short. The data alone does not account for the impacts that proposed rule changes would have on ownership by woman and people of color,” says Jessica Gonzalez, National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) Vice President of Policy and Legal Affairs. “If this data shows anything, it is that current media owners do not reflect the diversity of this country.”
Latinos are also poorly represented in radio-station ownership, owning only 2.7% of FM radio outlets and only 4.5% of AM radio stations. Ownership by women, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Native Americans are also low in number.
The report details that even though the minority population in this country is going up, their media participation is going down. Whites owned 69% of the country’s television stations in 2011, up from 64% in 2009. Whites also owned 95.2% of all commercial AM radio stations, up from 94.6% in 2009, and 81% of all commercial FM stations in 2011, up from 79.4% in 2009.
“Media diversity is such a low priority for the FCC that it took 13 years for the agency to issue a potentially accurate ownership count,” says Craig Aaron, Free Press President and CEO.
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