Content-Type: text/html Who Gets Named?: Nationality, Race and Gender in New York Times Photograph Cutlines, p. Who Gets Named?: Nationality, Race and Gender in New York Times Photograph Cutlines A Research Paper Submitted to the Visual Communication Division of the 1998 AEJMC National Convention Baltimore, Maryland by John Mark King, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Manship School of Mass Communication Louisiana State University Office address: 221 Journalism Building Manship School of Mass Communication Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 Home address: 40144 Autumn's End Ave. Prairieville, LA 70769-5152 Phones/e-mail: 504/622-1626 (home) 504/388-2216 (LSU) e-mail: [log in to unmask] Who Gets Named?: Nationality, Race and Gender in New York Times Photograph Cutlines A Research Paper Submitted to the Visual Communication Division of the 1998 AEJMC National Convention Baltimore, Maryland Who Gets Named?: Nationality, Race and Gender in New York Times Photograph Cutlines 75-word Abstract This research examined 986 New York Times images to assess the impact of nationality, race and gender on named individuals in cutlines. Chi-square tests, significant at less than .001, showed that Americans were named more often than non-Americans. Caucasians were named more often than Hispanics, Asians and Middle Easterners, but less often than people of African descent. Males were named more often than females. Two hypotheses were still supported after controlling for nine story types. Introduction/Literature Review A well-established practice in journalism is to view proximity as a strong news value, which often results in a bias toward covering events and issues close to the immediate community rather than issues far away from the community in which the newspaper is published, including news and information from other nations.[[1]] As a result, international stories consistently take up small percentages of the news hole.[[2]] Everette Dennis has chronicled historical, social, political and economic reasoning for these trends toward small amounts of foreign news in American newspapers as well.[[3]] One journalism and mass communication dean has noted that American newspapers seem to value stories featuring Americans over stories about people from other nations.[[4]] His observation would probably apply to many American newspapers. A British press baron once posted this notice in his newsroom: "One Englishman is a story. Ten Frenchmen is a story. One hundred Germans is a story. One thousand Indians is a story. Nothing ever happens in Chile." American journalists may think of themselves as more progressive than their English cousins on Fleet Street. But the motto could as easily have been posted on the wall of a U.S. newsroom.[[5]] In one of the few studies about international news photos, the researcher found that United States newspapers devote less space to foreign news photos than Canadian newspapers and that most international news photos in Canadian newspapers concerned U.S. news, while virtually none of the international news photos in U.S. newspapers concerned Canadian news.[[6]] In a study of more than 250,000 newspaper photographs published during a 53-year time span, Lester[[7]] found that coverage of minorities in American newspaper photos has increased steadily over the past 50 years, but that this was accompanied by an increase in stereotypical (crime, sports and entertainment) content categories. Research by the University of Southern California/New York University Women, Men and Media Project has consistently noted low frequencies of women as sources in newspaper stories.[[8]] In 1992, the researchers found that on front page stories of 20 newspapers, only 15 percent of the sources were women.[[9]] A national study by McGrath[[10]] found that newspaper readership by women is declining faster than readership by men. Fair[[11]] concluded that media images of African women tend to marginalize them and depict them as dependent on men. Social psychologists and historians have found that the practice of giving individuals names supports the idea that most cultures value names and that there are strong connections between and individual's name and his or her identity.[[12]] Names are also viewed as indicators of cultural and social ideologies for individuals and groups.[[13]] This line of research shows that most human beings value their names, and it could be reasonably argued that most people probably expect their names to appear when their images appear in the newspaper. Many newspaper editors and photographers have had the experience of a mother or father calling the newspaper office to ask why their child's name did not appear when they were sitting right beside the lead trumpet player or running right beside the star basketball player. Journalists understand that the lead trumpet player or basketball star was probably the central figure in the photograph, but parents often may not appreciate this. But, when individuals are central to the story or the point of the photograph, it is reasonable to assume they expect to be named. Are they named? Who gets named and who doesn't? These are the central points of this research. Research Questions/Hypotheses As noted in the literature review, it is clear that mass communication researchers have established that there are distortions of nationality, race and gender in newspapers. This has been primarily manifest in studies which show that international stories are not very common in newspapers published in the United States, that minorities are often subjects of crime, sports and entertainment stories and that women are largely underrepresented in news coverage. Visual communication has been part of this line of research, yet so far, no study has looked at effects of nationality, race and gender in newspaper photographs in the same study. Moreover, a study which examines the very core human value of being named or not in newspaper photograph cutlines has yet to be published. Studies which document frequency of appearance of people based on nationality, race and gender are important measures of media representation. However, an even more fundamental way of examining questions of media representation is to study how newspapers identify or do not identify people based on their nationality, race and gender when their images do appear in print. An important indicator of the value assigned to people who are subjects of newspaper photographs is whether their names appear in the cutlines which accompany the newspaper photographs containing their images. The idea of using naming of individuals in newspaper photograph cutlines as a dependent variable raises some worthwhile questions for researchers and journalists. Are Americans more likely to be named in newspaper photograph cutlines than people of other nations? Are people in newspaper photos with events or datelines inside the United States more likely to be named than people in newspaper photos with events or datelines outside the United States? Are Caucasians more likely to be named than people of other racial groups? Are men more likely to be named than women? How does story content influence these trends? Specifically, four hypotheses can be advanced to study these issues in a systematic, measurable, testable way. H1: Americans will be named more often in newspaper photograph cutlines than people of other nations. H2: Individuals appearing in photographs with datelines or events inside the United States will be named more often in newspaper photograph cutlines than individuals appearing in photographs with datelines or events outside the United States. H3: Caucasians will be named more often than people of other racial groups (people of African descent, Hispanics, Asians, Middle Easterners) in newspaper photograph cutlines. H4: Men will be named more often than women in newspaper photograph cutlines. Method To answer the research questions, a content analysis of two randomly constructed weeks of the New York Times was conducted. The New York Times was chosen because it is widely considered one of the most influential American newspapers with a significant national and international focus. The publication time period covered one year, Sept. 1, 1995- Aug. 31, 1996. The unit of analysis was any individual appearing in any photo which contained people published during the time period of the study. All story types were included in the study except for advertising content. All pages in the issues of the newspapers were examined. Two coders coded the photographs along several dimensions. First coders established whether the photos contained people or not. Then nationality (American or not), race (Caucasian, African descent, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Easterner) and gender (male, female) of people who appeared in the photographs were coded. Individuals who appeared in the background or who were not otherwise part of the central point of the photo were not included in the analysis. Multiple individuals appearing in the same photograph were coded separately. Nationality, race and gender were determined by appearance of the individual and/or textual cues in the cutlines and datelines. While this does present some methodological problems, most of the time people of other nations were identified in such a way that it was clear that they were from a nation other than the United States. For example, the cutline would identify an individual as a Somali woman or an Ethiopian child. Other variables were place of event or dateline (nation), story type (natural disaster, war/conflict, political/government, sports, entertainment/leisure, crime, religion, human interest/feature, environment, local news, obituaries, business, technology/science, health/medicine, other disaster (man-made/accidental), and fashion/product demo). An intercoder reliability test of 76 images published in 1994 showed 87-99 percent agreement for all categories between two coders, both graduate students in an accredited journalism and mass communication program. Results A total of 1,104 images of individuals and photos without people were examined. One hundred and 18 photos (10.7 percent) did not contain images of people and were eliminated from the analysis. A total of 986 images of people were published and included in the analysis. Images of 735 (74.5 percent) Americans were published and 249 (25.3 percent) images of non-Americans were published. Nationality could not be determined on two images (0.2 percent). The place of the event or dateline was dominated by United States locations; 686 (69.6 percent) of the images originated inside the United States. Table one shows the frequencies for all nations represented in the study. Table 1 Frequencies of images by place of event or dateline Place of Event/Dateline Frequency Percent United States 686 69.6 unstated 111 11.3 Canada 24 2.4 Bosnia/Serbia/Croatia 23 2.3 England 18 1.8 Russia 14 1.4 India 11 1.1 China 10 1 Egypt 8 0.8 Germany 7 0.7 Cuba 7 0.7 Australia 6 0.6 Chechyna 6 0.6 Japan 6 0.6 Israel 5 0.5 Italy 5 0.5 South Korea 5 0.5 Ethiopia 5 0.5 Phillipines 5 0.5 France 5 0.5 Mexico 4 0.4 Thailand 4 0.4 Brazil 2 0.2 Poland 2 0.2 Haiti 2 0.2 Ireland 1 0.1 South Africa 1 0.1 Pakistan 1 0.1 Denmark 1 0.1 Afghanistan 1 0.1 Totals 986 100 Note: N= 986. Caucasians were dominant in the images; 704 (71.4 percent) of people pictured were Caucasian; 158 (15.8 percent) were of African descent; 45 (4.6 percent) were Middle Eastern; 40 (4.1) percent were Asian and 37 (3.8 percent) were Hispanic. Race could not be identified in four (.04 percent) of the images. Images of males (656, 66.5 percent) were more prevalent than images of women (312, 31.6 percent). Gender could not be determined for 18 (1.8 percent) of the images. Of the 986 images analyzed, 529 (53.7) contained individuals who were listed by name in the cutline. Almost half (457, 46.3 percent) were not named. Crosstabulations and Chi-square analyses were performed to test the hypotheses among the images of people. The significance level was set at .05. Almost all hypotheses were supported by the Pearson Chi-square analysis of statistical significance. H1 was supported. Americans were named more than twice as often as people of other nations in newspaper photograph cutlines as indicated in Table 2. Table 2: Chi-square analysis of nationality by naming in newspaper photograph cutlines Nationality Not named Named non-American 191 (76.7 %) 58 (23.3 %) American 264 (35.9 %) 471 (64.1 %) Total 455 (46.2%) 529 (53.8%) Note. N= 984, Chi-square= 124.48, p= <.001 H2 was supported. Individuals appearing in photographs with datelines or events inside the United States were named more often than individuals appearing in photographs with datelines or events outside the United States. An initial crosstabulation revealed 45 cells with too few frequencies to perform a chi-square analysis, so locations were collapsed into regions. Table 3 shows that among locations or datelines that were listed, only Americans were more often named than not named in newspaper photograph cutlines. People in locations in Western Europe were the next group most often named, followed by people in locations in Mexico/South America and the Caribbean. People in other regions were named in less than 30 percent of the images. Table 3: Chi-square of place of event or dateline by naming in newspaper cutlines Place of Event/Dateline Not named Named United States/Canada 290 (40.8 %) 420 (59.2%) unstated 54 (48.6%) 57 (51.4%) Western Europe 36 (60 %) 24 (40%) Mexico/South America/Caribbean 10 (66.7%) 5 (33.3%) Asia/Australia 34 (70.8%) 14 (29.2%) Russia/Eastern Europe/Republics 18 (78.3%) 5 (21.7 %) Africa/Middle East 15 (78.9%) 4 (21.1%) Totals 457 (46.3%) 529 (53.7%) N= 986, Chi-Square= 44.98, p= <.001 H3 was supported with one exception. People of African descent were named more often than any other racial group. Caucasians were named more often than Asians, Hispanics and Middle Easterners. Asians were named the least often. Table 4 shows the results of the analysis. Table 4: Chi-square of race by naming in newspaper photograph cutlines Race Not named Named African descent 58 (37.2%) 98 (62.8%) Caucasian 317 (45%) 387 (55%) Hispanic 19 (51.4%) 18 (48.6%) Middle Eastern 31 (68.9%) 14 (31.1%) Asian 29 (72.5 %) 11 (27.5%) Totals 454 (46.2%) 528 (53.8%) Note. N= 982, Chi-square= 26.34, p= <.001 H4 was also supported. Men were named more often than women in newspaper photograph cutlines as Table 5 indicates. Table 5: Chi-square of gender by naming in newspaper photograph cutlines Gender Not named Named Male 271 (41.3%) 385 (58.7%) Female 168 (53.8%) 144 (46.3%) Totals 439 (45.4 %) 529 (54.6%) Note. N= 968, Chi-square= 13.41, p= <.001 Discussion and Exploratory Research This study supports the hypotheses advanced; all but one was highly significant at less than .001. Americans were more than twice as likely as non-Americans to be named in photograph cutlines. Photographs covering events or with datelines in the United States were much more likely to include names than photographs of events or with datelines outside the United States. With the exception of people of African descent, Caucasians were much more likely to be named than people of other racial groups. Men were much more likely to be named than women. What are possible explanations for these findings? One possibility is that certain story types might naturally exclude names because of difficulty in obtaining identification of individuals or for other reasons. To test for this possibility that story type may have an impact on the hypotheses, an exploratory Chi-square analysis of story type and whether individuals were named or not was performed. Some categories from the original list were collapsed to enable statistical analysis due to empty cells. Results indicated some differences among story types as shown in Table 6. As expected, disaster stories and war/conflict stories had the highest incidence of not naming individuals. Among the remaining categories, features/human interest and local news were the only categories with less than 50 percent of the individuals named. Table 6: Chi-square of story type by naming in newspaper photograph cutlines Story Type Not named Named Business 22 (23.2%) 73 (76.8%) Entertainment 63 (28%) 162 (72%) Crime 17 (35.4%) 31 (64.6%) Sports 73 (42%) 101 (58%) Politics/Government 54 (47.8%) 59 (52.2%) Features/Human Interest 71 (58.7%) 50 (41.3%) Local News 67 (66.3%) 34 (33.7%) War/Conflict 61 (81.3%) 14 (18.7%) Disasters 29 (85.3%) 5 (14.7%) Totals 457 (46.3%) 529 (53.7%) Note: N=986, Chi-square= 136.04, p= <.001 To further examine the proposition that story type might influence the results of the hypothesis testing, exploratory crosstabulations and Chi-squares (where possible) with each story type as control variables were performed for each of the four hypotheses. This resulted in several dozen additional crosstabulations and Chi-Squares which were somewhat difficult to interpret due to many cells with frequencies too small to run the significance analyses. However it appears that across some story types the findings from the hypotheses testing still held true. Table 7 shows that Americans in photographs were named more often than non-Americans across six story types including sports, entertainment, features, local news and business, all significant at less than .01 and politics/government, significant at less than .05. Disaster stories and war/conflict stories featured only Americans, so there was no way to compare with non-Americans on those types of stories. There were no significant differences on naming among crime stories. Cells with small frequencies should be interpreted with caution of course, but it appears that the hypothesis that Americans would be named more often than non-Americans in newspaper cutlines was still supported after controlling for story type. Table 7: Chi-squares of story type by naming by nationality in newspaper cutlines Story type Nationality Not named Named Chi-square p Disasters non-American 0 0 American 29 (85.3%) 5 (14.7%) War/Conflict non-American 0 0 American 60 (81.1 %) 14 (18.9%) Politics/Gov't non-American 6 (85.7%) 1 (14.3%) American 48 (45.3%) 58 (54.7%) 4.3 <.05 Sports non-American 55 (87.3%) 8 (12.7%) American 18 (16.2%) 93 (83.8%) 83.39 <.001 Entertainment non-American 51 (54.8%) 42 (45.2%) American 12 (9.1%) 120 (90.9%) 56.64 <.001 Crime non-American 1 (100%) 0 American 16 (34%) 31 (66%) Features non-American 44 (97.8%) 1 (2.2%) American 26 (34.7%) 49 (65.3%) 46.09 <.001 Local news non-American 18 (100%) 0 American 49 (59.9%) 34 (41 %) 11.12 <.001 Business non-American 16 (72.7%) 6 (27.3%) American 6 (8.2%) 67 (91.8%) 39.53 <.001 Note. N= 986. Frequencies were too small in numerous cells to accurately test the influence of story types on whether individuals in photos with events or datelines inside the United States were named more often than individuals in photos with events or datelines in nations and regions outside the United States. Therefore, categories were collapsed to include events or datelines outside the United States/Canada and inside the United States/Canada. Table 8 shows that individuals in photographs with events or datelines inside the United States/Canada were named more often than individuals in photographs with events or datelines outside the United States/Canada when the stories were about politics/government, sports and features. There were not significant differences between the two groups on the other story types, suggesting that story type may have some impact on naming by location and lending weaker support for the original hypothesis. Table 8: Chi-squares of story type by naming by location in newspaper cutlines Story type Location Not named Named Chi-square p Disasters outside U.S./Canada 15 (93.8%) 1 (6.3%) inside U.S./Canada 14 (77.8%) 4 (22.2%) War/Conflict outside U.S./Canada 49 (79%) 13 (21%) inside U.S./Canada 12 (92.3%) 1 (7.7%) Politics/Gov't outside U.S./Canada 25 (58.1%) 18 (41.9%) inside U.S./Canada 29 (41.4%) 41 (58.6%) 2.98 <.05 Sports outside U.S./Canada 18 (66.7%) 9 (33.3%) inside U.S./Canada 55 (37.4%) 92 (62.6%) 8.02 <.01 Entertainment outside U.S./Canada 10 (21.7%) 36 (78.3%) inside U.S./Canada 53 (29.6 %) 126 (70.4%) Crime outside U.S./Canada 2 (28.6%) 5 (71.4%) inside U.S./Canada 15 (36.6%) 26 (63.4%) Features outside U.S./Canada 46 (73%) 17 (27%) inside U.S./Canada 25 (43.1%) 33 (56.9%) 11.14 <.001 Local news outside U.S./Canada 0 0 inside U.S./Canada 67 (66.3%) 34 (33.7%) Business outside U.S./Canada 2 (16.7%) 10 (83.3%) inside U.S./Canada 20 (24.1%) 63 (75.9%) Note. N= 986. People of African descent were named more often than individuals of other racial groups across four story groups including sports (p= <.01), entertainment (p= <.001), crime (p=<.05) and features (<.05). Three of these categories (sports, entertainment and crime) represent stereotypical story types for people of African descent and should not be viewed as evidence of achievement. There were no significant differences among the other story types, primarily due to small cell frequencies. However, it is interesting to note that only one person of African descent, two Asians and two Hispanics showed up in business photographs, while 69 Caucasians were featured in such images. Several low cell frequencies on this variable made statistical inference impossible, so race categories were collapsed into two categories, non-Caucasian and Caucasian. Table 9 summarizes these chi-square tests. Caucasians were named more often than non-Caucasians on stories about war/conflict and local news, but less often than non-Caucasians on sports and entertainment stories. These findings show that story type may have an influence and that the hypothesis that Caucasians would be named more than any other racial group is weakened. However, this may still be largely due to the fact that non-Caucasians were named more often on sports and entertainment stories. Table 9: Chi-squares of story type by naming by race in newspaper photograph cutlines Story type Race Not named Named Chi-square p Disasters non-Caucasian 11 (91.7%) 1 (8.3%) Caucasian 18 (81.8%) 4 (18.2%) War/Conflict non-Caucasian 27 (93.1%) 2 (6.9%) Caucasian 32 (72.7%) 12 (27.3%) 4.68 <.05 Politics/Gov't non-Caucasian 18 (50%) 18 (50%) Caucasian 36 (46.8%) 41 (53.2%) Sports non-Caucasian 20 (29.9%) 47 (70.1%) Caucasian 53 (49.5%) 54 (50.5%) 6.55 <.01 Entertainment non-Caucasian 6 (16.2%) 31 (83.8%) Caucasian 57 (30.5%) 130 (69.5%) 3.11 <.05 Crime non-Caucasian 5 (27.8%) 13 (72.2%) Caucasian 12 (40%) 18 (60%) Features non-Caucasian 21 (55.3%) 17 (44.7%) Caucasian 49 (59.8%) 33 (40.2%) Local news non-Caucasian 28 (77.8%) 8 (22.2%) Caucasian 39 (60%) 26 (60%) 3.28 <.05 Business non-Caucasian 1 (20%) 4 (80%) Caucasian 21 (23.3%) 69 (76.7%) Note. N= 982. Males were named more often than women in five story types including politics/gov't, sports, features, local news and business. Women were named more often than men in association with crime stories. Table 10 shows that the hypothesis that men would be named more often than women in photograph cutlines was still supported after controlling for story type. Table 10: Chi-squares of story type by naming by gender in cutlines Story type Gender Not named Named Chi-square p Disasters Female 12 (85.6%) 2 (14.3%) Male 11 (76.6%) 3 (21.4 %) War/Conflict Female 17 (89.5%) 2 (10.5%) Male 38 (76 %) 12 (24%) Politics/Gov't Female 21 (61.8%) 13 (38.2%) Male 33 (41.8%) 46 (58.2%) 3.81 <.05 Sports Female 11 (64.7%) 6 (35.3%) Male 62 (39.5%) 95 (60.5%) 4 <.05 Entertainment Female 21 (24.1%) 66 (62.6%) Male 42 (30.4%) 96 (69.6%) Crime Female 1 (8.3%) 11 (91.7%) Male 16 (44.4%) 20 (55.6%) 5.13 <.05 Features Female 48 (66.7%) 24 (33.3%) Male 17 (39.5%) 26 (60.5%) 8.06 <.01 Local news Female 27 (90.0%) 3 (10%) Male 40 (56.3%) 31 (43.7%) 10.7 <.001 Business Female 10 (37%) 17 (63%) Male 12 (17.6%) 56 (82.4%) 4.08 <.05 Note. N= 968. Overall, two of the hypotheses remained strong after the exploratory research was performed. Americans were named more often than non-Americans and men were named more often than women after controlling for story type. The other two hypotheses were weakened by exploration of the impact of story type. It appears that whether a photograph with a dateline or was covering an issue inside the United States or outside the United States was not a strong predictor of naming when story type was controlled. Similarly, race did not appear to have a strong impact, but this may be due to stereotypical coverage of people of African descent. Clearly, images of people of other races (Asians, Hispanics and Middle Easterners) were not very common. These findings suggest that photojournalists, photo editors or editors at the New York Times or their sources for these images may not be equally identifying people of other nations and women in cutlines as measured by the practice of naming or not naming individuals central to the visual story in photograph cutlines. It is understandable that in professional journalistic practice that sometimes on some story categories identification of individuals by name is impossible to obtain. Indeed, in disaster stories and war/conflict stories, this study found that a large majority of individuals were not named. However, the exploratory analysis also showed that Caucasians were more likely to be named than Asians, Hispanics and Middle Easterners in association with such story categories. Males were more likely than women to be named in both story categories as well. This and other findings in the study suggest some cultural bias. If journalists seek to be more diverse in coverage of news and information, naming individuals of all nationalities, races and genders whenever possible is an obvious place to begin. Since statistically significant findings were supported by this study, visual communication researchers should broaden research in this area by conducting studies of wider scope for improved generalizability. Perhaps an expanded study of a larger number of United States newspapers and international newspapers would bring the research to a higher level of abstraction and generalizability. Endnotes [1] [1] [] Jack Fuller, News Values: Ideas for an Information Age, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, 1996. [2] [2] [] Daniel Riffe, et. al., The Shrinking Foreign Newshole of the New York Times. Newspaper Research Journal, Summer 1994, pp. 74-88. [3] [3] [] Everette Dennis, ed., Global News After the War. Media Studies Journal, Fall 1993. [4] [4] [] John M. Hamilton and George A. Krimsky, Hold the Press: The Inside Story on Newspapers. Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. [5] [5] [] Hamilton and Krimsky, op. cit., pp. 70-71. [6] [6] [] Roy E. Blackwood, International News Photos in U.S. and Canadian Papers. Journalism Quarterly, Spring 1987, pp. 195-199. [7] [7] [] Paul Martin Lester, African-American Photo Coverage in Four U.S. Newspapers, 1937-1990. Journalism Quarterly, Summer 1994, pp. 380-394. [8] [8] [] Karen Schmidt and Colleen Collins, Showdown at Gender Gap. American Journalism Review, July-August, 1993, pp. 39-42. [9] [9] [] Debra Gersh, Women Still Underrepresented. Editor & Publisher, May 15, 1993, pp. 20-21. [10] [10] [] Kristin McGrath, Women and Newspapers. Newspaper Research Journal, Spring 1993, pp. 95-109. [11] [11] [] Jo Ellen Fair, The Body Politic, the Bodies of Women, and the Politics of Famine in U.S. Television Coverage of Famine in the Horn of Africa. Journalism & Mass Communication Monographs, August 1996. [12] [12] [] Rachel Dinur, Benjamin Beir-Hallahmi and John E. Hoffman, First Names as Identity Stereotypes. Journal of Social Psychology, April 1996, pp.191-200. [13] [13] [] Gloria L. Main, Naming Children in Early New England. Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Summer 1996, pp. 1-26.