ETHNIC PRESS COVERS THE RACE WITH GUSTO
By Fernanda Santos
New York Times
Jan 31 2008
NY
Will Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s endorsement of Senator Barack Obama
sway Irish-Americans? What about The Irish Voice’s endorsement of
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? Could Mr. Obama become a household name
among Chinese-American voters? Will American relations with Russia
and Pakistan affect immigrant voters here? And can any Republican
contender distance himself from Bush administration policies in the
eyes of Arab-Americans?
These questions have not figured high – or figured at all – on
televised debates and in the mainstream media coverage of the 2008
presidential campaign. But they are being asked in New York City,
which is not only a media capital, but also the ethnic media capital,
host to about 200 periodicals and broadcast outlets in dozens of
languages – including Bengali, Tagalog, Dari, Latvian, Yiddish,
Malayalam and Hungarian.
These ethnic media outlets have been intensely attentive to the
presidential competition, not only because it is the most competitive
presidential race in decades, but also because American foreign
policy and immigration reform are also headline issues that resonate
with their audiences. With an eye cast here and another overseas,
a group of ethnic media reporters participated in a radio project
called Feet in Two Worlds and went to New Hampshire last month to
cover the primaries. City Room interviewed five of those journalists
as well as other ethnic media journalists on how the campaign is
being covered in their communities.
Perhaps the most impressive effort is being put out by the
Spanish-language ImpreMedia chain, which was freshly formed during
the last campaign cycle from a merger and now expanded to a combined
circulation of 10 million weekly. This election cycle, the media chain
is embedding six reporters with various campaigns, covering Super
Tuesday from seven battleground states, and doing its own extensive
polling of Hispanic voters.
"In the history of ethnic media, there has been no comparable
level of coverage as what we are providing for this election," said
Alberto Vourvoulias Bush, editor of El Diario/La Prensa, one of the
publications in the 11-newspaper chain.
Arguably, ImpreMedia is devoting more resources to the election than
many mainstream English publications. In December, ImpreMedia conducted
a poll of Hispanic voters and identified the war in Iraq, immigration
and the economy as the top issues. "Because of those three things,
we realized that sometime back this election would take place under
a heightened awareness and heightened interest," Mr.
Vourvoulias said. "We decided to commit to commit extra resources
to campaign coverage and to provide world class coverage of their
readers."
Among topics that the chain is paying close attention to: the drug
war in Mexico and the question of driver’s licenses for illegal
immigrants, which caused Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to stumble
in October, when she clarified her position. But above all, perhaps
the major concern in the ethnic press is immigration reform. "For us,
it’s not a border security or national security issue. It’s a daily
life issue," Mr. Vourvoulias said.
Taisheng Won, editor in chief of the Chinese-language World Journal,
which has a circulation of 70,000 in the New York metropolitan region
and 300,000 nationwide, agreed. "Immigration is our priority, our top
concern," he said. He said the newspaper was following candidates’
position on immigration policy very closely. "If they say something on
the immigration issue, we will take it from A.P., Reuters or A.F.P.,"
he said, referring to The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse,
two leading wire services.
Kazi Shamsul Hoque, the editor of Akhon Samoy, a Bangladeshi newspaper
based in New York City, said his readers, many who are undocumented,
are following the candidates closely on the issue. "We actually
studied their positions on the Internet," he said. "We are listening
to their speeches. We are in favor of giving some kind of legality
to undocumented people."
As Mr. Hoque’s comments suggest, the line between news coverage
and editorial advocacy is not always sharply drawn in the immigrant
press. And not all ethnic news outlets necessarily favor leniency
for undocumented workers.
Many Armenian-Americans are second- or fourth-generation, and thus,
"Armenians generally vote just like any Americans," said Chris Zakian,
the managing editor of the English-language Armenian Reporter. (In
fact, Mark Krikorian, the head of the Center for Immigration Studies,
a research organization that promotes stricter immigration enforcement,
is of Armenian descent.) But one issue that resonates with the
Armenian-American community is the long-running fight to obtain
Congressional recognition of the Armenian genocide in Turkey, which
many presidential candidates have take positions on – whatever that
may mean later on. "They are reassuring, friendly and certainly
encouraging, but I think Armenians has become skeptical of the
translation of a candidate policy later on," Mr. Zakian said.
Foreign policy positions can take on an stronger resonance for ethnic
communities that still maintain ties to home. For example, when Mr.
Obama said in a major foreign policy speech in August that he would
take a harder stance on Pakistan – and suggested a willingness to
bomb the country – it became the lead story in the Pakistani press,
both overseas and locally.
"The moment he gave these remarks about Pakistan, it was reported
by the U.S. media and electronic media – those reports were picked
up immediately by Pakistani media in Pakistan," said Mohsin Zaheer,
editor of The Weekly Sada-e-Pakistan, a Pakistani periodical based
out of New York. Thanks to satellite television, those channels
were also broadcast back in the United States. "Those words spread
immediately. Within one hour, everyone knew," he said.
"After these remarks, we covered the reaction of the Pakistani
community," he said. "There was a demonstration outside a fund-raising
event of Barack Obama in Chicago. We got widespread coverage of these
demonstrations on our front page."
"The American policy has immediate consequences on the very existence
of the Arab and Muslim community," said Mohrez El Hussini, publisher
of Al-Manassah Al-Arabeyah, an Arabic language publication based in
New Jersey.
"The community that are most concerned with the war on terror is not
the Chinese or the Greeks; it’s the Middle Easterners," said Antoine
Faisal, the publisher of Aramaica, an Arab-language biweekly with a
circulation of 30,000. "Even though we are still in the primaries,
many from our community are trying to tune in to find out what kind
of message,what kind of communication are the candidates doing toward
the Arab world."
Fairly or not, Mrs. Clinton is strongly associated with the foreign
policies of her husband’s eight-year presidency in the minds of many
immigrants. That helped her draw the endorsement from The Irish Voice,
which noted she "was with her husband every step of the way during
his intervention in the Irish peace process, without which there
would never have been the successful resolution that we’re currently
witnessing in Northern Ireland."
And the Clinton administration’s support of Jean-Bertrand Aristide
to Haiti, to reclaim his presidency in 1994, is still remembered by
the Haitian immigrant community in New York. "Some of them are very
pro-Clinton and some of them are very anti-Clinton," said Ricot Dupuy,
the general manager of Radio Soleil, a Haitian radio station with
about 200,000 listeners. "The Aristide factor is the determining
factor for that."
And among other groups, Mrs. Clinton’s association with her president
is even more simple: name recognition.
"Americans are loyal to political parties. Chinese are not. They
vote for the candidate they know," said Lotus Chau, reporter for the
Chinese-language newspaper Sing Tao Daily. "Between Hillary Clinton
and Obama, they’ll definitely vote for Hillary Clinton." Why?
"Because she was first lady. And she went to China."
The Bush administration’s foreign policies will likely affect whichever
Republican candidate wins the nomination. The war on terror isi
"an exodus from the Republican Party to the Democratic Party" among
Arab-Americans, both Muslim and Christian, "and that has to do with
the guilt-by-association mentality that has taken hold in the past
years," said Mr. Faisal, publisher of Aramaica.
The feeling also permeates New York’s Pakistanis, who "feel as if
they have been unjustly victimized since 9/11," said Jehangir Khattak,
a contributor for the English-language newspapers Pakistan News, which
is published in New York, and Dawn, which is based in Pakistan. Because
of President Bush’s close support of the Pakistani president, Pervez
Musharraf, "the general consensus among the Pakistani communities of
this country is that if a Republican candidate is elected, there will
be more years of Musharraf, which means more years of an undemocratic
democracy," Mr. Khattak said.
Under the same notion, Russian-Americans are paying close attention to
what the candidates say about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia
and, for different reasons, about Israel, since many of the Russians
who live in New York are Jewish, said Ari Kagan, senior editor of
Vecherniy New York, a weekly Russian-language newspaper in Brooklyn.
"I recall in 2004 that one of the reasons the Russian community voted
for George Bush over John Kerry was that they perceived George Bush
as a much closer friend of Israel," he said. "But if the candidates
praise Putin, like Bush has done, they will not be very popular with
most of the Russians here."
Major issues in the race – like the Iraq war, the economy and health
care – are scrutinized through different prisms. The war in Iraq
has greater, more personal significance among Hispanics voters than
the overall population because of the large number of Latinos in the
armed forces, said Mr. Vourvoulias of El Diario/La Prensa. The poll
found that about half of Hispanic voters wanted the troops to come
back now and just under half knew someone who is serving in Iraq.
"This is an issue that affects Hispanics in a life and death sort of
way," he said.
The Haitian community pays especially close attention to the health
care policies, since many of them are among the 47 million uninsured
Americans, said Mr. Dupuy or Radio Soleil, the radio station.
And Russians are unhappy about how expensive the food imported from
Europe and sold in local stores has become since the dollar has
dropped in value against the euro, Vecherniy New York said.
One topic that unites nearly all the ethnic media outlets, no matter
what political outlook, is the importance of getting their audiences
to vote in the most contested American presidential election in
over a generation. And ethnic media outlets are playing a much more
service-oriented role in the lives of their audiences.
The Polish Daily News published a voter registration guide with dates,
addresses and Web sites, said Czeslaw Karkowski, its editor.
"We just inserted it into our newspaper."
The Korean Central Daily News has done a number of articles explaining
why they should vote on this primary and general election.
"Even a vote from immigrants can count," said Steve Chong, a reporter
there.
The immigration debates have helped galvanize the ethnic communities
around the election, Mr. Vourvoulias said. "It heightened awareness
of the political process and the importance of the political process."
Jennifer 8. Lee contributed reporting. Read more Primary Journal blog
entries from the New York region.
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