Invisible Ink: Media Representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders

Invisible Ink finds that news coverage of Asian Americans was so sparse, it was as if it was written in invisible ink. Given the power of the media to shape the perceptions and decisions of philanthropy, policy makers, and other key decision makers, it is critical for news media to accurately and robustly include AAPI people in the course of covering the full spectrum of issues, including economic inequality. Coverage reinforced underlying themes of the model minority myth and news coverage focused on Pacific Islanders was virtually non-existent. In particular, for articles related to economic inequality and that mention at least one racial group, the report notes:Less than a third of this set of news articles mention Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders.Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are the explicit focus of these articles less than 4 percent of the time.Only 2 percent of these news media articles feature disparities in Asian American or Pacific Islander communities.Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are included in the data cited in these articles only slightly more than a quarter of the time.In some cases, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were excluded from the data in these news articles because the original data sources did not include AAPI people. However, newsrooms omitted AAPI data 37 percent of the time, even when the data were available