When there are Latinos in front of and behind the camera, streaming services can create content that is more successful in garnering a larger share of Latino and general audiences, according to the latest Nielsen report looking at Hispanic audiences.
“This, to me, is almost like a blueprint that the media companies and the people who are getting the green light and getting the content can look at when they’re making decisions,” Stacie de Armas, senior vice president of diversity insights and intelligence at NBC Nielsen. News on Thursday.
But a report from the Government Accountability Office released Wednesday seems to suggest that media companies may not be doing enough to foster Latino talent that could help them improve content while growing their audiences.
Latinos are underrepresented in the media industry workforce across film, radio, television, newspapers and digital platforms, according to the report.
In 2019, the most recent year for which American Community Survey data is available, about 12% of all media industry workers were Latino, a rate that has remained virtually unchanged since 2010, when Latino media workers made up 11% of the industry.
Latinos make up 19% of the nation’s population, nearly 1 in 5 Americans, and 18% of workers outside the media industry.
The largest percentage of Hispanic media industry workers were employed in service worker positions (19%)—which include catering, cleaning, and personal and security services, according to the most recent available reports submitted by media companies. at the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between 2014 and 2018.
In positions that can influence the content that audiences consume, Latinos were significantly underrepresented: They made up just 7% of media industry professional positions such as actors, producers, directors, writers, reporters, and editors.
They made up the same number, 7%, of first- or middle-level managers and only 4% of all senior managers and media executives.
The Nielsen report, released last month, looked at the 530 most-televised programs last year and found that 92% of them had no Hispanic representation in key roles such as executive producer, writer, director, creator or host.
Latinos seem to be taking notice, with 41% reporting that they believe there isn’t enough content representing them. When Latinos saw themselves represented in content, they thought “it was inaccurate” most of the time, de Armas said.
Previous reports from the GAO, Nielsen and the University of California, Los Angeles have addressed Latino underrepresentation on screen and how it relates to marginal representation behind the camera.
According to the GAO report, barriers preventing Latinos from entering the industry include limited access to professional networks, difficulty meeting union membership requirements and a lack of diversity among decision makers, as well as financial and educational barriers.
Media company mergers and consolidations could potentially close off more opportunities for Latinos seeking to enter the media industry, Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, one of several members of Congress who asked the GAO to study the issue. event.
“You go from two open doors to one,” Castro said after noting that Latino-led storylines like the TV show Gordita Chronicles and the movie Batgirl, starring Dominican American actress Leslie Grace, became collateral damage after cancelled. as a result of the recent merger of WarnerMedia and Discovery Inc.
“You go from having an opportunity at two companies to having an opportunity at one company that now has a lot more influence and power over content creators and others,” Castro said.
Who is in front of and behind the camera
Castro said the lack of diversity in the media workforce “has led to those skewed and unequal portrayals that then create a stigma for an entire community.”
In Viva Hollywood: The Legacy of Latino and Hispanic Artists in American Film, film historian Luis Reyes wrote that while the film industry has created some employment opportunities for many Latinos, “racism and ignorance have made it difficult for them to achieve stellar heights. in industry”.
The new book shows how Latinos have been involved in the film industry since its inception and focuses on the Latinos who had a hand in creating the groundbreaking special effects for the iconic 1933 film King Kong and the set design for Citizen Kane in 1941.
Many Hispanic actors, like others in the early Hollywood era, changed their names to suit the wishes of movie studios and have more career opportunities, “not because they were ashamed of their heritage or anything like that,” Reyes told NBC News. .
But Latino representation on screen has often been a reflection of American perceptions of Latino communities—for better and for worse.
In the early years of Hollywood, many actresses were typecast as the bandido, the Latina mistress, the sultry señorita and other stereotypical characters often found in literature, Reyes said: “Movies just put a face on them.”
Versions of these stereotypes have continued to persist in Hollywood, either through the hypersexualization of Latinos or by disproportionately portraying Latino men as criminals.
Problems with accurate representation of Latin Americans increased in the 1940s when the US government created a film division to persuade American filmmakers to make films with Latin American themes. But some filmmakers “didn’t make films about Latin America. They made films about Americans, going down to Latin America,” Reyes said. While the era provided employment opportunities for Latino talent, such as Carmen Miranda and Cesar Romero, it did little to promote authentic Hispanic portrayals on screen.
A significant number of Latin stars emerged between 1945 and 1965 – such as Ricardo Montalbán, Anthony Quinn, Rita Moreno and Raquel Welch – paving the way for more recent Latin stars such as Salma Hayek, Andy Garcia, Jennifer Lopez, Zoe Saldana and Benicio comes out Toro.
“Today we see the fruits of all the work that came before,” Reyes said, pointing to the work of current Latino actors like Ana de Armas, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal and Ariana DeBose, as well as Latino directors like Robert. Rodriguez and Patricia Cardoso, among others.
But there is still work to be done, he added.
The Nielsen report offers a window of opportunity, finding that 42% of America’s most-watched broadcast programs last year had Latino involvement in front of or behind the camera, de Armas said.
The report also found that the more this type of Latino representation continues, the more likely the content produced will be culturally relevant and resonate with Hispanic viewers.
“Do we have the golden touch?” de Armas said. “We do.”
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CORRECTION (October 7, 2022, 4:21 pm): A caption in an earlier version of this article incorrectly identified a Latino actor. Photo shows Anthony Quinn, not Ricardo Montalbán.
