Abstract EN:

For a long time African American leaders have been pointing out the under-coverage and misrepresentation of black citizens in the news media. In 1968, the Kerner report echoed their criticism, declaring that the media were depicting a world almost totally white with a white perspective, and encouraged them to make integration a reality in both their content and personnel. This study, which fits into the ongoing debate on the representation of minorities in the media, focuses on one magazine, Time, one of the most influential in American mainstream media. It seeks to find if the place and representation Time has given to and of the black community have evolved to become more prominent and even-handed after the 1960's. In the process, it inquires whether or not the integration of African American journalists at Time has helped to change either the frequency of the articles on Blacks or their image. The foundations of this research lay on an in-depth content analysis based on the notion of space and on sampling; more than 600 articles were analyzed in a computer file specially devised for the study. The findings suggest that the visibility of Blacks in Time has not steadily increased after the Kerner report and the integration of black journalists. Three different periods emerged from the data: 1965-1971, 1972-1988, and 1989-1995. The detailed analysis of these periods, bolstered by in-person interviews of Time journalists, reveals major evolutions in the visibility of black citizens and examines the extent of the influence of the few black journalists at Time who have contributed toward communicating to a mainly white audience what it is to be black in the United States.