Race and media in America

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Media Trends

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Axios Latino

Efforts to bring more diversity to media are no longer just a moral mission but a business imperative driven by the transformation of  U.S. demographics. 

Why it matters:  If newsrooms and studios were more inclusive, they could better address falsehoods in a society blighted by racial stereotyping, misinformation and distrust in institutions. 

Driving the news: A new study from The Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) and National Research Group finds that a vast majority of Black women are looking for more complex portrayals of themselves onscreen. 

Black women, the study found, overwhelmingly feel as though they are depicted via stories about Black pain and struggle, instead of joy and success.

If there was more diversity behind the scenes among editors, writers and stylists, Black women say they would be better represented onscreen, said Cindi Smith, VP of diversity, equity & inclusion at National Research Group.

"We want to make sure that on the business aspect of things, we are understanding what matters to our consumers," said Scott Garner, head of research at OWN. 

In newsrooms, the urgency to address shortcomings around equity in coverage has sent hiring managers scrambling to add editorial positions and products that specialize in coverage of race.  

All of the major broadcast news networks now have divisions dedicated to covering issues around race. Several major media companies have replaced top editors with people of color in the past year. 

In Hollywood, the business imperative has driven studios and governing bodies such as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to make some changes, although data shows the industry has a long way to go.  

Following the nationwide Black Lives Matters protests last year, the academy said films vying for Oscars would need to hit new diversity requirements. 

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association added six Black members last month following a backlash over the lack of diversity in its ranks.

A McKinsey study earlier this year found that the entertainment industry would bring in an additional $10 billion if it were to address racial inequities in  film and TV.

Yes, but: Despite increased awareness of the issue, there's no clear direction in terms of execution to reach racial and gender parity in the media. 

While dozens of newsrooms have introduced new diversity benchmarks in the past year, few have committed to frequent updates on how they're tracking.

Ad agencies and corporations responsible for allocating billions of marketing dollars that sustain media companies have begun making pledges to support more Black-owned media, but measuring media buys can be challenging, given that smaller upstarts are often undercounted by big vendors. 

By the numbers: Gonzalo Del Fa, president of the multicultural division at GroupM, one of the largest global ad agencies, told Axios the company estimates that less than .05% of all media buys goes to minority-owned media. GroupM now has 50 clients that have pledged to spend at least 2%. 

The past year has highlighted the systemic barriers that keep legacy news and entertainment media companies from reaching diversity benchmarks as quickly as more nimble startups. 

Newsrooms around the country are unionizing at a record pace, often citing a lack of diversity initiatives from corporate managers. But for years unions at legacy companies protected senior-level staff, who tended to be white, while newer Black and Latino employees' jobs were less secure. 

The bottom line: Media companies can no longer ignore the issue of diversity.

The U.S. Census Bureau said in August the 2020 census found the nation's population identified as more multiracial and diverse than ever before. That was driven by Latino growth and more options for identification.

Yet, just 5% of lead actors in films and 2.9% in all new and returning television and streaming shows were Latino in 2020, according to a report from the nonprofit research firm Latino Donor Collaborative. Meanwhile, Latinos bought nearly 30% of tickets sold.

1. Our warped reality

Deep Dive: Hard Truths - Media

Efforts to bring more diversity to media are no longer just a moral mission but a business imperative driven by the transformation of U.S. demographics. Why it matters: If newsrooms and studios were more inclusive, they could better address falsehoods in a society blighted by racial stereotyping, misinformation and distrust in institutions.

President Biden has made the COVID-19 crisis and a post-Trump return to national unity and traditional democratic ideals his top priorities. From vaccinations to stimulus to schools, Biden is seeking bipartisan compromise while showing a willingness to use executive authority and bare Democratic majorities in the U.S. House and Senate to implement his policies. Republican leaders are navigating deep party divisions over if and how to move beyond former President Trump.

Politics & Policy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Data: Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY; Note: Partial list based on CUNY's State of Latino News Media report (2019) and State of Black Media report (2020). Map: Sara Wise/Axios

Ethnic news outlets have been filling a void in local news, and serving up coverage that seeks to rectify journalistic bias in story selection and how news is framed.

Why it matters: The spread of "news deserts" — areas where local newspapers have folded and communities have no coverage — has endangered the critical role the press plays in disseminating accurate news and empowering the public in a democracy.

Many issues have caused news deserts, including the economic collapse of newspapers and a lack of digital access to online news, says Penelope Muse Abernathy, visiting professor at Northwestern Medill School of Journalism.

But the problem is not just in lack of coverage of certain regions but of entire communities of people and neighborhoods that have been ignored or only reported on when something (usually bad) happens there, says Mukhtar M. Ibrahim, editor and executive director of the Sahan Journal.

Systemic racism has played a role in the past, with prominent news organizations controlling the narrative, says Cheryl Thompson-Morton, director of CUNY's Black Media Initiative.

Some news organizations simply refused to cover most of the civil rights movement or didn't run that news on the front page — so many readers didn't know what was happening.

Others had a more direct influence in fomenting racist beliefs. In a 2020 apology, the L.A. Times wrote that in its first 80 years, it was an "institution deeply rooted in white supremacy and committed to promoting the interests of the city’s industrialists and landowners."

The editorial listed several examples, including a 1981 story that "reinforced pernicious stereotypes that Black and Latino Angelenos were thieves, rapists and killers."

Smaller, ethnic news publishers began to pop up in the 1800s that threatened the status quo. They were confronted by a sometimes hostile government levying sedition charges or granting only white men an FCC license to broadcast news, Thompson-Morton says. 

They also faced violent backlash, as seen in the burning of The Daily Record and the killing of African Americans in the 1898 Wilmington Massacre — the truth of which remained hidden for decades.

Since the killing of George Floyd, there's been a greater movement toward racial reckoning (as seen in apologies from the L.A. Times and the Kansas City Star) and an effort to increase the diversity of newsrooms and editorial leadership. 

But, mainstream media can "only go so far" in describing the nuances of what's happening in communities of color, Thompson-Morton says.

What's happening now: Small, often digital, upstarts that cater to neglected communities are growing, such as Ibrahim's Sahan Journal, which launched in 2019.

Ten Black newspapers announced in September they would create Word In Black, a platform to amplify the Black experience by reporting and sharing stories. There are nearly 300 news outlets that primarily serve Black communities across the diaspora in the U.S., per CUNY.

Indian Country Today, an online news publication and daily broadcaster covering tribes and Indigenous peoples, changed ownership in March from the National Congress of American Indians to a new independent nonprofit. There are an estimated 400 Indigenous news outlets in North America.

Two media giants — Telemundo and Univision — and others have recently increased their investment in news for Spanish speakers in their streaming operations. There are at least 624 Latino media outlets in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, per CUNY.

Hundreds of Asian community media outlets serving diverse communities played a significant role in informing the Asian community during the pandemic and the wave of anti-Asian hate incidents.

Of note: CUNY is developing an Asian Media Initiative, with hopes to launch next year. Axios plans to update the map if that data becomes available.

What's next: The challenge faced by ethnic media outlets is mainly in funding and capacity, Thompson-Morton says. "Community media needs and deserves support."

2. Ethnic media outlets sprout up in U.S. "news deserts"

Legacy news outlets have been pushed to reckon with systemic racism in the industry.

Ethnic news outlets have been filling a void in local news, and serving up coverage that seeks to rectify journalistic bias in story selection and how news is framed.Why it matters: The spread of &quot;<a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="news deserts" data-vars-click-url="https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/" data-vars-content-id="cb09cd22-e78f-42fc-909f-5983b8cf3b45" data-vars-headline="Ethnic media outlets sprout up in U.S. &quot;news deserts&quot;" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.usnewsdeserts.com/" target="_blank">news deserts</a>&quot; — areas where local newspapers have folded and communities have no coverage — has endangered the critical role the press plays in disseminating accurate news and empowering the public in a democracy.

Stock photos surround us in digital and real life — but advertisers, stock image companies and consumers know they have a diversity problem. 

Why it matters: Stock photography forms the little-noticed backdrop to our lives, and has the power to reinforce or dismantle our implicit racial biases. 

The big picture: Brands know representation and racial diversity matters, especially after 2020’s Black Lives Matter protests. 

Shutterstock’s 2021 global study of over 2,700 marketers found “65% of marketers agree racial and ethnic diversity is an important factor when targeting campaign audiences.”

Yet almost half of those surveyed also said “it can be difficult to reflect their brand with racial and ethnic diversity visually.”

How it works: Axios, like other media companies, relies on stock imagery to create lead visuals for stories. Stock photos form the building blocks of our photo composites and collages. 

When choosing stock photos for illustrations, I also select who’s depicted as incarcerated, who’s a student, who’s on strike and who’s a doctor. When white people dominate search results, it’s harder to make illustrations that fairly represent our multiracial reality.

At times, I’ve sifted through pages of white people before finding a suitable photo of a person of color. 

iStock’s search results for “hand isolated”.

iStock’s search results for "hand isolated." Though some token people of color appear, most photos show white people.

So why are the results so white? One factor: The more customers search for racial stereotypes, the more likely those images will keep rising to the top. 

What they're saying: Andrea Gagliano, Getty Images’ head of data science, tells Axios that iStock’s algorithms determining first page search results are a combination of keyword tags, popularity and engagement.

“If you only rely on engagement and popularity, you’re going to skew towards white people.... Customer behavior is beginning to change, so we should see less of that overtime. But we still have that historical bias,” Gagliano says. 

To create more balanced searches, iStock (which is owned by Getty Images) adds a secondary algorithm that “tries to match a particular distribution of ethnicities [that better] reflect the society,” she adds. 

What to watch: Stock image companies are creating new libraries and filters to help address the issue.

Getty has curated several image libraries highlighting diversity across race, ethnicity, gender, ability and age in the Lean In, Show Us, Disrupt Aging, Disability and Nosotros collections.

Shutterstock organized Diversity and Offset Diversity libraries. 

Adobe Stock partnered with Diversity Photos to make the Creative Flame collection and created Adobe Stock Advocates to support photographers from “underrepresented communities,” including through a $500,000 Artist Development Fund.

Ethnicity filters are another possible solution. iStock created ethnicity filters in 2019, and now Shutterstock offers them as well. 

iStock has written a guide and created videos that show users how to find racially diverse photos. 

Adobe Stock’s head of content, Sarah Casillas, says they are “actively working on providing an ethnicity filter to our customers.”

Between the lines: The ethnicity categories chosen by each company reflect the different racial biases in mainstream culture, similar to the evolution of racial categories in the U.S. Census. 

Adding new libraries and filter options also doesn’t change the overwhelming whiteness of unfiltered searches, as Professor Fernanda Carrera noted in her 2020 study of racism and sexism in stock image banks. 

What’s next: Black and brown creators have launched their own stock image sites that showcase racial diversity, including: CreateHER Stock (focused on Black women), Mocha Stock, Nappy, NativeStock Pictures,  Pixels in Colour and Tonl. 

The bottom line: Though every stock photo conveys a narrative about race, class and gender, viewers may scroll or walk past the image without a second glance, never realizing how much these pictures influence our viewpoints.

3. How stock images can reinforce racism

Stock photography has the power to reinforce or dismantle racial biases.

Illustrated collage of white hands with cut out eyes.

Stock photos surround us in digital and real life — but advertisers, stock image companies and consumers know they have a diversity problem. Why it matters: Stock photography forms the little-noticed backdrop to our lives, and has the power to reinforce or dismantle our implicit racial biases.

Data: RTDNA and ASNE; Note: ASNE stopped conducting surveys after 2018 due to low participation; Chart: Thomas Oide/Axios 

After covering the news about America's racial justice movement in the summer of 2020, many newsrooms looked in the mirror and faced a reckoning of their own.

Why it matters: The people covering the news have a tremendous impact on the information Americans consume. Newsrooms can't build trust and news companies can't build a business if they don't understand the communities they cover.

By the numbers:  The 2020 census found that for the first time ever, the U.S. saw an overall decline in the non-Hispanic white population, which now makes up 57.8% of the country.

Yet newsroom employees are still more likely to be white and male compared to U.S. workers overall, according to Pew Research Center.

White people accounted for 77.4% of U.S. news organizations that responded to the American Society of News Editors 2018 diversity survey.

73.3% of the TV news workforce and 84.6% of radio newsrooms are white, per Radio Television Digital News Association's 2020 report. 93% of TV general managers and 93% of radio news directors are white.

For the record, 68% of Axios staff are white.

Improving racial representation in newsrooms doesn't necessarily mean coverage will reflect the communities they serve. But it's a start, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) told Axios.

Castro has been putting public pressure on media outlets and Hollywood to hire more diverse staff.

"Latinos are 1 in 5 Americans, yet we're nearly invisible in the image-defining and narrative-creating institutions of American society, particularly Hollywood. Representation matters because it directly contributes to more accurate and authentic portrayals," Castro told Axios.

Though underrepresentation persists, news media companies are unable to even measure its severity. 

In 2019, the American Society of News Editors (now known as the News Leaders Association) suspended its annual newsroom diversity survey — one it started in the mid-1970s — after participation dwindled to a historic low of 17%. 

The organization decided to revise its approach in the hope of ensuring higher participation rates. 

The big picture: In the last few years, the industry has seen journalists of color leave establishment newsrooms to pursue projects that focus on their own communities.

Vox's editor-in-chief Lauren Williams left her post in 2020 to launch Capital B, a news nonprofit serving Black communities, with Akoto Ofori-Atta, former managing editor of gun violence news organization The Trace.

S. Mitra Kalita left CNN to launch URL Media with WURD Radio CEO Sara Lomax-Reese in January. URL Media describes itself as a "decentralized, multi-platform network of high-performing Black and Brown media organizations." 

"We know it can be glacially slow if you do work within the system," said Snigdha Sur, who founded The Juggernaut which focuses on South Asian communities, after working in media consulting. Frustrated with the slow rate of change, she launched her own hub. "When things start happening on the outside, people start changing from the inside." 

What to watch: The News Leaders Association wants to hold newsrooms accountable for improving diversity among their staff. The board is discussing partnering with foundations and awards organizations to require participation in its survey when applying for journalism prizes. 

If newsrooms aren't willing to even assess the problem, the industry will never be able to address issues of equity, said Dallas Morning News executive editor Katrice Hardy,  who chairs the News Leaders Association's diversity committee. "We need more to recognize that it's not optional."

4. Newsrooms reckon with their own story on race

News media

Media

After covering the news about America&#x27;s racial justice movement in the summer of 2020, many newsrooms looked in the mirror and faced a reckoning of their own.Why it matters: The people covering the news have a tremendous impact on the information Americans consume. Newsrooms can&#x27;t build trust and news companies can&#x27;t build a business if they don&#x27;t understand the communities they cover.

Despite a concerted effort to bring more funding and ad dollars to minority-owned media businesses, there have yet to be many measurable results. 

Why it matters: Without stronger and more reliable funding, it's harder for minority-owned media businesses to compete with well-funded mainstream media outlets. 

"From my experiences with (ad) agencies, there's a lot of good intent to make good on these pledges, and we're working to facilitate that ... but it's hard to get metrics," says Mark Larkin, president and chief operating officer of Group Black, a media collective and accelerator for Black-owned media properties.

Driving the news: Havas Media Group, one of the largest global media agencies, last month  announced a new program in the U.K. called "Havas Boost" to invest in media and tech startups founded by people from underrepresented groups. 

It had previously launched in the U.S. and is now extending the program globally. Havas' efforts mirror those from major global ad agencies like GroupM and IPG to invest more in minority-owned properties. 

Over the summer, GroupM, one of the largest media agencies within the advertising giant WPP, committed to spending at least $75 million of its clients' advertising budgets on Black-owned media companies through Group Black.

In June, 20 companies, including General Mills, Target and Tyson Foods, committed to spending at least 2% of their total annual media budgets on Black-owned media companies through GroupM. 

IPG, another global advertising giant, committed to spending at least 5% of its clients' budgets on Black-owned media by 2023. 

Between the lines: Most agencies and brands began to pay more attention to how they spent their clients' marketing budgets in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and advertiser boycotts of social media platforms last June. 

Media entrepreneur Byron Allen has led efforts to hold more brands accountable to their ad buy in the wake of the protests. 

In March, he took out a full-page ad in the Detroit Free Press calling GM CEO Mary Barra racist for not directing enough of GM's advertising budget toward Black-owned media.

In May, he sued McDonald's, alleging bias in the way it spent its ad dollars. In June, Allen joined with Verizon to host the first-ever Black-owned media advertising "upfront" presentation. 

The big picture: Black and bilingual newspapers, as well as magazines like Ebony and Jet, have rapidly declined or closed over the last decade, creating a new opportunity for startups to fill the void. 

Ten Black newspapers created a new online collaborative this year, Word In Black, to “amplify the Black experience by reporting, collecting and sharing stories about real people in communities across our country.”

The streaming service Canela Media, a New York-based minority- and female-owned digital media tech startup directed at U.S. Latinos, launched last year.

And former magazine editor DeShuna Spencer started kweliTV a few years ago. It's a streaming service that houses independent films, animation and documentaries from Black filmmakers around the world. 

Yes, but: Startups owned by people of color often struggle to lure investment from venture capital and private equity firms.

Spencer told Axios that following the death of George Floyd, she heard a lot of lip service from VCs about wanting to invest more in Black-owned startups as a way to fight systemic racism.

"But since then, all I've heard is crickets ... I have a lot of people offering mentorship, but I don't need more mentors. I need funding."

Spencer said this year she received a $100,000 investment from a co-founder of Motley Fool and was able to hire her first employee.

The intrigue: Funding for Black entrepreneurs in the U.S. hit nearly $1.8 billion through the first half of 2021 — a more than fourfold increase compared to the same time frame last year, Crunchbase reports.

But, but, but: Black startup entrepreneurs still received only 1.2% of the record $147 billion in venture capital invested in U.S. startups through the first half of this year, Crunchbase found.

Less than 1% of funds from the top 25 venture capital and private equity firms wound up in the hands of Latino-owned businesses last year despite the fast pace of Hispanics opening up new enterprises, according to a study by Bain & Co. and others.

Editor's note: This story corrects the amount Spencer says she received from the co-founder of Motley Fool.

5. Media's opportunity gap

Despite efforts to lure more funding and ad dollars, there have yet to be many measurable outcomes.

Illustration collage of two clapper boards separated by geometric shapes and lines

Latin America and Latinos

Despite a concerted effort to bring more funding and ad dollars to minority-owned media businesses, there have yet to be many measurable results. Why it matters: Without stronger and more reliable funding, it&#x27;s harder for minority-owned media businesses to compete with well-funded mainstream media outlets.

Closer

Axios Closer

Media consumers are more empowered than ever to create their own content, or to access new options, when they see bias in coverage and gaps in representation.  

Why it matters: Legacy news and entertainment companies no longer have a monopoly on audiences and attention. Organizations that ignore blind spots risk further losing trust and potential revenue from the fastest-growing segments of the population. 

State of play: U.S. population growth is being driven by Asians and Hispanics — the fastest and second-fastest growing single-race groups in the U.S., respectively, according to the newest census report.

And though the U.S. is aging, multiracial Black Americans are younger than any other group, with a median age of 16 — making them prime business targets.

Yes, but: Despite clear data on what the consumer marketplace looks like, TV and film rank among the top industries with disproportionately white talent and executives, according to McKinsey.  

U.S. newsrooms are also poorly representative — where only 11% have top editors who are non-white, and the total percentage of non-white journalists only reaches 9%. Meanwhile, roughly 40% of the U.S. population is non-white.  

What they're saying: Those gaps have turned into proving grounds for new, audience-led platforms that have quickly gained popularity. 

 "[T]he major events of the last year — the pandemic, the election, George Floyd — revealed some fissures in the country’s understanding of what [people] value. More of us are seeking out media outlets that speak to us in ways that match our core values and understanding of the world," says Vanessa De Luca, editor in chief of The Root, a digital media outlet aimed at covering Black news and culture.

"We are not just reporters [or] journalists serving readers, we are also our readers," says Benny Luo, founder and CEO of NextShark, a digital platform covering Asian and Asian American news.

The latest examples: Univision, one of the largest Spanish-language broadcast networks, overtook The CW this fall in reaching a coveted 18- to 34-year-old audience. 

NextShark saw its readership and audience grow after activist Amanda Nguyen's viral video drew widespread attention to Vichar Ratanapakdee's death and anti-Asian hate crimes. 

"Our Instagram account alone grew over 70,000 followers in 1½ months," says Luo.

The big picture: "[A]udiences are seeking voices of authority,” says De Luca.  The impact of a lack of authority or a direct perspective extends beyond more common race-relations matters, like policing, to issues like foreign policy.

Biases shaped press coverage of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, for example, prompting critics to call out areas they felt lacked context or displayed how reporters’ close relationships with their sources interfered with framing.

"The history, culture and politics are complicated and multilayered," Benjamin Hopkins, a historian at George Washington University, tells Axios.

"Add on top of this a lack of familiarity not only with the details, but the general terms (i.e. "ethnicity," "tribe"), and it is no wonder people struggle, and in many cases, give up on understanding.... This combination has allowed for the continued use of erroneous tropes to be both deployed to explain and understand Afghanistan," he says.

What to watch: Huge platforms like Apple, Netflix and Spotify have sought out Black creators and people of color to partner with to attract and retain audiences that traditional channels and companies have neglected.

Newsrooms across the country have conducted audits of their staff and coverage and scrambled to make changes. 

The bottom line: "When there is more for audiences to choose from, and more disparate voices to express varied attitudes and opinions, it can only make our understanding of the world more textured and richer," says De Luca. 

6. Audiences build their own solutions to gaps in media

Media consumers are more empowered than ever to create their own content, or to access new options, when they see bias in coverage and gaps in representation.

Illustrated collage of a person reading a newspaper and a microphone.

Media consumers are more empowered than ever to create their own content, or to access new options, when they see bias in coverage and gaps in representation. Why it matters: Legacy news and entertainment companies no longer have a monopoly on audiences and attention. Organizations that ignore blind spots risk further losing trust and potential revenue from the fastest-growing segments of the population.

Data: Common Sense Media; Chart: Jared Whalen/Axios

New research shows characters in TV shows and movies for kids significantly underrepresent people of color, particularly Latinos and Asians, despite efforts to increase diversity in children's and family programming in recent years.

Why it matters: Not being exposed to diversity "creates a normal for [children] that is not the real normal," said Polly Conway, senior TV editor for Common Sense Media, a children's advocacy group.

The underrepresentation of people of color gives kids "a skewed viewpoint of what is normal and what is ideal," Conway added.

Details: A new report from Common Sense Media finds that kids' screens today overwhelmingly feature white faces and stories, "and people of color are often stereotyped or, in some cases, absent altogether."

The data shows that Asian and Latino characters are grossly underrepresented in film, television and streaming roles, including children's sitcoms.

Middle Easterners, Arabs and Muslims "are rarely distinguished from one another, blurring the ability to determine who is represented." 

Native Americans, the report found, are "essentially invisible" across the media landscape.

The report also noted that characters of color in shows mostly viewed by children are more likely to be depicted as violent.

By the numbers: White characters comprise 71% of the roles in children's sitcoms but make up 62% of the U.S. population. Black characters are the second-most common at 22%, while they make up 12% of the population.

Asians comprise 6% of the population but only 1% of children's sitcom characters. Latinos make up 19% of the population, yet have 3% of those roles.

Native Americans make up 1% and people of Middle Eastern, Arab or Muslim descent around 1%-2% of the population, and comprise 1% or less of the roles in children's sitcoms.

Media companies have begun to introduce more diverse characters in kids' programming.

In February, Nickelodeon unveiled the first-ever Lakota figure to appear on a major American animated TV show, in "The Casagrandes."

PBS has long pioneered diversity in kids programming, particularly via "Sesame Street." This year, the show introduced two Black characters, a father and a son, following the Black Lives Matter protests that took place after George Floyd's murder in 2020.

The Proud Family, which ran from 2001 to 2003, was the first animated Disney television cartoon to feature an all-Black cast.

Besides cartoons, family sitcoms and shows such as "Fresh off the Boat," "Black-ish," "Kim's Convenience" and "One Day at a Time" focus on families of color. 

What they're saying: "When kids see a positive representation of someone who looks like them, an authentic and positive representation, it has a measurable effect on their self-esteem, and actually on their long-term success," said Sara DeWitt, senior vice president for PBS' children's media and education.

Yes, but: Experts fear it's not enough. DeWitt told Axios that having shows introduce one or a few characters to represent a group is limiting: "It's nice to have one character ... but if you have multiple ... you start to recognize also there's diversity among these populations."

Of note: Conway said that besides focusing on representation onscreen, the crew behind the scenes is also important to create faithful depictions of people of color's stories.

Zoom in: PBS has a show called "Molly of Denali," which follows a young Alaska Native girl who is a vlogger from the fictional village of Qyah.

There are over 60 Native Alaskan producers and advisers involved in creating the show, DeWitt said.

The bottom line: "It would be incredible to see every show on network TV or Netflix have both a gender- and racially balanced cast," Conway said.

7. Diversity in children's programming lags, too

Underrepresentation of some groups can give kids a "skewed viewpoint" of what's normal.

Children

Chart showing racial breakdown of representation in children's sitcom programming

New research shows characters in TV shows and movies for kids significantly underrepresent people of color, particularly Latinos and Asians, despite efforts to increase diversity in children&#x27;s and family programming in recent years.Why it matters: Not being exposed to diversity &quot;creates a normal for [children] that is not the real normal,&quot; said Polly Conway, senior TV editor for Common Sense Media, a children&#x27;s advocacy group.

Hard Truths: What we learned

The final monthly Axios AM Deep Dive in our Hard Truths series explores what has changed about race and justice in America — and what hasn't — since the series launched in October 2020.

The final monthly installment of our Hard Truths series explores what has changed and what hasn't.

Photo illustration of a Black Lives Matter protester in front of statues of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd 

Photo illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios. Photos: Alexi Rosenfeld, Bryan R. Smith/AFP, Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)