MediaSmarts Tags - Visible Minorities

Further, Canadian media often reflects American as opposed to Canadian visible minority populations: for example, TV viewers are more likely to see African Americans than African Canadians on their screen and specific Canadian minorities, such as South Asian or Southeast Asian populations, will often be underrepresented in favour of Hispanic populations. Concerns have also been raised that visible minority actors are being recruited not as central characters, but as a means of attracting viewers from diverse cultural audiences.

A 1994 study found that only 14 per cent of news reports in six major newspapers dealt with content relating to minorities [1] while in the cities in which those newspapers were published – Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto and Montreal – an average of 20 per cent of the population belong to a visible minority. (47 per cent of Toronto's population identifies themselves as being part of a visible minority.)

Claire Cossée describes several of these struggles [1]:

Since those early beginnings, globalization and new media such as blogs and podcasts have facilitated the expansion of visible minority voices and perspectives and have brought diverse communities together, resulting in a growth in popularity of visible minority media across the country.