The news story that received the most coverage was the summer 2009 arrest of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates. This story received nearly 20 percent of all African American–related news coverage for the entire year, which was nearly four times the amount of African-American coverage on important issues, such as the economy and health care.

The study also found that 9 percent of the coverage of the Obama Administration focused on issues that related to race, but most of that was also in reaction to specific incidents rather than broader issues or themes. The study analyzed over 67,000 national news stories between February 16, 2009, and February 15, 2010, and included newspapers, cable news, network television, radio and news websites.

African Americans weren't the only ethnic group ignored by mainstream media, though. Hispanics and Asians were covered even less.

Nearly half of all coverage of African Americans in media was related to the arrest of Professor Gates, the Obama presidency, the attempted hijacking of a flight by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and the death of Michael Jackson.

American media is far behind the eight ball when it comes to the way African Americans are portrayed and covered in media. Our most critical issues tend to be ignored, and most major media outlets have no African-American news anchors.

CNN, for example, has several news personalities branded for their night time shows, but none of them are African American. The network deserves some credit for having African-American news personalities during their daily segments, though.

The fact that the bulk of black news coverage for 2009 focused on the arrest of Henry Louis Gates should be appalling to us all. I am not sure when we decided that the inconvenience experienced by a professor on his front porch should supersede the shooting deaths of Oscar Grant (pictured above) and Sean Bell.

I am not here to say that Gates was at fault for what happened to him, but the truth is that there may not have been an ounce of racial injustice served during this incident, and I would imagine that Gates having a good publicist played a role in the reasons that his story received far more coverage than it deserved.

CNN added fuel to the fire by over-covering the story, perhaps because the timing coincided with the release of their special "Black in America 2." The racial controversy surrounding the Gates' case likely improved ratings for the special, which was heavily advertised during their coverage of the Gates/Obama debacle. In some ways, it was the perfect storm of nonsense to captivate the attention of our nation.


Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and a Scholarship in Action Resident of the Institute for Black Public Policy. To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.