On May 21, 2008, The Seattle Times ran a story called, “Police move closer to finding man connected to groping incidents.” In consultation with AAJA members, the newspaper reported that the suspect was attacking women “described as Asian or Asian American.” The AAJA National Office received a complaint from an Asian American Seattle Times reader who argued that differentiating between “Asian” and “Asian American” is unnecessary in this context. Following was the AAJA MediaWatch Committee’s response to the reader:
May 23, 2008
Dear Ms. Quach,
We appreciate your concern and it shows the challenges of terminology and interpretations when it comes to the choice of words about race, ethnicity and national origin in news stories.
Indeed what you read came in part because of concerns we raised with The Seattle Times about such terms in early news stories on this.
Identifying people in such ways in news stories must be done with care. That care first starts with deciding whether such details are relevant, which for this ongoing news story The Times successfully made the case that the groper appeared to be targeting women of a particular group.
Care must also be exercised in then deciding the terminology to use, and obviously views differ on the best ones. "Asian" can pose particular challenges for us because the term is used not just as a race identifier but also as a term to describe what continent a person is from -- thus denoting citizenship differences.
You may be thinking of Asian Americans when you wrote your note, but there are indeed some Asians in America (visiting, studying, etc.) who are not in fact Americans. So while some may see the word "Asian" including all of us of Asian heritage, Americans and those from other parts of the world, others see the term as specifically describing those across the Pacific.
We were specifically worried about that and raised it with The Times, advising them to use the term "of Asian descent." But journalists at The Times responded that may lead to an erroneous assumption that the groper was going after anyone of Asian descent, including those who are multiracial, when in fact investigators found he was apparently targeting women with physical characteristics common to those of Asians and Asian Americans.
In the news stories, if the term "Asian" alone was used, one possible misconception by readers might be to presume the groper was targeting tourists. If the term "Asian American" alone was used, some may think the groper is somehow figuring out their identities and targeting them specifically.
We find no problem in including both terms in news stories.
We assure you that in our dealings with The Times, we did not find a Eurocentric view casting a pall on our exchanges or one that was divisive. Instead we found an open attitude and a desire for accuracy.
Thanks for bringing your concerns to our attention and to giving us more to think about,
Asian American Journalists Association Media Watch Committee