Television is an integral part of American culture, and has the ability to play a major role in shaping belief systems, particularly for the youngest and most impressionable viewers. This study is the third annual study of diversity of characters in prime time television programming. The study examined the first two episodes of each prime time…

Children understand that media grant recognition and respect to racial groups that are positively portrayed. Approximately half of the programs in the 1999-2000 broadcast prime time entertainment programming exhibited some diversity in their opening credits casts. This study examined the nature of the portrayals of diversity. The study examined 10…

Because children today are growing up in an era of increasing racial and ethnic diversity and because television provides a steady educational influence on children's attitudes and perceptions, it is important to examine the extent to which television programming reflects diversity in all its forms. This study was commissioned by Children Now to…

Examines the issue of diversity and cable television from a content analysis of 1,035 randomly chosen moments from four channels: network, cable, independent, and public. Results demonstrate that there has been little movement towards more accurate proportional representation of historically underrepresented demographic groups across the 32…

News media hold significant power and responsibility in focusing public attention on child-related issues. This document summarizes a study of news coverage of children in national media in 1994 and reports on the follow-up conducted in 1998. The follow-up study was based on a sample of national news coverage collected throughout November 1998…