Ethnic media report, help their own

SAN FRANCISCO — "Black general takes charge in New Orleans." "Undocumented won't be allowed to receive help from FEMA." "1,700 Koreans in New Orleans yet to be located."

With passion and pride, ethnic news organizations in the United States are sending reporters, photographers and TV crews to the disaster area and covering the Hurricane Katrina story from angles not seen in many major metropolitan newspapers.

At times, the ethnic media have been more opinionated and outspoken. In many cases, they have taken a more activist approach than mainstream news organizations and tried to help members of their ethnic groups who have suffered from the storm.

For example, they have been reuniting families and finding housing for evacuees, said Daffodil Altan, associate editor of New California Media, a nationwide association of more than 700 ethnic media groups.

"I'd have to say the tendency to both really cover and interact with their communities seems to be one of the biggest differences," Altan said.

The association estimates ethnic media reach 51 million people in the U.S. For many of them, that is their only source of information.

The Korea Times, based in Los Angeles, is dedicating much of its coverage to motivating Korean Americans to help their own.

"There are so many Koreans who had been living in the New Orleans area ... and they lost their houses and businesses and had to evacuate from where they had been living, so Koreans have their own stories, and we're focusing on the Korean victims," Managing Editor Yoon Sung Cho said.

Reporter Euyhun Yi added: "We are also trying to help African Americans."

Koreans and blacks were antagonists in the 1992 riots after the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles. Now the Times is using the disaster to show they can work together.

In one story, the Times cited a Korean shopkeeper in New Orleans who was trusted with $12,000 of his black neighbors' money as they all fled the storm.

He later tracked them down and returned the cash.

Radio Saigon in Houston, the city where about half of Louisiana's Vietnamese population of 30,000 has taken refuge, spends two hours a day on hard news and devotes much of the rest of the time to helping fellow Vietnamese Americans.

La Opinión, a Los Angeles-based newspaper with 500,000 readers, sent a reporter and photographer to cover the storm's effect on Hispanics living on the Gulf Coast.

One of its major stories noted that illegal immigrants will not get help from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Rather than criticize the Bush administration, the story offered options for those seeking assistance.

"We included a box with what they can do and telephone numbers where they can call," Executive Editor Pedro Rojas said.

In the black media, the coverage has promoted racial pride — for example, with headlines like the one in The Afro-American Newspaper about the black military commander in New Orleans, Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore — and explored what some have branded racism in the mainstream media.

"A lot of the cable channels seemed obsessed with the looting. They'd say the blacks are looting, and the whites found some bread. Those kinds of things really strike a chord with African Americans," said George Curry, editor-in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and BlackPressUsa.com.

The black media, he said, have focused not on the looting and the violence but on the future of New Orleans' black population.