By Center for Media & Social Impact, September 9, 2019
Issues of housing security and homelessness in the United States are being grossly under covered, oversimplified and misrepresented by the country’s “most-watched” television programming and “most read” newspaper coverage, according to our new CMSI study, part of our ongoing examinations about portrayals of pressing social issues in news and entertainment.
The report, Homelessness & Housing Security in U.S. Culture: How Popular Culture and News Depicts An American Challenge, provides a close examination of how issues of homelessness, affordable housing, and gentrification were depicted in U.S. news coverage and television programming in 2018.
The study’s results stem from an analysis of 150 episodes of television, aired by the fifty “most-watched” 2017-2018 television programs in the U.S., along with an investigation of 5,703 news articles, reflecting every news story on a housing security issue published by the country’s twelve “most read” newspapers in 2018. The study also points to a small subset of new television programming, led by a diverse group of showrunners, which are producing more nuanced narratives on homelessness and gentrification-related issues and could serve as an industry-wide model for improvement.
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