2005 Annual Report - Ethnic Media Content Analysis

Sing Tao is a daily with a self-reported circulation of 50,000. It is not independent, but rather a subsidiary of the Sing Tao Daily in Hong Kong. The paper is thick with sections, colorful and full of pictures. With sister publications on the West Coast and in Chicago, it has 40 bureaus worldwide and is sold on the newsstand as well as by subscription for about $200 a year.⁸ In total, we examined 141 front-page stories - behind only the Pakistan Post.⁹

Sing Tao isn't simply a newspaper for those looking to keep up with news of China. Its reportage is more evenly spread across the board: 34% of stories were triggered by events on the Chinese mainland or Taiwan, 30% by events or news from the U.S. national region, 19% by local events and 18% by events in other regions. But the choice of stories suggests that Sing Tao sees its mission as reporting the news about Chinese people around the world, from Asia to Europe to South America, to its Chinese readers in the U.S..¹⁰

Geographic Focus of Sing Tao

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflect total of 141 stories

Topics Covered by Sing Tao

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Source: PEJ Research, numbers reflecttotal of 141 stories

Among topics covered by Sing Tao, homeland issues - 35% of the coverage - are more diverse than in the Pakistan Post. This may be due to the stable nature of Chinese governance. There were few pieces about the doings of the Chinese government. Instead pieces looked at such issues as, in the January 16 edition, who is building the new subway line in Hong Kong, or on February 2 the breakout of "Chicken Fever" throughout China.¹¹

More interesting, though, is how the newspaper covered world events outside of the home region. Sing Tao featured datelines from the city, the country and the world, but the theme throughout was the effect events had on Chinese people. The February 2 issue, for example, had a piece about four Chinese Muslims who died on their pilgrimage to Mecca. The May 1 issue contained the story "Fujianese Gangsters rampant in Flushing" pegged to a fight the night before. The June 8 front page had a piece on how three Chinese workers were killed when a construction site collapsed in Queens. And on February 23, the front page of the paper featured a story on two Chinese students in Norway being found dead.

And when two Chinese students were beaten up at "the infamously violent Lafayette High School," the story not only made the front page the day after the attacks, March 12, ("Chinese students at Lafayette High School Beaten") it also made the front page the next day ("Blood Clip Gang of Lafayette High School targets Chinese students) and a week later (Chinese Students say that Lafayette High School is like a battle field).

Straightforward news accounts were sprinkled in - about the U.S presidential election (2% of the stories we looked at) or U.S. government (3%) or terrorism (7%). Nevertheless there was a definite Sino-centric view of the news on the whole. Even much of the foreign affairs news (21% of all topics) generally had some link to the China or Chinese citizens.¹²

Interestingly, one of the areas where this didn't apply was science and technology reporting, especially pieces about space. Sing Tao was the only ethnic paper we looked at that fronted a story about NASA's 360-degree pictures from Mars. But it was also the only paper that saved front-page space for a story on how Yao Ming, the Houston Rockets' Chinese Center, scored 41 points in a game.

Judging from the front page, the readers of Sing Tao get a unique view of the world from their newspaper - a view focused on the Chinese people and their successes and problems in their home and the world at large. Beyond that, however, any look at the broader U.S. landscape, political or otherwise, is meager.