Latinos Prefer News In English, Study Finds

Changes in the Latino community are affecting the way they prefer to receive news. A new study by the Pew Hispanic Center, that was released Tuesday, found that 82 percent of Latinos get at least a portion of their news in English as opposed to 78 percent in 2006, the New York Times reported. Nearly one third of Latinos -- 32 percent -- said they got their news exclusively in English, jumping from 22 percent seven years ago.

The reason for these changes is due to the way the community has been evolving over the years. More Latinos are becoming fluent in English as rate of U.S.-born Latinos increases. Immigration has slowed down to net-zero. There are now 52 million Latinos in the U.S., with more than half of the adult Latino population speaking English proficiently at 59 percent.

"U.S. births are going to take over Hispanic population growth going forward," said Mark Hugo Lopez, the director of the Pew Hispanic Center and a co-author of the report.

Latinos are also in line with other groups when it comes to which outlets they turn to for news. Fifty-six percent of Latinos now get their news from the Internet, up from 37 percent at the time of the last study. Their TV viewership dropped to 86 percent from 92 percent, but still beat out the community's media consumption via print newspapers and radio. Spanish-language media stations, however, have not suffered from the increase. The report finds that 70 percent of Latinos find that Spanish-language media outlets do an "excellent" job of covering news pertinent to the community. In fact, only 59 percent found the same to be true of English-language media. The report also found that 35 million Latinos aged 5 and older speak Spanish at home and are also bilingual. There is also an increase in biculturalism, in which Latinos identify as both American and Latino.

"We do see some patterns within the Hispanic community that suggests an interest in maintaining some ties to cultural roots," Lopez said. "We have found that young Latinos are being told by their parents to emphasize their cultural identity."