Los Angeles Times Discloses Details of ‘Secret Audit’ – Finds Widespread Undercounting of Minorities

For the past several weeks, the Don’t Count Us Out/Queremos Ser Contados coalition has called on Nielsen Media Research and the Media Rating Council (MRC) to release the content of an Ernst & Young audit of the New York City Local People Meter system, which led to the MRC’s decision to withhold accreditation. In today’s edition of the Los Angeles Times the first details have been made public and they confirm the coalition’s worst fears.

According to the report, 1 in 6 viewers was improperly classified as black, while 1 in 14 viewers were improperly classified as Hispanic. In at least one instance a family was classified as Hispanic despite speaking no Spanish. Worse yet, the report cited “fault rates,” which refers to households from which Nielsen fails to collect any data at all, as reaching as high as 25% among African Americans. This means that at any given time, 1/4 of the African American community simply wasn’t being counted.

These shocking findings exceed even the most dire concerns of the coalition. At no point did the coalition suspect that there was a danger of Nielsen classifying non-black households as black, or non-Spanish speaking households as Hispanic. And the coalition was appalled to discover fault rates of 25% for one community.

These findings firmly establish the fact that the LPM system as presently deployed severely and systemically undercounts African American and Hispanic viewers. Moreover, these findings call into question the assertion by CEO Susan Whiting that the LPM system is, “more accurate and more reflective of the community than any other data collection system in use.” (Chicago Tribune, June 4, 2004). Based on these findings it is clear that either Ms. Whiting’s statement was intentionally misleading, or it is Nielsen’s position that undercounting as much as 25% of the African American community represents an improvement over the current system.

Given these grim numbers, Don’t Count Us Out/Queremos Ser Contados once again calls on Nielsen to immediately cease the use of the LPM system in New York City and to announce an indefinite delay of the launch of the LPM system in any new markets until an independent review can be completed.

The coalition further calls on all advertisers and broadcasters to refrain from using the tainted LPM data as the basis for any economic decisions. At present, any ratings being generated by the LPM system do not reflect the views of at least 1 out of every 4 African American families, and perhaps an equally high proportion of Hispanic families. As such, these ratings are fundamentally discriminatory and must not serve as the basis for decisions that can impact programming, marketing and employment decisions.

Finally, the coalition calls once again upon Nielsen and the MRC to release the full Ernst & Young audit. The findings cited in the Los Angeles Times make it imperative that policy makers, community leaders and the viewing public have the opportunity to see the report for themselves.