Although stereotypes of minorities in the media have been slowly changing, no real progress can be made until they are totally eliminated, said a University journalism instructor yesterday in an Ebony and Ivory Week presentation.

Leola Johnson presented "Racial and Ethnic Minorities in the Media" to about 40 people in a lecture sponsored by the Center for Women Students.

"Although the media has changed these negative images over time, it's not really progress," Johnson said. "Why doesn't the media completely abandon these stereotypes rather than just changing them?"

The discussion focused on a video entitled "Perceptions," which exemplified negative minority stereotypes by showing how American Indians have always been caricatured in the movies.

Sharon Lee (academic renewal-arts and architecture) created the video part of a Womens Studies class project.

"I came up with the idea for this film after reading a book about the negative image and treatment of American Indians," Lee said.

The video showed scenes from four different movies that portrayed Native Americans as being filthy savages. It also contained reactions from various students and faculty and what they believed were the most common stereotypes of American Indians and how they could be overcome.

Native Americans, the film proposes, are often portrayed as savages, second-class citizens or violent people with painted faces.

Johnson said these movies particularly illuminated minority women in a distorting light.

"These films portray Indian women as hussies," Johnson said. "There is an attribution of savage sexuality to minority women.

"Where white women are shown to be, in their natural state, all pure and with no sexual desire," she said.

The transformations of stereotypes in the media follow real transformations of power in the country, Johnson said.

"If we trace the development of different minority images through the decades, we can see the various balances of power in the industry," Johnson said. "There is a big change through the periods when the black movement was an insurgency through this country."

One of the biggest conversion experiences was the shift in description of blacks from negro to colored to black, culminating this year with Rev. Jesse Jackson's advocacy of the term "African-American."

"A lot of people out there agree with the usage of the term African-American, but for the media it seems to take too much effort," Johnson said. "In a newspaper, the writers aren't given enough space and the words 'African-American' just won't fit into a short column."

Johnson said the only remedy for the newspapers is for the industry to take less profits and hire more people to do bigger and better stories.

"It's very hard in these days of 'McNews,' but unless reporters are given more room to do in-depth stories they won't be able to help overcome various stereotypes perpetuated in the media," she said. "There is a difference between the truth and the whole truth, and we have to stop letting the media give us only the truth."