![]() ![]() "We need new and different lenses, people of different backgrounds thinking at the table. A typical white, male-centric newsroom, means critical stories will continue to go unreported and news analysis will remain unbalanced. For O'Neal, who analyzed the coverage with a racial lens, the Kaepernick story raised questions "about why the country is more brown than ever but mainstream journalism is so white."Ĭode Switch Is There A #PubRadioVoice That Sounds Like America?įor O'Neal, hiring women, minorities and generally journalists of diverse backgrounds is not a luxury or a matter of "different optics," or political expedience, as recruiters typically approach the matter, but essential to the profession's mission and longevity. Initial reports by other outlets focused on Kaepernick as divisive and a potential distraction in the locker room. His refusal, Wyche learned, formed part of a larger outcry over police violence against black men and women. The implications of this generalized absence are manifold, and begin at the storytelling level.Ī September 2016 piece by Lonnae O'Neal in The Undefeated, a site that covers how sports, race and culture intersect, described how NFL Network reporter Steve Wyche - one of the country's leading African American national sports reporters - covered the story of Colin Kaepernick's refusal to stand for the national anthem as an act of protest. Though nearly 20 percent of the country's population is Hispanic, very few of these publications had a single VIDA respondent self-report as Hispanic. VIDA's numbers show that women of color (and minorities in general) are virtually absent from the political commentary and investigative journalism these magazines provide. In a 2015 survey by the group VIDA: Women of the Literary Arts, magazines with a focus on news and culture, such as The New Yorker, The New Republic and Harper's, don't fare any better. (In the spirit of full disclosure, NPR's latest diversity figures can be found here.)Ĭode Switch 'Diversity' Is Rightly Criticized As An Empty Buzzword. Around the country, local newsrooms remain largely white by most measures. But the numbers lag far behind demographic shifts in a country where nearly 40 percent of Americans are part of a minority group. Numbers from 433 news organizations that participated in 20 show a 5.6 percent increase in the minority workforce, now at 17 percent at print and online news sites. The organization stopped requiring that news outlets reveal their identities in an attempt to increase participation in the yearly census. Nationally, Hispanic, black and Asian women make up less than 5 percent of newsroom personnel at traditional print and online news publications, according to 2016 data from the American Society of News Editors. According to studies from the American Society of News Editors, the Women's Media Center and the advocacy group VIDA, gender and ethnic diversity in newsrooms have hardly improved in the last decade despite increasing demand for more inclusive journalism in the current round-the-clock news cycle. ![]() In many of today's newsrooms, women and journalists of color remain a sliver of those producing and reporting stories. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |