RTNDA: “No Good News” on Broadcasters of Color
While women continue to make strides into radio and television news management, overall numbers for people of color are down for the second year in a row, Bob Papper reports for the Radio-Television News Directors Association.
“The latest figures from the 2003 RTNDA/Ball State University Annual Survey show the largest percentage of women television news directors ever, but almost all the numbers for minorities — in both radio and TV — are down.
“Women now make up 26.5 percent of TV news directors — a slight increase from last year’s record of 25.9 percent. But there was no good news for minorities in either radio or television. In television, the minority workforce dropped from 20.6 percent to 18.1 percent.
“All minority groups fell except Native Americans, who remained the same. Minority news directors fell from 9.2 percent to 6.6 percent — with all minority groups dropping except Asian Americans,” Papper writes in RTNDA’s The Communicator.
“Ironically, the number of minorities in television actually increased, but they didn’t increase as fast as overall staff rose. Consequently, the minority percentage slipped. In radio, the minority workforce continued its near-relentless slide, which started with the elimination of the EEO rules. The percentage of minority radio news directors remained largely unchanged.”
In the first reaction from journalists of color, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists blasted broadcasters for “paying lip service to diversity and backpedaling.” Text of the statement at the end of today’s posting.
New York Times to Name “Public Editor”
“Seeking to mend the damage to the credibility and staff morale of The New York Times following a reporter’s extensive fabrications, the newspaper’s new executive editor today accepted the major recommendations of an internal committee, including the appointment of a “public editor” to serve as a representative for readers,” the Times reports on its Web site today.
“Acting on his first day as executive editor, Bill Keller wrote in a memorandum to the staff that he would soon hire a public editor, or ombudsman, who would ‘have license to write about issues of our coverage, and to have those independent, uncensored commentaries published in our pages.’
“Mr. Keller, after several days of discussions with the newsroom management, also accepted the panel’s recommendations that he create senior-level posts for editors to monitor internal compliance with the paper’s standards and to insure that assignments and promotions within the newsroom are made on a more transparent basis.”
“The report of the 28-member panel, which included three outside journalists, was made available today to the newspaper’s staff and to the public on The Times Company’s Web site.”
A statement on affirmative action from committee member Roger Wilkins is at the end of today’s posting.
Committee Calls Diversity Accusations “Simplistic”
The report from the New York Times committee acknowledges that racial factors played a role in the Jayson Blair fiasco, but called “simplistic” efforts by critics to fault the diversity effort for “the Blair calamity.” Gerald Boyd, the then-managing editor, who is African American, again denied that he served as Blair’s mentor and volunteers that “I incurred some criticism from journalists of color who felt I was not looking out for them.”
From the report:
“Blair came to The Times in a program that was then intended to increase newsroom diversity. Some critics have argued that this diversity effort was essentially what caused the Blair calamity. That is simplistic. . . . Though diversity considerations are obviously embedded in the Blair story, they are far from the real culprits of deeply flawed structures, attitudes and processes.”
However, the report says that Blair’s promotion to the regular full-time staff of the Times “has all the earmarks of a social promotion” since “Blair committed more mistakes than anyone else on metro.”
“The recommendation was made by a recruiting committee led by Gerald Boyd, at that time deputy managing editor. Boyd has told the Siegal Committee that other intermediate reporters with less experience were being promoted at the time, and that there was no question Blair would be promoted at some point.”
Jonathan Landman, metro editor, said he didn’t think Blair was ready for the full-time staff, but “it was clear that Gerald felt pressure to promote Jayson and that he thought it was the right thing to do. The racial dimension of this issue and Gerald’s obvious strong feelings made it especially sensitive; in that sense it is fair to say that I backed off a bit more than I would have if race had not been a factor. I think race was the decisive factor in his promotion. I thought then and think now that it was the wrong decision, despite my belief in diversity and my respect for our institutional commitment to it.”
The report says that when Boyd saw a particularly negative evaluation of Blair in February 2002, he called Blair into his office. “I said, ‘You have enormous promise and potential but your career is in your hands. I don’t know what you’re doing, drugs or what, and I don’t care. The issue is your performance, and unless you change, you are blowing a big opportunity.'”
It also says:
“[Executive editor Howell] Raines and Boyd both said they had no special relationship at all with Blair, who reportedly often left the impression with colleagues and editors that he was protected by them. Boyd took particular exception to reports that he was Blair’s mentor. Boyd told the committee: ‘Philosophically, I have never bought into the concept of mentoring . . . I didn’t feel I should take people under my wing and move them up the ladder. I incurred some criticism from journalists of color who felt I was not looking out for them. My view was that it was competitive and a matter of merit.'”
Roone Arledge Wanted Last Word on Max Robinson
ABC-TV made history 25 years ago this month when it named Max Robinson one of three anchors on its new “World News Tonight,” and surviving anchor Peter Jennings marked the occasion — and Robinson’s achievement — on the air on the July 10 anniversary date. As ABC News chief Roone Arledge writes posthumously, “No one had ever seen a black network anchor, period.”
Robinson had his difficulties with ABC, and with Arledge. Both men are now dead, but Arledge used the memoir he would publish after his death to have the last word.
Arledge writes that “the camera loved Max Robinson” and that with his experience, he seemed to have “every hole punched.” But he says that “had I probed, I might have found some other things,” such as Robinson’s personal problems that ultimately cost him his job.
In “Roone: A Memoir” (Harper Collins, $25.95), Arledge recounts the fateful speech Robinson gave at Smith College in 1981, in which Robinson accused ABC of racism. He says Robinson denied the remarks, but asked Robinson to teach him about “unconscious racism.”
He quotes Robinson as saying, “Okay. I’ll satisfy your curiosity. You are an unconscious racist. All white people are. Only difference is, some of you hide it better than others.”
“He went on like that, getting more and more bitter, for over an hour. When he finished, the only thing that has been added to my understanding was how angry he was — as much at himself, it seemed, as at me,” Arledge writes.
Arledge adds, however, that the exchange “galvanized” him into calling together all the African Americans on staff, telling them he wanted to do an hour-long documentary using only black professionals. The result was “Black in White America,” narrated by Carole Simpson and George Strait, airing in 1989.
Arledge’s book could have used better fact-checking. He recalls Robinson’s role in concluding a hostage taking at Washington’s B’Nai B’rith headquarters in 1977, when actually the hostage taking took place in three locations, with Robinson’s role chiefly in a different part of town, at the home of the Hanafi Muslims, where he “conducted dramatic interviews in person,” the Washington Post wrote at the time.
And he lists Robinson’s brother, Randall Robinson, as head of “Pan Africa,” rather than TransAfrica, the advocacy group for Africa and the Caribbean best known for its antiapartheid efforts in the 1980s. Even the name of the documentary just discussed, “Black in White America,” is rendered incorrectly, as “Growing Up Black in White America.” Arledge died in December at age 71; Robinson in 1988 at age 49.
Rich Luna Lands at Detroit News
Richard Luna, who left suddenly this month as managing editor of the Indianapolis Star, has been named metro editor at The Detroit News, the News reported yesterday. Both the Star and News are Gannett papers.
“We’re just ecstatic about naming him,” said Detroit News Publisher and Editor Mark Silverman. “He brings great sophistication and people skills to this job.”
Luna, 44, had previously worked as an editor on the features and metro desks at the Detroit Free Press.
A five-year board member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists who lost a bid in 2002 for re-election, Luna was the No. 2 editor in the Indianapolis newsroom for about a year. The paper reported July 14 that Luna left “to pursue other opportunities within Gannett and elsewhere,” according to editor Dennis Ryerson.
Bryant Trial Judge Issues “Most Restrictive” Rules
“An Eagle County, Colo., judge reassured reporters that an order he handed down restricting access to people involved in the Kobe Bryant case is a work in progress, but he added that some restrictions will certainly be necessary,” the Vail Daily in Colorado reports.
Judge Frederick Gannett’s order includes restrictions from naming the alleged victim, interviewing witnesses, and conducting any other interviews within the courthouse.
“Manny Medrano, a legal reporter with KNBC of Los Angeles, said that if the rules stand as they were handed down Tuesday, they’d be the most restrictive he has seen in 10 years of covering high profile court cases,” the paper reported.
In other reporting on media coverage of the case:
- Columnist Marc Hansen of California’s Orange County Register: Bryant case revives query: Why shield rape victims?
- The Internet is reshaping the Bryant story, writes Bob Baker in the Los Angeles Times.
- Media writer David Shaw writes in the Los Angeles Times that “If the accused is named, the accuser should be too.”
- In the Washington Post, media writer Howard Kurtz notes how tawdry the coverage has become, but says underneath the free-for-all, “a serious debate is emerging about whether it’s time for journalists to abandon their longstanding practice of shielding the identity of alleged victims in rape cases.”
- The Miami Herald ran dueling columnists: “With Kobe the Phony, his image was illusion,” headlined Jeff Miller’s column, while Greg Cote’s was headlined, “All neutrality lost in this media mauling.”
Connie Cameron Dies, Published Seattle Weekly
Connie Cameron, “equal parts storyteller and social critic” as editor and publisher of The Seattle Medium newspaper, died Monday in Seattle after a heart attack, reports the Seattle Times. She was 51.
“A Georgia native, Mrs. Cameron, known in print and on air as Connie Bennett Cameron, was among the first group of black students to integrate the high school in her hometown of Waynesboro.
“The racism hurled at her that first year, recalled her older brother Chris H. Bennett of Seattle, rooted her passion for taking on issues she felt adversely [affected] African Americans.”
The newspaper’s “blue office on Jackson Street in Seattle’s Central Area now houses the largest African-American-owned and -operated communications company in the Pacific Northwest. Mrs. Cameron helped to oversee publications in Seattle, Tacoma and Portland, penning editorials and “poetic thoughts” that didn’t hesitate to criticize,” the Times said.
“She had had opportunities to leave the black press, her husband [architect Sam Cameron] said. But she was fiercely loyal to the family business. What began as a summer volunteer job at the newspaper turned into an award-winning journalism career. Most recently, she received an award for editorials from the National Newspaper Publishers Association,” reported the Times.
Statement of NAHJ on Latest Broadcasting Figures
NAHJ Blasts Broadcast Industry for Backpedaling on Commitment to Diversity
July 29, 2003
Washington — The president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists blasted the nation’s broadcasters for paying lip service to diversity and backpedaling in their commitment to full racial and ethnic integration of their newsrooms.
The remarks from NAHJ president Juan González came after the Radio and Television News Directors Association announced for the second straight year that the association’s annual employment survey has shown a sharp decline in the percentage of Hispanics and other minorities working in local radio and television news.
The percentage of Hispanics in local television news in 2003 was 6.5 percent, down from 7.7 percent last year and 10.1 percent in 2001, according to the RTNDA study.
Hispanics currently comprise 13.5 percent of the overall U.S. population, according to the U.S. Census.
When the large number of news professionals working in Spanish-language television are separated out, the employment percentages are even more dismal. Only 5.2 percent of newsroom employees in English-language television are Hispanic.
“The virtual disappearance of Hispanics from radio news is especially alarming,” González said. In 2003, only 1.2 percent of news personnel in local radio news were Hispanic, compared to 2.4 percent the previous year and 5.5 percent in 2001.
Radio’s “near-relentless slide” in minority employment, according to the study, began with the elimination of the old EEO rules in broadcasting.
The RTNDA study also found drops in television news employment percentages among African Americans and Asians.
As for broadcast news directors, only Asians registered a small percentage increase over previous years, and in radio only African Americans saw a small increase in their percentage of newsroom workers.
The drop in minority percentages is not due to downsizing, according to the RTNDA. The number of all workers in broadcast news grew this year, but the number for whites grew most.
The numbers are actually worse than the RTNDA indicates, because several thousand of the most coveted jobs in broadcasting — those at the network news divisions — are not accounted for in the annual survey, González said. “How can broadcasters assure the diversity of voices that federal law requires when their newsrooms are moving in the opposite direction from the rest of the nation?”
NAHJ reiterated its call for the television network news divisions to report the makeup of their newsrooms annually.
In addition, González called for major broadcasters to adopt a more pro-active approach to newsroom diversity, such as NAHJ has developed with its Parity Project for newspapers.
The NAHJ is working with media companies to increase rapidly the presence and influence of Latino journalists in selected cities by involving expertise and resources from the total community.
“We are ready to partner with any broadcast company that is serious about diversity and quality news coverage,” González said. “But we will not accept a return to the tokenism of the past.”
Roger Wilkins Statement in Times Committee Report
Roger Wilkins, a former New York Times editorial writer who now teaches history at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., was one of the three “outside” members of “The Committee on Safeguarding the Integrity of Our Journalism” at the Times. The committee endorsed his “note on affirmative action.”
A Note on Affirmative Action
The Need
The requirement that the staff of a news organization with the worldwide ambitions of The New York Times be diverse is obvious. The publisher of The Times recognized this in establishing a clear policy directing that the company pursue diversity aggressively.
The paper needs to be able to see a diverse world and an increasingly diverse nation with as many sets of eyes looking from as many differing perspectives as possible. In a purely neutral culture, gathering such a staff would be easy, but The Times’s recruitment occurs mainly within the context of the American culture, with all of the extraordinary freight that it has accumulated in the 400 years since Europeans first set foot on this continent and encountered the people who already lived here.
Essentially that culture taught that white men were the only people qualified to carry out the serious business of the world. Even down to the seventh decade of the last century, that culture was producing many newsrooms across the nation that were lily-white and all-male. The preferences and prejudices that produced such results have been blunted but have hardly disappeared in the brief 35-year period since then. Thus the countercultural forces of affirmative action and diversity programs are still necessary to assemble the kind of news gathering staff required to produce excellent journalism.
The Implementation
Essentially an affirmative action program develops innovative ways to search for qualified but nontraditional candidates for jobs, courts them aggressively, trains them effectively and manages them and the other members of the newsroom staff in ways that assure their retention as valuable employees. Retention is important because the Times newsroom is an American place and is thus touched — as are virtually all American places — by our culture, including some remnants of hostility to minorities and women.
Affirmative action done badly helps no one and injures both the company and the cause of enriched American opportunities. Thus diversity searches should be designed to discover candidates whose chances for success at The Times appear to be as great as those yielded by the newspaper’s normal recruitment policies. Further, though retention of effective female and minority employees must be a priority of a strong affirmative action program, unsatisfactory employees, no matter how they got their jobs, should be dismissed according to the newspaper’s normal policies.
An effective program would almost be assured if the paper were to put into place the kind of personnel system recommended by the Siegal Committee. Civility, training of newsroom executives in personnel management and transparent personnel transactions would go a long way toward assuring that the diversity policy enunciated at the top of the company was made real in the daily life of the paper.