Network Reporters of Color Less Visible in ’04
Correspondents of color were 23 percent less visible on the broadcast networks’ evening news programs in the 2004 election year than they were in 2003, according to the annual study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, released Monday.
“If any specific minority group took a hit, it was Latinos,” center spokesman Matthew T. Felling told Journal-isms today. “With Jim Avila leaving for [the ABC newsmagazine] ’20/20,’ the number went down.
“The crux of our study is that (A) there seems to be a threshold (what I’ve called a ‘white ceiling’) for minorities of about 14% visibility—the networks never assign them more than that in a given year, and (B) even though minorities crack the top ten occasionally, they never enter the highest echelon, to where a network would assign a minority to a high-profile presidential campaign.
“At least that’s this observer’s view.”
The center’s data showed that on the ABC, CBS and NBC nightly news shows, blacks covered 7.8 percent of the stories in 2004; and Latinos covered 2 percent. In 2003, the figures had been 7 percent for blacks, 3 percent for Hispanics; in 2002, 9 percent blacks, 2 percent Hispanics; in 2001, 8 percent blacks, 2 percent Hispanics; in 2000, 9 percent blacks, 2 percent Hispanics; in 1999, 10 percent blacks, 3 percent Hispanics; and 1998, 10 percent for blacks, 2 percent for Hispanics.
However, the survey’s racial and ethnic identifications of the correspondents are not entirely accurate. Veronica Villafañe, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said she believed that three reporters on the list identified as white are actually Latino. And Bill Whitaker of CBS, who is African American, is listed as white.
[Added March 3: “We coded him as an African-American in our research,” said Felling. “The only mistake made was a typo on the table.”]
On the racial breakdown, Felling added that, “since Asian reporters make up an even smaller ratio than Latinos, we didn’t tease them out especially this year. . . . Don’t assume that blacks went up [this year]. I only had data out to the tenths for this past year, so last year it could have been as much as 7.4%.”
The study also ranks reporters and correspondents by the number of stories they filed. Heading the list were Tom Brokaw of NBC, 200; Peter Jennings of ABC, 186; and John Roberts of CBS, 159.
The journalists of color with the highest number of stories filed were Byron Pitts of CBS, who is African American, with 96, ranking 15th; Carl Quintanila of NBC, who is Hispanic, with 83, tied for 17th; Pierre Thomas of ABC, African American, with 61 stories, ranking 30th; Rosiland Jordan of NBC, African American, with 60 stories, tied for 31st; Randall Pinkston of CBS, African American, with 41 stories, in 46th place; and Ron Allen of NBC, African American, with 40 stories, tied for 47th place.
NBC was called the “worst diverse” and CBS the best.
In December, leaders of the National Association of Black Journalists met with NBC News President Neal Shapiro, after which NBC News committed to “continued dialogue about hiring and retaining black journalists.” Shapiro met again in January with the NABJ board, driving to the New York board meeting in a snowstorm after being on a red-eye flight from the West Coast, said Barbara Ciara, NABJ’s vice president/broadcast.
“It was like a posse left the building” at NBC last year, Ciara said, as Shapiro, a former “Dateline NBC” executive producer, said he wanted a change of direction, from those who reported breaking news to those who excelled in newsmagazine-type story telling.
“But people who are still there say that’s code for, ‘we’re not in his circle,'” Ciara said. She added that after the January meeting, Terri Martin, an executive producer, e-mailed NABJ that NBC was looking for “serious candidates for major positions from reporters to PAs,” or program assistants.
In February, leaders of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists met with CBS News President Andrew Heyward to urge that a Latino be part of whatever new arrangement the network creates for the “CBS Evening News.”
“Anytime there’s a drop in the presence of minorities covering the news, it’s a source for concern, Villafañe told Journal-isms today. “I’m particularly worried that Latino journalists are barely visible in network news, when the Latino population, now the largest minority in this country continues to grow. It’s evident that there isn’t true representation of the population and that has to change.”
ABC hires Liz Marlantes of Christian Science Monitor (Broadcasting & Cable)
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Globe Scolds Reporter Bray Over Blog Postings
Hiawatha Bray, a Boston Globe technology reporter, came under fire Tuesday night from the group Media Matters for America, which describes itself as “a Web-based, not-for-profit progressive research and information center dedicated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”
“While reporting on the 2004 presidential campaign for The Boston Globe, technology reporter Hiawatha Bray apparently wrote posts for several weblogs in which he declared his support for President Bush, attacked Sen. John Kerry, and bolstered discredited allegations by the anti-Kerry group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (now Swift Vets and POWs for Truth),” a story on the Web site said.
The Globe today challenged the accuracy of the Web site’s report, but said that Bray had been told that his blog postings were “inappropriate and violation of our standards.”
“Mr. Bray is a technology reporter and did not cover the presidential campaign, other than a minor technology-related story on very rare occasions,” spokeswoman Mary Jane Wilkinson said in a statement. “That said, his blog postings were inappropriate and in violation of our standards, and he was informed of that when we learned of them last fall. Mr. Bray was instructed to discontinue any such postings, and to our knowledge he complied.
“Mr. Bray was not a Globe reporter on the Swift Boat Veterans matter, the presidential primaries, or the general election campaign. Our coverage of those subjects should be judged on its own merits, and we are confident the coverage meets the standards of fairness, accuracy, and honesty.”
Bray is one of the few African Americans covering technology issues on a metro daily and comes from a journalistic family. A sister, Rosemary Bray McNatt, a Unitarian Universalist minister, is a former editor with the New York Times Book Review.
Bray has continued running brief observations on his blog, mostly about technology. He wrote on Jan. 21:
“Another Powell Out of a Job
“Colin’s out as Secretary of State, and now his son Michael steps down at the FCC.
“Pity. I liked the guy, and I think that in general, he gets it. The digital age is transforming media in ways that make some traditional FCC concerns, like media concentration, seem vaguely ridiculous. Alas, lots of other folks don’t see it that way. Still, time will prove him right. So long, Mike.”
How much free speech is a journalist entitled to outside his or her own newsroom? (Dan Kennedy, Boston Phoenix)
Finding real discourse online about race matters can be tough (Keith M. Woods, Poynter Institute)
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Did Chris Rock Really Pull Down Oscar Ratings?
The e-mail list of the National Association of Black Journalists debated the role that host Chris Rock might or might not have played in the disappointing ratings of Sunday’s Academy Awards telecast.
At least three black columnists weighed in on the comedian and the Oscars:
- LaShawn Barber, La Shawn Barber’s Corner: Triumph of Ignorance and Vulgarity
- Clarence Page, Chicago Tribune: Rock ‘n’ `Ryan’: The 2 sides of TV censorship
- Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: Oscar’s ‘Ray’ Of Hope
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On Liquor Ads, BET’s Been There, Done That
Much was made this week of CNN’s decision to become the first national cable television news network to accept commercials for distilled spirits.
The commercials, as Stuart Elliott reported Tuesday in the New York Times, must include a message that promotes drinking responsibly.
But Black Entertainment Television began running hard-liquor ads in 1996, as Alicia Mundy reported for MediaWeek at the time.
“You know, they were running liquor ads on Hispanic TV for five years, and nobody said a thing! But now when it’s on regular TV, suddenly it’s a health issue,” Mundy later quoted BET founder Bob Johnson as saying. “Bullshit! I don’t make money off liquor ads. Maybe $60,000 (partly from Seagram). That’s out of $ 60 million in ad revenue. It’s nothing. But it’s the principle. Alcohol is alcohol. You don’t see them rushing to take beer ads off the air, do you?”
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Harris Faulkner Joins “A Current Affair”
“Michel James Bryant, Harris Faulkner, and Tina Malave have been named correspondents of ‘A Current Affair,’ the contemporary version of the groundbreaking news magazine show hosted by Tim Green and scheduled to launch March 21, 2005,” begins a news release issued yesterday from Twentieth Television, part of Fox.
Broadcasting & Cable magazine reported Monday that the syndicated magazine show, usually scheduled as a lead-in to prime time, is now cleared in about 50 percent of the country and will begin airing again in the spring, it said. The show aired for 10 years starting in 1986.
The news release said, “Bryant joins ‘A Current Affair’ from ‘Extra,’ where he served as the program’s legal expert and consumer reporter. He will be based in ‘A Current Affair’s’ West Coast bureau. Most recently, Faulkner was the principal weeknight anchor for ABC’s Minneapolis affiliate KSTP. Malave formerly hosted the NBC reality program ‘Next Action Star.’ Both Faulkner and Malave will be based out of ‘A Current Affair’s’ east coast headquarters.”
As reported last year, the Minneapolis station made history when it paired Kent Ninomiya, a Japanese-American man, with Harris Faulkner, an African American woman, in the anchor chair. However, the show was not a ratings success.
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Feelings Still Strong Over Essence Sale to Time
The polarizing feelings among many African Americans over the January sale of Essence magazine to Time Inc. played out in the March issue of Black Enterprise magazine, in an unscientific poll on the Black Enterprise Web site and in a discussion on Tuesday’s “News and Notes With Ed Gordon” on National Public Radio.
Marcia Gillespie, who served as editor-in-chief of Essence from 1971 to 1980, said in the March issue of Black Enterprise, which is not yet online:
“As a people in the 1970s, we were searching to own and control our own business. It was about black entrepreneurship and all that implies so [the sale] is counter to that. I have mixed feelings about the sale because it signals that we are headed in a different direction than what our dream was about. We lost a piece of our history.”
In conjunction with the article, the Web site asked readers during the week of Feb. 15:
“How do you feel about Essence Communications Partners agreeing to sell the remaining 51% of its ownership to Time Inc.?”
Of 730 responses, 101, or 14 percent, checked, “It makes good business sense”; 249, or 34 percent, said, “They sold out”; 333, or 46 percent, said they were “concerned about how it will affect the magazine, other events”; and 47, or 6 percent, said they were unsure.
On Gordon’s NPR show Tuesday, Derek T. Dingle, author of the Black Enterprise article, and Forbes magazine’s Brett Pulley, author of a biography of Black Entertainment Television founder Bob Johnson, differed.
Pulley likened the Essence situation to that of BET: “It’s difficult for people to digest the idea of Black Entertainment Television being sold to a mainstream company. Particularly we’re talking about a company that’s the only black-owned television entity at the time, so that’s difficult to accept, but I think it’s a question of, you know: Is the glass half-empty or half-full?
“And I think it’s progress because, you know, the fact is there will be other Black Entertainment Televisions. You know, there are people who are working to launch cable entities. There are some that are getting going. It’s not easy, but I think other people are creating assets that will replace it. At the same time, the capital that Bob Johnson got from the sale helped create the first owner of a professional sports team. As you know, Bob bought the Charlotte Bobcats, the Charlotte franchise of the NBA. So it’s sort of the way it works in business, and I think it’s especially difficult when we’re talking about media entities. But, nonetheless, I think that other people are coming along who will replace those that are sold off.”
But Dingle, who is executive editor of Black Enterprise, favored maintaining black ownership.
“The challenge is whether you’re going to have entrepreneurs who are going to look at, one, how they can tap shareholder value and maintain black ownership,” he said. “When you look at a company like Burrell Advertising, which has a 49 percent stake ownership by Publicis Corp., which is a French conglomerate, the owner took a strategic thrust in which he passed on his majority ownership stake to his managers and maintained that company as black owned. So as we look at the future in terms of maintaining black institutions, it may require some creativity and some ingenuity as we go forward,” Dingle said.
Pulley also noted that, as Time initially bought a minority share of Essence, Rupert Murdoch recently invested in TV One, the year-old black cable channel geared toward adults. CEO Johnathan Rodgers, in an article Sunday on TV One by Ken Parish Perkins of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, predicted his network would break even in less than five years.
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Ex-Essence Publisher Turns to Travel Business
While Essence Co-Founder Ed Lewis will continue to represent Essence as “non-executive chairman” under Time Inc. ownership, the other Essence co-founder, Clarence Smith, is devoting his time to the travel business.
“When we first created Essence in 1970, the magazine emerged as a bridge between African American women and the mainstream public,” Smith said in a news release quoted in a Black Enterprise profile. “The creation of Avocet [Travel] is a natural extension of my continued mission to build bridges between cultures.”
“Smith and his seven employees have spent the last couple of years laying the groundwork for an exclusive deal recently approved by the Department of Transportation to do just that—offering the nation’s first nonstop air charter service between the U.S. and Bahia, Brazil, the third leading tourist destination in Brazil according to the American Society of Travel Agents,” reporter Glenn Townes wrote.
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U.Md. Paper Acknowledges Lack of Black Staffers
The final installment Monday in a four-part series in the University of Maryland’s student newspaper on the history of blacks on the campus contained this passage:
“Today, none of The Diamondback’s 16 editors is black. There are no black staff writers.
“In fact, while there is a ‘diversity’ beat position on the staff, many of the blacks working at The Diamondback in recent years have been columnists and general assignment reporters.
“In its history dating back to 1910, the paper has only had two black editor-in-chiefs: Ivan Penn, who held the position in 1990-1991, and Jayson Blair, the journalist whose plagiarism at The New York Times brought great scrutiny to the university’s journalism school and its policies.
“The campus does have two other publications aimed specifically at blacks, but both publish monthly and have small staffs and light content.
“The Diamondback’s open house last month yielded only a few prospective black journalists out of a room of more than 40.
“‘We have few minorities seeking out positions at the newspaper and turnover rate at The Diamondback is incredibly high,’ editor in chief Jonathan Cribbs said. ‘Therefore, when we do have qualified minority applicants, much like other people on our staff, they tend to leave almost as quickly as they come in.'”
A survey last year by the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education to which newspapers at 19 of the nation’s 25 highest-ranked universities responded, found 350 editors at the 19 papers. “Only nine, or 2.6 percent, were black.”
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Three Papers Drop “Boondocks” Strip
“At least three of the approximately 300 ‘Boondocks’ clients dropped today’s strip mentioning President Bush’s alleged former drug use,” Dave Astor reported Monday in Editor & Publisher.
“Aaron McGruder‘s comic showed one character saying: ‘Bush got recorded admitting that he smoked weed.’ Another character replies: ‘Maybe he smoked it to take the edge off the coke.’
“According to Universal Press Syndicate, newspapers pulling today’s strip included The Detroit News and the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. The Poynter Institute’s Romenesko site reported that the Chicago Tribune also dropped today’s ‘Boondocks,’ with the paper saying the comic ‘presents inaccurate information as fact.’
“Universal said the Star Tribune also plans to drop tomorrow’s ‘Boondocks,’ which again refers to Bush’s alleged former drug use.
“The syndicate further noted that The Miami Herald plans to pull ‘The Boondocks’ when McGruder addresses a different topic this Friday and Saturday; Universal declined to say what that topic will be.”
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