Diversity in the Newsroom
Making keen
observations are essential to successful journalism. While making observations about the people
tasked with delivering the news to the public on a daily basis, it’s easy to
see a common denominator, lack of diversity.
This could be attributed to a myriad of different reasons and theories,
all of which will be covered in this case study. The purpose of this case study is to inform
on the topic and have the reader decide if the research provided leads credence
to the notion of lack of diversity in television news and the journalism field
as a whole.
Introduction: Analysis
of the Current Landscape
The first step is
to survey the current news commentary landscape in the United States. The ‘Big Three’ television networks news
bureaus of ABC, NBC and CBS currently have one news anchor of color on the
national stage in primetime and that is Lester Holt, anchor of NBC’s Dateline
and the weekend anchor of NBC Nightly News and Today. When evaluating the morning television landscape,
which is critical for generating revenue for the entire news bureau courtesy of
advertising rates derived from ratings success, only ABC News has a news anchor
of color and that is Robin Roberts, co-anchor of Good Morning America who has
held the position since 2005. CBS This
Morning, which launched in January 2012, is the flagship morning news program
for CBS News and features Gayle King, an African-American billed as co-anchor. However, playing closer attention to her
role, you begin to realize she exclusively appears on the second hour of the
show, an hour reserved in breakfast television for ‘soft’ news compared to the
harder news which airs in the first hour time slot. The other two co-anchors, Charlie Rose and Norah
O’Donnell, appear throughout the entire show for two hours.
NBC’s Today Show
had Ann Curry of Japanese descent when she replaced the popular Meredith Veira
as co-anchor for a year from June 2011 to June 2012. Savannah Guthrie, a Caucasian, controversially
replaced her; amid the program losing its ratings lead to ABC rival Good
Morning America. According to the Brian
Stelter authored book, ‘Top of the Morning: Inside the Cutthroat World of
Morning TV,’ Curry was made the scapegoat for Today’s viewer erosion due to her
mistakes and appearance. “At one point, the executive producer, Jim
Bell, commissioned a blooper reel of Curry’s worst on-air mistakes. Another time, according to a producer, Bell
called staff members into his office to show a gaffe she made during a cross
talk with a local station. (Bell denies both incidents.) Then several boxes of
Curry’s belongings ended up in a coat closet, as if she had already been booted
off the premises. One staff person recalled that, “a lot of time in the control
room was spent making fun of Ann’s outfit choices or just generally messing
with her”(Stelter 17). Once Bell
determined it was time to make a change involving Curry, a careful three-step
process was formulated. “One morning-TV veteran suggested to him
that firing Curry, who had been co-hosting for only about six months at that
point, would be tantamount to “killing Bambi.” Undeterred, Bell hatched a
careful three-part plan: 1.) persuade Lauer to extend his expiring contract;
2.) oust Curry; 3.) replace her with Savannah Guthrie. According to this
source, Bell called his plan Operation Bambi. […] (Bell denies using the term “Operation
Bambi”)(Stelter 19). The Ann Curry
fallout cast a negative viewpoint on the Today Show as evidenced by the program
losing its ratings led to ABC’s Good Morning America for the first time in 16
years. The Today Show was number one in
the morning television news ratings department for 885 consecutive weeks until
Ann Curry tearfully departed. Curry has
described leaving the Today Show as “professional torture” and according to
Stelter told colleagues that “it feels like I died and I’ve seen my own
wake.” From reading Stelter’s book, it
appears Curry felt slighted by co-host Matt Lauer after she was criticized for
not having “chemistry” with him on camera.
Viewers subsequently blamed her premature departure on Lauer, who has
been with the program since 1994 and has seen his Q score which measures
likability decline by 25%. This example
demonstrates the possible ramifications an audience can present if it
formulates a viewpoint that an anchor was replaced unfairly, their support of
the show will become severed.
On cable news, the
landscape varies depending on the network.
Fox News Channel is the most popular cable news network in the country
as evidenced by its primetime lineup consistently beating its cable news
counterparts. FNC does not feature a
news anchor of color in its weekday-programming lineup including in primetime. On the weekends, its lineup however is diverse
as it feature four people of color on various news programing. Kelly Wright and Harris Faulkner are
African-American, Uma Pemmaraju is of Indian descent, and Geraldo Rivera is a
Latin American with Puerto Rican heritage.
In regards to Fox News and Lester Holt, the question then becomes why
are people of color limited to working on-air solely on the weekends? Could it be that there is a smaller audience
that watch weekend news programming compared to its weekday counterpart? The ratings per Nielsen, the official rating
measurement database in the world show that on average, FNC has half the
audience on weekends compared to its weekday schedule. The average weekday audience of FNC
fluctuates between 1.3 and 1.5 million and 2.4 and 2.7 million in primetime. On the weekends, it features 700,000 to
800,000 viewers throughout the course of a day and 1.0 to 1.2 million viewers
in primetime.
CNN, the first
24-hour cable news network to launch in 1980 has been criticized recently for
lack of racial diversity. Since Jeff
Zucker, former executive producer of Today became president of CNN, wholesale
changes have been made to its programming lineup in regards to its on air
personalities. Soledad O’Brien, a
Latin-American, lost her position as the morning news anchor in early 2013
which CNN did not cite in its press release as to why O’Brien was removed from
her on-air position into a behind the seen production role. O’Brien cited inadequate support from CNN as
to why her morning television show ‘Starting Point’ failed to attract a wider
audience, an audience that was considered, “too ethnic, based on the high
concentration of minority viewers” by former CNN Vice President Bart Feder in a
controversial interview with Politico Magazine.
Words can often become misconstrued when conducting interviews but the
comments made by Feder displayed lack of judgment for someone in the position
of VP and reflected poorly on CNN to the point where the network felt the need
to issue clarification on Feder’s comments.
Feder citing too much ethnicity of Starting Point’s audience as one of
the reasons for O’Brien downfall is cause for concern in regards to newsroom
diversity. O’Brien mentioned in an
interview with the Huffington Post shortly after her transition at the company
that, “We (Starting Point) did not get a lot of promotion. We did not get a lot of marketing, we weren’t
fully staffed.” A report on Mediabistro
asserts that the cause for O’Brien’s Starting Point failing to attract a wider
audience was due to the show being rushed.
The show’s premiere was pushed forward to January of 2012 to coincide
with the all-important Iowa Caucus. From
the show’s start, it was not fully staffed and the initial promise of promoting
the show never materialized as expected, leading credence to O’Brien’s beliefs
as to why Starting Point was cancelled.
Consistent ratings success compared to the competition is often the
measuring stick barometer that network executives use to judge how successful a
program is. That logic is simple and
arguably reasonable to understand as the more viewers a program brings in, the
more a network can charge advertisers to run a commercial during that
designated time slot. Production of news
programming is not cheap hence the desire for a network to have a show that
will generate revenue based on its own rating success. When evaluating the ratings of Starting Point
for January 2013, its last month prior to cancellation, the show attracted a
daily, cumulative audience of 264,00 viewers.
Direct cable morning news competitors to CNN’s Starting Point, MSNBC’s
Morning Joe and FNC’s Fox & Friends had 468,000 and 1.07 million viewers
respectively. Those numbers for each
network are nearly identical across the board a year prior in January 2012, the
month that Starting Point premiered.
Considering the ratings, there was not an improvement of O’Brien’s
ratings nor was there viewership erosion.
The ratings for all cable morning news programming stayed constant which
leads to the question of why O’Brien was replaced after only one year? Could it be that racial inequality played a
role in her show’s cancellation? The
National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) seemed to view O’Brien’s
cancellation with a jaundiced eye as it summoned a meeting with CNN President
Jeff Zucker in February to address the network’s commitment to journalists of
color. Since O’Brien’s transition to a
less visible, off camera position, only one news anchor of color remains on
CNN’s weekday programming lineup, which is Suzanne Malveaux. On the weekends, three news anchors are black
including Don Lemon, Victoria Blackwell and Fredericka Whitfield. Lemon has recently been awarded a possible
promotion within the company, as he will have a weeknight program airing for 30
minutes at 11pm air for several weekends as a trial run during Erin Burnett’s
maternity leave from the network.
Burnett’s show OutFront airs re-runs at the 11pm hour. Why did it take a host having to depart on
maternity leave for Lemon, who has been with the network since 2006, to receive
his opportunity, albeit through a trial run, to have a weeknight program? In his previous role as President of NBC
Universal, Zucker hired Paula Madison as chief diversity officer and charged
her with hiring and promoting black talent in front of and behind the cameras
on local television news affiliates as well as on the national level. It will be interesting to see if Zucker
appoints a similar role at CNN, charged with opening the doors for diversity
for news anchors and on-air personalities.
MSNBC, NBC’s
24-hour cable news network has made a concerted effort to hire black
personalities for news anchor roles. The
network’s current programming lineup features a plethora of diverse talent that
serve as news anchors including Tamron Hall host of NewsNation, Toure of the
Cycle, Al Sharpton of PoliticsNation and Melissa Harris-Perry. For the exception of Perry whose show airs on
Saturday and Sunday mornings, all aforementioned news anchors broadcast during
the weekday. In an interview with Mediate, MSNBC President Phil Griffin described the diverse a semblance of
talent is due to the network’s philosophy.
“This has been steady
growth for us for some time,” Griffin noted on the network’s ratings
improvement. “I think we made a commitment, we decided, that in order for this
channel to succeed, that we had to reflect the country. This meant that we had
to be part of the country in ways that the other channels weren’t.” Griffin added, “We have a diverse on-air
group of people,” Griffin said, “because that matters, and people want to know
that we reflect their world. And it’s not just a single show – it’s across the
board. You look at the guests every hour and we make sure that we have women,
African Americans, everything, and I think to spend a day watching MSNBC is to
see America as we have seen it.” Due to
the network’s commitment in that philosophy, MSNBC saw it’s African-American
audience increase by 60% last year. “It
wasn’t like we said ‘Oh, we have to have a diverse person on here and there,’”
he said. “We made a decision. We made a commitment in ideas, issues and
everything – the audience followed, and that goes back to four or five years
ago. As we grew, we recognized that it was the right thing to do. It’s
giving a voice to people in these kinds of programs who don’t always get a
voice. Our look is as diverse as any on mainstream TV. I’m incredibly
proud of it. It’s not like we decided ‘We’re going to increase our African
American viewership by 60%,’ but I’m thrilled that it happened, and it says a
lot about what we’ve been doing over the last few years.”
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| News Anchor Desk Courtesy of Broadcast Engineering |
Local and International
Are news networks more willing to hire a
more diverse news anchor team for its local affiliates that have a segmented
audience than on the national stage, which feature a wider audience? When examining the local news broadcast teams
in the New York area alone, for WCBS-TV, WNBC-TV, WNYW-TV and WABC-TV,
diversity comes to the forefront. Each
network features a news anchor of color including in primetime. Both of CBS 2’s primetime anchors for the 5
pm and 11 pm newscasts are of color as Maurice DuBois is a Dominican American
and his co-anchor Kristine Johnson is from the Philippines. On NBC 4, diversity is widespread as Shiba
Russell; an African-American replaced another black news anchor, Sue Simmons in
June 2012 as co-anchor of the 5 pm and 11 pm newscast alongside veteran anchor
Chuck Scarborough. Darlene Rodriguez, a
Puerto Rican-American, is the anchor of the morning broadcast. David Ushery, an African-American is well
respected throughout the New York City journalism scene for his investigative
reporting and contributions to the community.
Subsequently WNBC awarded Ushery with his own show “The Debrief with
David Ushery” which was awarded an Emmy in 2011. ABC 7 has news anchors of color as well
evidenced by two African-Americans, Sade Baderinwa and Sandra Bookman working
weeknights, in primetime at 5 pm, 6 pm and 11 pm. David Navarro of Philippine descent and Liz
Cho, an Asian American, anchor the afternoon newscast at 4 pm. ABC 7’s entire morning broadcast team is of
ethnic color as Lori Stokes is African-American and Ken Rosato is a Hispanic
American. Even the state of Utah which
is stereotyped as ultra conservative due to the Mormon religion hired a black,
female news anchor, Nadia Crow, for Salt Lake City’s ABC News affiliate this
fall.
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| FairMedia Council Maurice DuBois and Kristine Johnson CBS 2 |
The international broadcast landscape is
harder to assess accurately due to most countries not having a diverse
background of citizens compared to the United States. In many countries throughout Europe and Asia,
the demographics are dominated by one overwhelming race. One country with a similar, eclectic mix of
racial-ethnic groups is the United Kingdom.
Sky News, owned by News Corp, is the UK’s version of CNN, a 24-hour
cable news outfit. While observing
various programming throughout the course of a week, I noticed that there was
not a diverse presence of news anchors.
Of the 18 employed news anchors that appear throughout the course of the
day on Sky News on various news programming, only two anchors are of
color. Gillian Joseph, an
African-American female appears on the morning news program Sunrise on the
weekends, Friday through Sunday. Lukwesa
Burak, from Zambia, does not have a set schedule and appears periodically
throughout the week on-air. Rival BBC
News on the other hand features a more diverse lineup. Matthew Amroliwala has family lineage from the
Middle East and anchors weekdays from 2pm to 5pm. Clive Myrie, an African-Caribbean presents
Monday through Thursday in the evenings. Naga Munchetty and Babita Sharma are of Indian
descent and anchor during the night for BBC and BBC World News
respectively. On BBC World News, George
Alagiah is a Tamil and anchors on weekday mornings. Four presenters of various ethnic
backgrounds including African-Caribbean, Indian, Pakistani and Sindhi descent
anchor on either the weekends or are considered substitute co-hosts. Those presenters for BBC World News are
Rajesh Mirchandani, Sonali Shah, Mishal Husain and Sharanjit Leyl. Although there are some newscasters of color
featured during the weekday, there is a prevailing theme of diversity taking
place more frequently on the weekends similar to the United States news-broadcasting
counterpart.
Why? The National Association
of Black Journalists React
A report by Poynter, a non-profit
journalism school located in Florida, cites that The American Society of News Editors (ASNE) reports that the
percentage of African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American
journalists continues to decline in U.S. newsrooms for the third consecutive
year. Astoundingly, there were, “929 fewer black journalists in the 2010 survey
than were recorded in 2001,” a drop of 31.5 percent. This report strongly suggests that the perspective
and unique insight that black journalists, in particular, and minority
journalists, in general, bring to their newsrooms and communities are being
marginalized and devalued – and, by default, so is the paying readership. On the print side, NABJ applauded The New
York Times for its recent decision to promote an African American, Dean Baquet,
to managing editor of news. Unfortunately, black editors are becoming an
“endangered species” in the midst of layoffs. For example, daily newspapers in
Houston and Savannah have staffs that are disproportionately white. Yet, the
communities they serve are overwhelmingly of color. The Houston Chronicle does
not have a single black metro editor deciding what gets covered on a daily
basis. While the recession and digital
revolution can be attributed to some of the dip, NABJ believes that the
downsizing decisions should be proportionate to the populations served by each
newspaper. The president of NABJ, Kathy
Y. Times made the argument in a letter in June 2011 that news anchors of color
are qualified yet they are being overlooked for possible promotions at their
respective network of employment. “People
of color comprise more than a third of the U.S. population. The 2010 Census
shows the minority population is growing from coast to coast, and the majority
of children in the U.S. will be minorities by 2050. So, there’s a strong case
to be made that news media is running in the wrong direction of its audience. The Big 3 networks and cable news channels
have undergone a series of rare changes behind the desk. While the replacements
are all seasoned journalists, what is glaringly missing in the flurry of
changes is the failure to elevate African Americans to any of these positions.
The National Association of Black Journalists finds this troubling –
particularly since there are dynamic African Americans poised to ascend to
these coveted positions. For nearly four decades, NABJ has worked tirelessly as
advocates for diversity, calling out those guilty of maintaining the “status
quo.” As America inches toward a world that is more black and brown,
corporations are adjusting their cultures to embrace diversity because they
know it makes good business sense. But too many network executives are ignoring
this reality. Russ Mitchell of CBS News, Lester Holt of NBC News, and CNN’s T.
J. Holmes are weekend warriors who possess charisma, journalistic heft, and the
handsome qualities to front a prime-time show. Mitchell’s poise and
professional bearing as he commandeered the historic announcement of Osama bin
Laden’s death surely put to rest any doubt about his prime-time readiness. Holt
has been the go-to guy as a substitute for vacationing “stars,” but his primary
shift is the weekend,” as detailed in the letter to network executives complaining
about lack of diversity.
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| Logo of the NABJ |
Reaction
Glenn Proctor, former editor of
the Richmond Times-Dispatch who served in the journalism industry for 40 years
has encouraged news agencies to become more vigilant in finding diverse
reporting talent. “The lesson is simple,
diverse newsrooms are necessary for all the obvious reasons. But editors and publishers sometimes need to
be pushed to find and hire diverse candidates.
But because editors must fill jobs in a quick time frame, they don’t
expand the pool of candidates to include people of color,” said Proctor in an
interview with Mediawire. The
Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications formed
in 2000, created a standard that media must reflect and serve the diversity of
America. The council requires journalism
schools to hire women and faculty members of color. In a video promo interview discussing his
program on BET, ‘Don’t Sleep,’ TJ Holmes, an African-American and formerly the
weekend morning anchor on CNN said in regards to lack of racial diversity in
the journalism field, “I’ve always said that I’ve never had an African-American
boss in my journalism career,” said Homes.
“But I’ve had plenty of my bosses look me dead in the eye and tell me
what black people think. This (show) is
an opportunity now to tell people in the country what we think,” said
Holmes. This is one of the reasons
Holmes cited as to why he left his position at CNN to host his own weeknight
show on BET. Holmes went on to add that
chose to leave CNN because, “they have a different type of audience. “ The accrediting council also tired to give
journalism schools some tools for change in diversity in a 2003 handbook of
best practices. The teaching strategies
ranged from bringing in guest speakers to integrating diversity into every part
of the school. In the most successful
classrooms, all courses, from journalism history to news values to ethics
included ideas about how to incorporate diversity into the field. In an interview with the Society of Professional
Journalists, De Uriarte, who
is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, recommends
changing the learning environment so that it supports intellectual
diversity. “Readings and discussions
should include more writings and research by authors of color. New classes should educate students about the
history of race in America and the U.S. power structure,” she says. “Students could read George Fredrickson’s A
Short History of Racism, for example, or Ronald Takaki’s A Different Mirror: A
History of the Multicultural United States.”
A study by SPJ went on to conclude that like newsrooms, journalism
schools that commit to it could indeed diversify. The University of Alabama
went from no communication professors of color in 1989 to about one in eight in
1998. The University of Florida more than doubled minority faculty from 9.4
percent to nearly 20 percent over the same period. The University of Missouri
quadrupled its faculty of color to 12.2 percent and doubled its female faculty
to 40.8 percent during that time. Lee
Becker and his colleagues at the University of Georgia studied the reasons
behind such successes. All three colleges had targeted hiring and kept job
descriptions flexible. They also developed student recruiting and curriculum
diversity at the same time.
When speaking to students who
described themselves as observers of news, one common response to why they
believed there is a lack of diversity in journalism had to do with who they
would be learning it from. “I would be
reticent to join journalism because its not diverse a program as say business
administration,” said Rohan Vaidya. “If
possible, students would like to learn from a diverse selection of professors
so that they can share in their respective life experiences in the profession
that you are also pursuing a career in, it’s not the fault of Rutgers if there
aren’t many diverse people in the profession to begin with. In this sense Rutgers or any journalist
department is limited in who they can choose as professors to teach students”
he said. Mike Bierman, a junior,
mentioned that the younger generation seeks people in their desired profession
that they can relate to. “When you watch
a news show, you mostly see the same demographic reporting the news,” said
Bierman. “You usually see an older white
male in his 50s or 60s and if you’re black or Hispanic, you might find that
hard to relate to. I aspire to be in
finance and there are people in that profession that I see that I can relate to
in some ways,” he said. Omotade
Fetgeruson, a junior, who spent part of his childhood living in London, was
able to observe the United Kingdom’s style of delivering news content. “Whenever I watch the news, one thing I
notice is that the diversity isn’t the same as what I saw in England, said
Fetgeruson. “There’s more of a mix
especially people from the Middle East or India I often see reporting for like
BBC News,” he said. Journalism departments are encouraged to seek
a wide mixture of students and in their teaching choices; professors have been
encouraged to expose their charges to a spectrum of issues, voices and
views. Research conducted by the
Accrediting Council show that the nation’s journalism school faculties does not
reflect the nation’s population. For the
past two decades, less than one out of every 12 full professors in journalism
and mass communication was someone of color.
Journalism and mass communication programs include a smaller proportion
of faculty of color than the overall makeup of most four-year colleges nationwide.
Conclusion
Through reading this case study,
the hope is to process the information and determine ways to improve diversity
in the newsroom. From my perspective, it
was an important study to conduct when I have an ambition to become a news
anchor in due time, regardless if the conventional role of news anchoring
becomes unconventional in years to come due to the emergence of social media
through convergence and how that reflects people receiving their news. It’s important to find out if I would face
being in a profession, dedicating my life to only realize that I was operating
under the dreaded professional “glass ceiling.”
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