#JournalismSoWhite: DEI Is MIA In American Media — Forbes
The New York Post has come under fire for racial bias in two stories. The first titled “Trayvon Martin had traces of marijuana in system at time of death, autopsy reveals” presents 17-year-old Martin, black, unarmed, and murdered near his home in 2012, with a negative, or prejudicial, bias. The second, a recent story, titled “Suspected teen gunman Kyle Rittenhouse spotted cleaning Kenosha graffiti before shooting” presents the white, heavily-armed, alleged murderer, also 17, with a positive, or confirmation, bias. The images set side-by-side bring to mind Alexandra Bell’s bracing Counternarratives, which “interrogates and revises racial bias in media.”
In countless ways, direct and subtle, the American media industry has kept Jim Crow alive: “If you’re white, you’re alright; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re yellow, you’re mellow; but if you’re black — oh, brother! — get back, get back, get back.” This demands immediate redress by the industry and aggressive reversals of status quo, beginning with those who hold the pen.
Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-chief at The Atlantic, said “It’s really, really hard to write a 10,000-word cover story. There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males.” (NeimanLab, June 2019). Goldberg probably thought he’d never hear the end of this, but he wasn’t wrong. He was simply telling an ugly truth that he, and so many others in his position, have the power to change — yesterday. But then, in his next breath, he encouraged and emphasized a focus on gender, not race, as the corrective path. “We have to be very deliberate and efficient about creating the space for more women to develop that particular journalistic muscle.”
The persistent conflation of anti-black racial discrimination with gender discrimination deprioritizes injuries specific to anti-black racism. Raising alarms about “The Patriarchy” instead rapidly produces adjustments that provide equity benefits to white and white-proximate women, and still leaves black women out of this ancient equation. (Black men too, for that matter.) Goldberg and other whites who hold the power to force change in American media consistently get this calculus wrong. Is it intentional?
The Atlantic’s 2020 Report on Diversity and Inclusion represents its race and gender composition over the past seven years. Black people held 7% of staff positions as of June 30, 2020, up just two points from 2013 — forthose keeping track, that’s a two-tick increase over 7 years. Blacks comprised 10% of the publication’s editorial leadership, according to its oddly-named report.
Howard French, graduate professor at Columbia Journalism, said it best: Blacks “who make their way [in] are heavily concentrated in stereotypical roles. [They’re] essentially absent from large swaths of coverage, and even more sparsely represented among the ranks of editors. This problem is obvious to anyone who cares to look…” ( The enduring whiteness of the American media)
This means that, with 77% certainty, stories about black life and experience, when told through American media, have first been pitched by white writers to white editors who serve the best interests of white corporate sponsorship, white media owners, and white media managers. Then, if those black stories are accepted for publication, they’re filtered through white life experience and steeped in white perspective. This journalistic gate-keeping mechanism is hard at work even in my hometown, ultra “progressive” Seattle, and often working overtime at national platforms. Unsurprisingly, the resulting content can feel superficial, contrived, distant, and thin.
“What we should be most concerned about […] is the narrowing of choices, because that removes […] the full spectrum of views and information …” (PBS Independent Lens)
The broad daylight murder of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by white former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020 kicked off a boom of diversity initiatives across corporate America. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion heads were brought on board and tasked with negotiating quick fixes for decades-long shortfalls in corporate leadership responsibility and accountability.
Right on trend, mainstream American media has been saturated with proclamations that “Black Lives Matter,” but where are their black editors-in-chief, black managing editors, black staff writers, and black freelance writers?
When Black Lives Matter in American media, black people will finally be well represented, and taking up substantial space across the newsroom and across the page.
Originally published at https://www.forbes.com.
