It's amusing to watch liberals blast each other for failing to meet goals of racial diversity. Alicia Shepard, a former ombudsman at National Public Radio, wrote a piece for BillMoyers.com headlined "How Newsrooms Fail To Reflect America and Why It Matters: Too often, there's only one person among the reporters and editors to speak up for diversity."
Their target was MSNBC, which has boasted all over the place about its bevy of female reporters covering the 2016 presidential campaign. But Shepard can still use their advertisement about it as a starting place for complaints:
Yes, it’s great to see young women flourishing on the campaign trail. Yes, the casual chic may appeal to some millennials. But given that our country is on its way to the long-dominant white majority becoming the minority, this photo doesn’t reflect society. If I were an African-American or Hispanic — and I’m not — I would not see myself in this photo. (OK maybe if you look really closely you might discern that Kristen Welker, second from right, is biracial. Her mother is black and her father white.)
"Ok, maybe" Welker is biracial....which means she's just like Barack Obama. You have to "look closely"?
Shepard peppered MSNBC with racial-diversity inquiries, something their hosts -- from Chris Hayes to Melissa Harris-Perry -- boasted about their superiority in race-balancing.
When we asked MSNBC about the lack of diversity in its “road warriors” ad, the network responded by providing a list of its on-air talent of color, a list of eight that includes Welker and José Diaz-Balart, although he has left his regular gig on the cable channel’s air for a seat at the NBC Nightly News anchor desk (weekend edition). A promised breakdown of MSNBC’s staff demographics didn’t arrive by deadline.
Census projections indicate that minorities will become a majority in the US by 2044, which makes it imperative to have more diverse voices and perspective in traditional and digital media.
Why does it matter?
For starters, diversity is good for business. If the audience doesn’t see itself reflected in news stories, then minorities often think their interests are being ignored, misinterpreted, distorted or undervalued.
Based on her interviews with us, we know Shepard knows there's more than one kind of diversity. This whole argument about "diversity is good for business" is never applied to hiring more conservative journalists. Shepard also didn't address the question if minority public-affairs viewers are going instead to more racial/ethnic media, from Univision to BET and black and Hispainic websites. Diversity defeats "groupthink," she claims, but doesn't apply that to conservatives:
Diverse voices often conquer a common newsroom malady: groupthink.
For [NPR TV critic Eric] Deggans, there’s an ethical value connected to accuracy. To accurately cover immigration, policing in poor communities, rising incarceration rates and the #BlackLivesMatter movement, you need the input of a diverse staff — staff members with firsthand experience with these issues.
“That level of coverage is much, much more difficult without a diversity of staff at all levels of the news organization,” Deggans said. “So even though there’s a fairness and social justice component to giving women and journalists of color equal opportunities in newsrooms, the overriding issue in my estimation, is the increased fairness and accuracy of coverage which results from a staff whose diversity matches the community it is covering.”
Shepard (and Deggans) also don't wonder if what happens inside liberal newsrooms is a different kind of "groupthink." Everyone has to side with Black Lives Matter, with LGBT advocates, with amnesty-pushing, "Dreamer"-boosting Hispanic lobbyists. Ethnic media activists enforce a different kind of "groupthink." Think outside their box, and you're placed back in the "racist" category.
