Covering Diversity - The Need for Inclusion

Joe Bartolotta
jb177314@ohio.edu


The power journalists hold regarding the overall discourse that is put out to the public, is a subject that should be handled with much scrutiny. Simply writing articles that align with only one person or group’s discourse pushes many marginalized groups of people out of the conversation making them feel ignored. When covering the news, stories about marginalized groups are often treated as commodities or isolated topics in the news. The inclusion of marginalized groups such as racial minorities or the LGBTQ+ communities into daily news simply as a standard of practice is what journalists must strive for. To simply label these groups as a separate fragment of the news is not a justifiable practice when it comes to social progress in our society. As a result, many of these people have very low trust in mainstream news and are not satisfied with the overall media portrayals of them. To successfully cover these groups and communities, journalists must do their best to educate themselves to present them in a holistic way.

According to a survey by the Media Insight Project, a large majority of Hispanic and African-American news consumers do not trust mainstream media to accurately portray their communities. Many of these people say they cannot successfully seek out mainstream news coverage that accurately portrays them and their communities. This can be paralleled by these groups’ distrust of our systems in the United States such as the legal system or the education system. This is of course a result of the institutional racism deeply embedded in these systems. As a result, the mainstream coverage of these marginalized groups fails to highlight the fact that these systems treat them unfairly, which results in inaccurate coverage. This is quite a problematic issue considering the sheer reach of the mainstream media and the types of underlying effects that come with it. To change the landscape of the representation of the groups in the mainstream news cannot be accomplished overnight, but rather through a continuous and gracious effort at all times.

 Because of this, Hispanic and African-American media outlets have evolved on their own. Their press focuses on the complexities in their communities by virtue of experience. For example, the #BlackLivesMatter movement was originally started on Twitter and highlights the importance of the internet as a disruptive medium. Additionally, the #IfTheyGunnedMeDown hashtag following the death of Michael Brown, helped highlight mainstream media’s ongoing inaccurate portrayals of African-Americans and the hashtag turned it into a lesson about racial stereotypes that went viral. This type of widespread coverage derived from a viral social media movement is a modern tool for social activism. Shooting Spur Hashtag Effort on Stereotypes

 Relaying back to the mainstream media’s effect on public discourse, understanding how to cover the LGBTQ+ community in a holistic way will help foster inclusion. This can be a difficult concept for journalists who are not educated about this community’s needs, and building enough rapport in this subject is of the utmost importance. This first step in all of this is understanding how to be considerate of this community’s needs all while educating the reader who may need basic LGBTQ+ concepts explained. The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation has suggestions for how mainstream media should cover LGBTQ+ people in accordance to how they identify themselves. Doubly Victimized: Reporting on Transgender Victims of Crime. Most mainstream coverage tends to treat transgender stories as commodities or isolated events by focusing on transgender people in their pre-transition life referring to them by their name and pronouns that they identified with at the time while overlooking wider transgender community topics. Journalists must educate themselves on which pronouns to use when talking about a transgender person. Ignoring this terminology is a form of discrimination in itself. As this gender-neutral terminology is used more in the media and becomes more common, it'll help educate readers and become more of a norm.

Picture courtesy of: queerpgh.com

To begin mending these wounds, journalists must begin covering stories about these groups at large and focus on broader issues that these people face daily, rather than just focusing on isolated events. When mainstream media covers these topics, it must be in the context of structural inequality that these people are plagued by everyday. That way the general public can understand the whole picture and not just focus on one's individual behavior.