Representation of people of color in journalism

Scott Thomas

scthomas389@gmail.com

 

At first, the lack of diversity in newsrooms wasn't very striking or concerning to me. As a white male from a fairly affluent neighborhood, I haven't had to consider these things too much. Plus three-quarters of the newsroom workforce being non-Hispanic white compared to two-thirds of the national workforce didn't seem like too egregious of a disparity.

That way of thinking changed tremendously as I read the column by Jelani Cobb for The Guardian. As she told the story of how a New York Times writer missed key details about lower-income people being robbed, I was struck by this quote: "The people who are most likely to appear in these kinds of stories are the least likely to have a say in how those stories are told."

This quote made me rethink our roles as journalists. As reporters and writers we are supposed to relate to our audiences but how can we do that if we are writing stories of people who are living completely different lives.

The lack of diversity in the media correlates to the misrepresentation of poor people in this country. According to the Nieman Reports blog, "Blacks appeared in 52 percent of the images, despite being a quarter of Americans living in poverty during that period. Although Hispanics made up 23 percent of the poor, we saw their faces in just under 14 percent of the photos." The photos being referred to are pictures that were run in poverty-related articles.

The idea of only showing Black people as impoverished has had an effect on the work of Black journalists, too.

Picture source: Seattle Association of Black Journalists

Karen Attiah, a Black journalist for the Washington Post said in a Columbia Journalism Review article, "too often we have this idea that covering ‘Black stories’ means covering pain, trauma, and racism, which in and of itself, is not only taxing, but a limited way to look at the totality of what it means to be a Black person in America."

Being a person of color is hard in America, but having a voice is even more difficult. The pressure of people of color to represent their culture and background right is immense.

In an interview with NPR, Futuro Media president and founder Maria Hinojosa said, "I don't want journalists of color to have to be warriors, in order to be able to work as journalists."

It is the responsibility of people in power to continue to hire people of color in newsrooms so that they don't have to be warriors. These people should have a voice as loud as anyone else's and should be able to exercise that without being forced into a box.