Why It's Important for the Media to be Diverse

Joe Collins

 

joed3754@gmail.com

 

 

According to a 1979 prediction by the American Society of News Editors, the percentage of minorities in the newsrooms would match the percentage of minorities in the United States by the year 2000. Today, minorities make up about 40% of the U.S. population. However, today minorities only make up about 17% of all newsrooms. That is a complete failure on the part of the media for all the talks of diversity.

 

For a country that is meant to have people of different backgrounds, ethnicities and cultures, it seems that only the majority is the one in the media. The unfortunate part is that the newsroom isn't where this problem occurs. 

 

The ASNE also reports that in radio, only 11.7% of the people in radio are people of color. With such a small diversity of people in the media, this can cause problems for the media trying to report.

 

An area of the media where low diversity has been a big problem is in advertising. Remember that controversial Pepsi ad with Kendall Jenner?

 

Picture source: New York Times

                         

For those of you who don't remember the infamous "Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad" from 2017: In the ad, there is a protest going on and during the middle of it, Kendall Jenner walks up to a police officer and hands him a can of Pepsi. The cop drinks it and everyone starts cheering.

 

Many people took offense to this as one of the main criticisms of the ad was that the protests were made out to resemble the "Black Lives Matter" protests that had occurred in years prior. Pepsi pulled the ad shortly after it aired.

 

Where there is a problem, is that because the media is mostly white and not more diverse to resemble the U.S. the advertising team at Pepsi clearly did not have a meeting with ethnic groups and people of color to make sure the ad was ok. The lack of diversity, made it seem like airing the ad wouldn't be a problem, but it turned out to be one.

 

Being diverse in the media is important because it opens up people to so many other communities. Be honest, how many of you have read a news report in your local newspaper about the LGBTQ or Black community? Probably not a lot because they aren't covered that much since there isn't many people from those backgrounds in media. 

 

If the media was more diverse, we'd get a better understanding of America as a whole because America is a very diverse place that makes itself out to not be. If we want to resemble the America that really is, we need to be more diverse and start including people of all backgrounds in the media and reach that 40%.