Ensuring Diversity in Coverage and Newsrooms

Rebekah Bostick

rb442218@ohio.edu 

Diversity in both news coverage and newsrooms has been an issue since reporting began. Even though there have been shifts that have tried to happen in both newsrooms and in the coverage that they are producing, it hasn't quite hit the mark to ensure that equality has been reached. While some companies tried to make the switch to provide more inclusive content for their customers, their content ended up using harmful stereotypes or lacked in real diversity overall.

Not only will better representation in newsrooms make the coverage produced more diverse but it will also ensure that harmful stereotypes aren't used over and over, time and time again. When advertisements and newsrooms continue to make these mistakes, these harmful narratives about minorities are less likely to change. More diverse newsrooms will help to ensure that proper language is being used as well when speaking about minorities.

Image taken from CJR

Not only is diversity better for those who consume the media, research has shown that diversity is better for business. In 2012, JC Penny had Ellen as their first openly gay woman spokesperson. They did not have any pictures of Ellen with her wife, but this was big for the time. There was obvious backlash, but there was even more support coming from the LGBTQ community and allies. 

Even though diversity has been shown to be better for business (and ethical reasons), companies are still very slow to make genuine changes when they say that they will appoint more diverse individuals to positions of power. While those in charge try to make the incorrect case that it will be bad for business, it is also because of old ideas that change isn't necessary and the need for diversity will die down. These ideas are in fact false and need to be changed.

One of the examples that we read for class that stuck out to me was from an ad that Dove ran. In the advertisement, a Black woman is seen lifting her shirt to reveal a white woman underneath. When I saw the ad, I had no idea what they were trying to advertise. A large portion of their audience that saw the advertisement did not understand what message was coming across. This makes me wonder if there was enough diversity in the room when this ad was created, because too many people had to have okay-ed that ad for that big of a mistake to have been made.