No more single narratives from single voices

Claire Del Vita

cd750919@ohio.edu

Growing up half-Asian in America has created a disconnect between my Asian culture and the Western culture that surrounds me everywhere I go. In school, a majority of my peers were white, especially given that most of my childhood was spent in Dublin, Ohio, where 71.6% of residents are white according to a DataUSA.io study. With the lack of representation I saw both at school and in the media, it took me until my junior year of high school to finally start acknowledging my Asianness. On standardized testing when asked about my race I began to bubble in Asian alongside white, I made more of an effort to learn about Korean cuisine from my mother and grandmother (Halmoni), and I even tried to learn Korean (though this endeavor would ultimately result in failure). While I made an effort to connect with Asian culture, the world around me remained stagnant. Nowhere could I find shows with actors that looked like me or books with characters I could relate to unless they were Asian-made. Hollywood even cast white actors in roles that would have been better filled by Asian actors, like when Matt Damon was chosen as the lead in "The Great Wall" or the casting of Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost in the Shell". The first movie I ever watched that featured an almost entirely Asian cast was "Crazy Rich Asians", which demonstrated that actors with Western characteristics are not the only ones who can be seen on the big screen. Since then the film industry has continued to expand into more diverse casting decisions and just recently Marvel released its first Asian superhero film "Shang Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings". While Hollywood is slowly beginning to make a change for the better, the journalism industry continues to seemingly reject diversity.

Chart from a Pew Research study

The chances that you will see an Asian journalist on news channels or authoring articles is very slim, in fact, 77% of newsroom employees are white according to a Pew research study. This leaves just 33% for any other race, and the numbers are even smaller when it comes to newsroom executives. In the time of COVID-19, which has led to an influx of discrimination against Asians around the country, it is more important now than ever for the news industry to extend its diversity to Asian Americans. I could not tell you the name of one Asian journalist before conducting research on the topic compared to the plethora of white ones. This lack of Asian representation in the media means that the few journalists who are Asian are tasked with covering the crimes against their people, as can be seen with the shootings in Atlanta earlier this year which left nine Asian women dead. This task is extremely overwhelming. In an article by the Hollywood Reporter, NBC News correspondent Vicky Nguyen shared how hard it was for her to cope with the news of the shootings while also doing her job: " 'I couldn't get my mind right,' she says trying to get into the 'positive and upbeat' Today show spirit while still reeling from the carnage the night before." Being surrounded by death is never easy, but when you are the only one who can relate to the victims and you are bombarded with stories of your people being murdered all because of your race it can feel like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. Asians are not alone in this matter, Black journalists face the same issues every day when they have to cover story after story about Black boys and girls being shot down on the street all because of the color of their skin, but that is another story. The same Hollywood Reporter article mentioned that many Asian reporters were being passed up to cover stories about the hate crimes in favor of white reporters, for fear that they would be too "emotional" or "biased". Asian news perspectives on Asian stories are so important because there is a level of understanding between the reporter and the subject that is lost when the is white. If we continue to hush Asian voices, we are creating a newsroom that is uninclusive and toxic. 

Vicky Nguyen at the Know Your Value national event on Dec. 1, 2018.
Photo courtesy of NBC News. 

The silencing of Asian journalists is not the only issue, Asian American stories and experiences have been rendered invisible. Asian American communities are filled with newsworthy stories, but they are rarely ever told. For a race that is considered a "model minority" by many Americans, there is no journalism model with Asian representation. There has to be change, newsrooms have to hire employees that match their audience. We can no longer have single narratives told by a single type of journalist, we need diversity for journalism to be at its best. The world and its culture are evolving and this same evolution must be matched in the journalism industry. Silence is not an option. Diversity in the newsroom has to happen or the journalism industry will meet its downfall.