One of the issues around Jayson Blair’s disgrace at The New York Times has to do with the awful entanglements around race relations in the workplace. Questions about race and affirmative action are priorities in most newsrooms including NPR. But many news organizations still struggle with finding the right balance among questions of race, opportunity and ability.
One of NPR’s most distinguished commentators, Marvin Kalb grasped the sharp end of the debate on Morning Edition on May 15th (Commentary: Jayson Blair):
Jayson Blair, a minority intern quickly raised to the status of reporter, blew it big time… the senior editors (at The New York Times)… wanted this bright and energetic liar to succeed, his blatant shortcomings notwithstanding. The Times believed in racial diversity, and that is a good thing. But a reporter’s race ought not to be as crucial a consideration as his competence, his honesty and integrity.
James Nordin wrote to reject Kalb’s commentary, at least in part:
Clearly the intern’s behavior is reprehensible. I teach in graduate school, and plagiarism is a failing offense. Only in novels is fiction a good thing — clearly not in the news. And The New York Times should be censured for the damage it has done to the intern by not correcting his behavior and to the news media in general for chipping away at its credibility.
However, Mr. Kalb’s inclusion of the intern’s minority status — to the exclusion of all other details — is equally reprehensible. I see only two conclusions I can reach. Mr. Kalb is a conscious racist and took this opportunity to impugn all minorities because of the action of one and denigrate diversity programs at the same time. Or worse, he is an unconscious racist that does not even realize what he has done. In either event, NPR was severely in error in allowing his commentary to air in the form that it did.
Diversity in a Newsroom
So what is a newsroom diversity program? How should it work? What are the signs in a newsroom that it is not working?
In my opinion, diversity is about many issues, of which race is only one.
Many, if not all news organizations believe that it is essential to have a more diverse work force that reflects the audience they wish to serve. The better news organizations actively recruit among various journalistic talent pools seeking out groups who may be underrepresented in their news organizations. Yet there are still 40 percent of all newspapers in America without any journalists of color on their staffs.
Slowly (some say too slowly), the presence of journalists of color is changing the way that newsrooms look and report. That includes NPR.
But NPR has taken some considerable steps in the right direction, in my opinion. It helps train students and young journalists through a remarkable initiative called Next Generation Radio. NPR recruits at job fairs and has made contact with the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Native American Journalists Association.
A recent study on minorities in journalism has shown that news organizations are still numerically unrepresentative. Often minority journalists just don’t feel “at home” in some newsrooms. Colleagues make negative assumptions about the qualifications of journalists of color that are not made about non-minority journalists. The opinions of minority journalists are more readily dismissed and their opportunities for advancement are often limited.
Why Doesn’t Diversity Do A Better Job?
In my experience, there are a few reasons for that.
First, some news organizations need to know they have obligations to all their journalists that go beyond just hiring. They need to hire people to succeed and often minority journalists just don’t get the support and the training they need. Most starting journalists — minority and otherwise — complain that they don’t get that support. But somehow, it’s the minority journalists who leave first.
Second, some minority journalists have told me that the cultural assumptions in a news operation are not very open to other perspectives — and that includes NPR.
A recent example:
Questionable Assumptions
After the death of Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, NPR’s Cokie Roberts spoke most eloquently about his legacy on Morning Edition on March 23 (Moynihan, Senator and Scholar, Dies at 76):
Roberts: Well, he wrote something that has come to be called the Moynihan report about the state of the black family and talked about the single-mother households and the high rate of illegitimacy. At the time, people said he was blaming the victim… He talked about family structure and the rise of illegitimacy. It was a lifetime concern among his many, many myriad concerns.
Edwards: He coined the term ‘benign neglect,’ and liberals hated that.
Roberts: They did hate that. Of course, it was taken completely out of context. He was saying to tone down the rhetoric. But it came to be seen as neglecting the concerns of black Americans.
But a young African-American employee at NPR told me that she found the tone of the piece to be insensitive and insulting. She felt it assumed the Moynihan Report was still valid and that any criticisms were misplaced.
Diversity in Hiring and in Thinking
It occurs to me that diversity is not only about hiring. It is about listening to other perspectives and about actively seeking them out. It is also about people being encouraged to speak out at editorial meetings and not letting the “received wisdoms” pass as the only way of viewing a story.
NPR is doing a better job than it once did at hiring, encouraging and sustaining minority journalists.
But NPR needs to do more.
It needs to foster an environment where young and minority journalists are actively sought out and encouraged. And not just in a pro forma way. Mentoring is part of that process. It can be a formal pairing of new and senior journalists. It is also in the way that information about the organization is shared.
Diversity works at an intellectual level as well. NPR needs to make sure that it is getting a wider range of experiences and opinions inside the organization. That is also of real benefit to the employees and the listeners.
The Benefits of Outside Thinking
Finally, the input from the listeners is critically important when it comes to questions of diversity — even more essential than I realized when I began as ombudsman more than three years ago.
What happened to The New York Times is a tragedy. It is a tragedy for all of journalism because of the role that newspaper plays in American life.
But before I took this position, I called a senior manager at the Times who I had met at a couple of journalistic conferences. I asked him for his advice on whether taking on the role of ombudsman at NPR was a worthwhile endeavor.
He was enthusiastic and encouraged me to accept the position.
When I asked him why the Times did not have an ombudsman, he paused and said the Times did not need one. “We have editors,” he observed.
