A few weeks ago, I participated in a discussion at Brevard Community College’s Titusville campus about one of the hardest issues the media face — covering race and diversity in our communities.
More than two hours of debate later, some of those involved walked away with strikingly different views.
To Brevard County Judge A.B. Majeed, the media have “made enormous strides on this issue and they deserve praise. Not only are they making a serious effort, but they are succeeding.”
But to Juanita Barton, the Titusville campus’s minority retention and recruitment specialist, the message she heard from young African-American men in the audience was far from reassuring.
“They feel the media may be trying, but they’re not succeeding because when they read a newspaper or watch TV they see themselves (portrayed) as the villains,” she said.
I think the reality runs both ways. The media have made improvements in their coverage of race, but they are far from uniform and as a result we are frequently not connecting with our readers and viewers of color.
Searching for a deeper look at the issue — and ideas on how the press can do better — I went to a new study by a group of media experts who spent the past two years examining how 12 news organizations cover diversity.
One of those involved was Keith Woods, who teaches journalism ethics and directs diversity programs at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, which commissioned the research.
He said the key finding is that the quality of coverage depends on the amount of buy-in between editors and reporters at all levels.
Where the commitment exists to have a diverse newsroom with staff members who believe in multiculturalism, the reporting can be deeper, more meaningful and more fair, Woods said. But where there is talk but no dedication, the result can be damaging.
“What you get is superficial, shallow coverage and sometimes harmful coverage,” Woods said, adding the quality of media coverage nationwide “varies widely.”
The study was exhaustive, with researchers looking at 4,531 newspaper articles and 8,203 television stories. The content of that coverage found some familiar, disturbing problems:
In newspapers, nearly 60 percent of coverage of people of color focused on sports and entertainment, while about half of TV’s minority coverage centered on crime, violence and entertainment.
Overall, the best coverage tends to be found at daily newspapers in large cities, where the commitment seems to be strongest, Woods said, citing the San Jose Mercury News in California as an example.
There, every section of the paper often reflects the area’s ethnic diversity, with stories in news, sports, features and food reflecting people of many races.
Most worrisome remains TV stations, where “very few are deeply committed” to improving coverage, Woods said.
“There are only a handful of broadcast organizations that I’d put into the category of really working hard on this, and it shows,” he said.
Woods also said this: “A news organization that covers a festival may think it counts as covering diversity, but locals don’t see it that way. People want ordinary, day-to-day coverage. They want deployment of a newspaper’s resources on a daily basis.
“When that happens, people see it as their newspaper, not a newspaper that covers them on an occasional basis.”
If that can be accomplished, added Woods, it can lead to a terribly elusive goal for newspapers in minority communities — “influence.”
