Racism on the Front Page
Pick up your local newspaper and flip through it. Look at all the photos. Look closely. Notice all the local pictures of nonwhites and other minorities?
Not really, huh? Well, don’t be surprised. There’s been a lack of real-life and everyday portrayals of blacks, Latinos, Asians, gays, lesbians and just about every other type of person who isn’t straight or white from the newspapers we read for quite a while now. It’s one of those things that’s nobody’s fault per se, but that we all have a responsibility in dealing with.
It’s called gatekeeping, and it’s as old as newspapers themselves.
In 1968, in the wake of bloody race riots in several major cities, a federal commission led by Illinois Governor Otto Kerner discovered what America’s black population already knew: That blacks were woefully underrepresented in the press, often featured in unflattering light, if they were featured at all. The commission’s report urged newspaper editors and publishers to diversify both their newsrooms and their coverage of minority communities.
In the intervening three and a half decades, many newspapers have performed admirably in their efforts to recruit African American reporters and present complete, balanced coverage of their community’s black populations. Unfortunately, these efforts haven’t brought newspapers within range of their projected goals, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE), and within the past year, the number of minorities in the workplace has actually decreased from 11.85 percent to 11.64 percent.
In Pennsylvania, where I live, the problem is no better, and in central Pennsylvania, where I started my career as a reporter, minorities are all but absent from the newsroom. A survey of minority newspaper workers released this year by ASNE revealed that only five newspapers in Pennsylvania have percentages of blacks in the newsroom that exceed ten percent; four are in eastern Pennsylvania (the Lansdale Reporter, 11.1; the Philadelphia Inquirer, 15.1; the Philadelphia Daily News, 21.5; and the Bucks County Courier Times — where I’m freelancing now — 15.2), and one in western Pennsylvania (the Sharon Herald, 11.5). At 26 of the 48 papers surveyed in 2001, there were no minorities present in the newsroom.
The problem is similar across the United States, where the number of minority journalists working at daily newspapers fell from 11.85 percent to 11.64 percent over the past year. In 1978, ASNE began encouraging newspaper editors and publishers to set a goal of matching the percentage of minorities in the newsroom to the percentage of minorities in the United States. Currently, minorities make up 30 percent of the U.S. population.
This has a clear and present impact on the content of the newspapers we read. In her book Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media, NYU journalism professor Pamela Newkirk describes a newspaper industry still fraught with institutional racism:
Whites, unable to see what they don’t experience, continue to cling to some of the most damning views of black people, as the mass media routinely highlight the exceptions in black life — criminality, celebrity and buffoonery — offering them as the norm. In an increasingly sensationalized media climate, the prospect for the news media to offer even more damaging images of blacks increases.
On the whole, Newkirk’s book has much potential to come off as abrasive and unfriendly to white editors and reporters, since she doesn’t pull any punches. But for the reader who’s willing to take a few of those punches for the good of the journalistic community and the mass media as a whole, it’s a good read that makes a valid point: In an industry where most of the people in charge are white, it’s difficult for minority viewpoints to show up on the page, even with the people in charge trying as hard as they can. In other words: It’s nobody’s fault but everybody’s.
The shorthand is known as the “gatekeeper” effect: Whites dominate the editorial structures of mainstream newspapers, and news must pass through their offices before it appears on the front page; consequently, readers get a predominantly white view of the world. Story assignments, story opportunities and wire service stories are actively chosen by editors and writers are part of the news process, and making these decisions registers itself as a constant background hum in the mind of those editors and writers ” what many would call a “news sense.” Some events are judged to be news while others are not. Generally, the white point of view goes unchallenged, since there are few in similar “gatekeeping” positions to challenge it.
Despite attempts by white news writers and editors to remain impartial — and the vast majority of these succeed in some sense of impartiality to a great degree — news artifacts are still created by reporters who cannot help but see the world from a white point of view. In its 1968 report, the Kerner commission deftly described mainstream news content as by and for “white men’s eyes and a white perspective.”
Think about it. As hard as you may try to place yourself in another’s shoes, it’s still impossible to tell a story from that point of view. You can come damn close, but the only person who can tell that story is the one wearing the shoes in the first place.
Lots of papers miss the boat by hiring minority reporters to cover “minority beats;” reporters are sent to ethnic neighborhoods to get the obligatory opinions of their residents, under the notion that those residents are more willing to open up to a nonwhite reporter than a white one. This may be true, but to use a presumably talented reporter in this throwaway manner isn’t addressing any problems in a serious manner.
According to Newkirk, though, a far more damaging problem is present as well. She borrows a description of the position of black reporters from Washington Post publisher Don Graham. Black reporters, she said — and the term can easily be applied to other minorities in the industry — are under a “double-special burden,” to report news from a black perspective, but to do so in a way that draws as little ire as possible from white reporters and editors. Blacks, she says, are frequently called upon to act as spies, writing stories that confirm the already-formed perceptions of whites.
Media scholar Clint Wilson describes how mainstream media notions of minorities pass through five stages: An exclusionary phase, wherein the minority is rejected from the news; a threatening-issue phase, where they are a threat to the perceived social order; a confrontation phase, in which problems between ethnic groups are highlighted; a stereotypical selection phase, wherein minorities are pigeonholed into societal roles; and the integrated coverage phase, wherein minorities are reflected in all stories.
In Pennsylvania, where minorities are all but nonexistent in the newsroom, this process is an even slower one, and Newkirk’s “double-special burden” has yet to be reached — let alone hurdled — simply because there are so few African Americans to take that role. From a local-news standpoint, newspapers in places like Altoona, Johnstown, Chambersburg, Ebensburg and their environs are still at Wilson’s confrontation (and sometimes stereotypical selection) phase, and papers like the Altoona Mirror, which have no minority staffers at all, have yet to travel the long, hard road that their more urban contemporaries have already traveled.
How do we know this? Well, the easiest way is to look at the papers themselves. I did this with the Mirror, since I used to work there and had easy access to its archives. I looked at the paper’s photographs, since graphics, along with headlines, are the most readily noticeable aspect of a newspaper, and because photographs are more likely to be perceived by readers as objective reality. After all, the camera doesn’t lie. Sometimes it just leaves things out. I focused on photos of African-Americans, since — and this is kind of embarrassing, actually — they were the only nonwhites that appeared on the pages of the Mirror.
Of the 1,469 photos that appeared during the month of July 2001 — including news, sports and community photos — 119 featured African-Americans (There were also eleven instances of advertisements featuring African-Americans, but this was a matter of a few ads being repeated several times). The fact that photos of African-Americans accounted for just over eight percent of the monthly photo load by itself says little about portrayal, since we have already established a very small population of color in the Mirror readership area. Who appears in those photos is another matter entirely.
By far, blacks appeared in Mirror photos most often as celebrities or athletes. Of the 119 photos of African-Americans, 89 were of celebrities and athletes (18 celebrities, 71 athletes). Six of the 119 photos alone were of tennis player Venus Williams. Many featured players for the Altoona Curve, the town’s minor-league baseball team.
Of the remaining 30 photos, ten featured either alleged criminals or victims of crime. When black-on-black crime struck an Altoona nightclub early in the morning of July 21, the victim’s photo appeared four times following the incident (once with her obituary); her accused assailant’s photo was shown once. Earlier in the month, the same protection-from-abuse violator was shown three times.
African Americans appeared in photos above the fold on the front page of the News section four times. One of those photos featured children playing and the other three featured either alleged criminals or victims of crime. They appeared far more often as sports centerpieces, and occasionally as centerpieces in the national and lifestyle sections.
It is telling that the most prominent photos of blacks — featured above the fold on page one, in areas clearly visible even to readers who simply look over and don’t purchase the paper — feature blacks as criminals or residents of inner cities.
The first is a picture of two African American children playing on a trampoline before a section of central Pennsylvania farmland. The headline (which runs beneath the fold) reads “City Kids, Country Times,” with a dropline that reads “It’s a long way from the Big Apple to an old-time summer.” The photo accompanies a story about Fresh Air, a program under which inner city children spend summers with rural host families.
As one of the few appearances of blacks on the front page of the Mirror who are not celebrities or athletes, the photograph speaks volumes. Characterizing blacks as residents of inner cities, the photo reinforces the notion of minority-as-alien already strongly present among a white population that has little interaction with people of color. (Altoona is 150 miles from Pittsburgh and about the same distance from Wheeling, W. Va.)
The other photos feature a murder victim, her suspected killer and the violator of a court-ordered protection-from-abuse. For a reader whose primary local news source is the Mirror, the inference that blacks are primarily criminals and poverty-stricken inner city residents is an easy one to make.
The Mirror is not alone. Many newspapers in central and western Pennsylvania lack the racial diversity that allows a newsroom to truly reflect the nation it reports in, perhaps merely due to a thin local population from which to draw new journalists. The same ASNE survey that revealed a dip in minority employment over the last year found that many towns in central and western Pennsylvania like DuBois, Latrobe, Kitanning and Gettysburg employ no people of color. Some that received high marks on the ASNE survey, like State College’s Centre Daily Times, do so not because of a strong contingent of minority employees but because of a small newsroom where one person can represent a deceptively large percentage of the staff.
And according to Newkirk and her contemporaries, the portrayal of blacks as celebrities, athletes and criminals, and little else, is a portrayal that haunts newspapers around the nation.
What’s the solution? Well, obviously, recruiting more minority reporters to our newsrooms is an excellent start. But that’s hard, especially for papers in towns like the ones in central Pennsylvania, where minority populations are small, communities have little to offer outsiders and newcomers, and where minorities may actually be met with outright hostility. Financial incentives are difficult, since paying someone more for being a minority is clearly unethical, and besides, newspapers have little enough money to pay the reporters already on the payroll.
The problem is one that faces not only newspapers but entire communities. As the world becomes smaller and more integrated through population shifts and technological improvements in communications, it becomes more and more important for individuals to face their perceptions of people who don’t look like them, pray like them, or love like them.
Some dailies across the nation have even challenged readers to make such self-evaluations. In 1993 the New Orleans Times-Picayune tackled racial issues in its town in a series of stories that ran over seven months. It was a long, hard road for both the paper and the community, but in the end, its purpose was served: The community, and the reporters, took an equally long, hard look at their racial attitudes, and the paper’s coverage began to change to make a better fit with its audience.
In newspapers throughout America, the absence of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, gays and lesbians translates into front pages that beg readers to recognize only a straight, white population that is more and more becoming part of a national culture of multiculture. Sending white reporters, photographers and editors after minority stories, while a good start, will not solve the problem to the degree that increasing the diversity of the newsrooms themselves will. In central Pennsylvania, where minorities are scarce but nonetheless present, they are all but ignored in the print media. Most probably, the issue is one that faces communities as a whole rather than just the newspapers that cover them, but as newspapers commonly take on both active and indirect roles in shaping public opinion, it is well within the domain of the print media to address the problem community-wide.