A new study by the National Urban League reveals that only 8 percent of major Sunday morning talk show guests in the past 18 months were black — but the question now becomes: so what do you suggest producers do about it?
What’s interesting in this study is that by implication it’s suggesting that producers who have X amount of minutes to deal with an issue need to be keeping tabs on how many blacks (and we assume that would also mean Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, Italians, Irish) they’re getting on each month. Are we exaggerating? Decide yourself from the Washington Post:
Only 8 percent of the guests on the major Sunday morning talk shows over the past 18 months were African Americans, with three people accounting for the majority of those appearances, according to a new study by the National Urban League.
Black guests — newsmakers, the journalists who questioned them and experts who offered commentary — appeared 176 times out of more than 2,100 opportunities, according to the study, which is scheduled for release today. But 122 of those appearances were made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, and Juan Williams, a journalist and regular panel member on “Fox News Sunday.”
“There’s very clearly a division, an exclusion,” said Stephanie J. Jones, executive director of the Urban League Institute, who initiated the study, “Sunday Morning Apartheid: a Diversity Study of the Sunday Morning Talk Shows.”
“I watch these shows regularly,” she said. “I just started to notice after a while, week after week after week, that there were no African Americans on them. I saw people talking about issues, even though they didn’t have a particular expertise.”
So there was an “exclusion”?
Nope. As someone who worked in the news media for some 20 years this must be said:
When editors/producers are on deadline or flush out a story (even in an analysis) the consideration is to get guests/sources who can give nice, compact quotes and explanations. If that means inviting someone of X ethnicity who happens to be picked, it’s done.
But they don’t sit around with a ledger, adding up totals, figuring that this month they’re down one black, one Hispanic, one Christian, one Jew. It isn’t a case of “excluding” anyone.
If they’re talking about Karl Rove and they already have a GOP-view guest, they’ll look for a Democratic-view guest. If either of them is black, or whatever, they’ll invite them on. But they first and foremost look for who is (a)available, and (b)can give them the content.
Where the Sunday shows DO show deficiencies is in not occasionally putting the crisis or Big Story Of The Week aside a bit and doing an interview on a topic specifically of relevance to minorities, or having a minority or ethnic-issue related guest on for a high profile interview — and not one relegated to a short, proforma interview at the end of the show. But that also applies to OTHER ISSUES (environment, endangered species, financial trends) that may not be front page stories but are vital ones. And you can argue THAT suggestion to death (should the shows deal with what’s a hot story or help educate audiences?).
The Post piece also notes:
Network officials said they rely on guests who are newsmakers, most of whom are white men in the top echelons of government….Barbara Levin, senior communications director for NBC News, said that “Meet the Press” interviews “the same newsmakers who dominate the front pages and op-ed pages of every newspaper in America, including The Washington Post.”
So the Urban League’s attempt to impose PC on the Sunday Talk shows is — to be blunt — a poor idea because then there is no reason why Latino groups and other interest groups shouldn’t also clamor to get their constituencies represented, if “diversity” is to be a priority on guests on Sunday talk shows.
There are two other views on this.
One comes in this MUST READ POST from Booker Rising, a blog that bills itself as for black conservatives and moderates but is in fact one of the best centrist blogs on the Internet. An excerpt:
“Meet the Press”, the show with the largest number of viewers, had no black guests on 86 percent of its broadcasts. The study contends that the Sunday morning talk shows are particularly important because they help Americans digest complex political issues. Network officials said that they rely on guests who are newsmakers, most of whom are white men in the top echelons of government.
All true. Yet a much more pertinent question to me: what is stopping TV One, Black Family Channel, and / or Black Entertainment Television from having their own Sunday-morning news shows to help rectify the situation?
Indeed: why not? Could it be that just as the networks opt for guests who above all can give them the content they need for their Sunday morning formula talk shows to garner ratings, TV One, Black Family Channel and BET don’t have Sunday morning talk shows because they might not garner sufficient ratings? (And let’s face it: the network Sunday talk shows are for POLITICAL JUNKIES — not for people who actually have a life…)
And then there’s this from another one of our favorite weblogs, Oxblog (also listed under Center Voices on our blogroll). David Adesnik writes:
I’m really not sure what’s funnier: that the Urban League is comparing Tim Russert and George Stephanopoulos to South African racists, or that the WaPo considers such a ridiculous report to be newsworthy. What’s next? The WaPo covering a study by the Anti-Defamation League entitled “Monday Night Auschwitz: A Diversity Study of Players in the National Football League?”
And for those of you who insist that I respond to this ridiculous article with reasoned argument rather than pure mockery, I say this: What percentage of the legislators, government officials, and journalists inter alia who are qualified to be on a Sunday morning talk show are black? I’m guessing it’s pretty darn close to the percentage of black guests on those shows. You know, it’s not as if someone’s trying to keep black pundits off the air.
In short: it may be heresy to say it but this if you look at the flat numbers and have a political agenda this may be an issue — but if you look at the issue, it’s as non-issue. Except to those who apparently need an issue.
UPDATE: Booker Rising’s Shay, in a comment on this post, notes agreement with the Urban League but a change in emphasis on the solution.
For the record, I (over at Booker Rising) believe the National Urban League has a point re: whose voices get raised up and whose voices do not. There are black experts in various fields who the media could draw upon, but they instead prefer to draw upon their narrow network of contacts. My point is that the National Urban League shouldn’t count on white journalists to rectify the situation (it ain’t gonna happen). Instead, far more emphasis should be on building up the news divisions of the black-owned (TV One, Black Family Channel) and not-black-owned-but-black-watched (Black Entertainment Television) channels.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.