just for now

futurejournalismproject:

At the Huffington Post, Evan Shapiro writes:

The 2010 Census reported that 63.7 percent of America is white; 12.6 percent is black; 16.3 percent is Hispanic or Latino and 4.8 percent is Asian. Sixty-four percent of America is white, 36 percent is not. However, The Radio Television Digital News Association reports that, as of 2011, 79.5 percent of all TV News jobs are held by white Americans, while 20.5 percent are held by minorities of any kind — an under-representation of minority Americans by a factor of nearly 2. Not great, but not awful either. However, 92.5 percent of all Television General Managers and 96.6 percent of Network TV Affiliate GMs are white, while only 7.5 percent of all TV GMs and 3.4 percent of Local TV Affiliates are another race. That is an under-representation of minority Americans by a factor of 5 on a national scale and a factor of 11 on a local scale. minority representation in the Newspaper business is similarly tilted. According to The American Society of News Editors, only 12.79 percent of all newspaper jobs are held by someone who is not white, with only 11 percent of Supervisor jobs held by non white Americans.

While it is great that black, Hispanic and Asian Americans are getting more jobs as reporters, photographers, camera operators and art directors, it is not the rank and file who determine which stories are covered and what America deems as “newsworthy.” These decisions are made at the Editorial and Director levels, where representation of the “minority” point of view is stunningly far behind that of the population they serve.

As Brian Stelter wrote in the New York Times, it took nearly a month for the killing of Trayvon Martin to become national news; and that only happened after his family — and thousands of online activists — repeatedly demanded attention for his story and secured the release of the 911 recording from the night of his shooting. In fact, as Brooke Gladstone reported on On The Media and Kelly McBride wrote about on Poynter, if not for several black journalists, including Trymaine Lee of the Huffington Post, Ta-Nehisi Coats of the Atlantic, Charles M. Blow of the New York Times, and Reverend Al Sharpton of MSNBC, it is doubtful anyone would know who Trayvon Martin is and was.

Please, PLEASE, don’t get me wrong — I am not saying there is overt or purposeful bias in America’s Newsrooms. I do submit, though, that the stunning under-representation of minorities at the TOP of our national and local news organizations creates an institutional lack of empathy for minority victims of violent crime. How else to explain the blanket coverage given every missing white girl in America, while it takes a month and a movement to get similar attention for the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, within eyeshot of his father’s house?

FJP: Unfortunately, lack of newsroom diversity has been an ugly stain on American journalism for as long was we can remember. 

Even as celebrity activists such as Emma Thompson, Demi Moore, and Mira Sorvino raise awareness about commercial sex trafficking, survivor Rachel Lloyd publishes her memoir Girls Like Us, and the Senate introduces a new bipartisan bill for victim support, the problem proliferates across continents, in casinos, on streets, and directly into your mobile device. And, as Amy Fine Collins shows, human trafficking is much closer to home than you think; victims, younger than ever, are just as likely to be the homegrown American girl next door as illegally imported foreigners. Having gained access to victims, law-enforcement officials, and a convicted trafficker, Collins follows a major case that put to the test the federal government’s Trafficking Victims Protection Act.