Whose News Is It Anyway?

In the wake of the racist Don Imus commentary, Media Matters for America conducted a study of the race and gender diversity of hosts and guests on prime-time cable news programs. At the peak of the Imus controversy, program hosts pursued African Americans and other people of color for comments on the topic. Was this just an anomaly in the cable news world? Are people of color only invited to speak on subjects dealing with race and racism but overlooked as experts in other subject matters? The Media Matters study sought to address these and other tough questions and found a disturbingly familiar trend: while a significant number of Blacks were on cable news programs (CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC) the week of the Imus controversy, White hosts and guests dominated the airwaves both before and after Imus faded from the media spotlight. The data confirmed what we knew to be true—cable news media is still a world of White, peppered by people of color only as the need arises.

The study reported that “in none of the three weeks did Latinos, Asian Americans, or any ethnicity other than African Americans make up more than five percent of the guests on any network.” It is appalling how these programs tout themselves as being the expert source for news and frequently report and comment on issues of concern to communities of color, yet don’t consult with or feature the people affected.

When viewed in the context of these and other statistics about racial diversity in the media, we find an explanation for the racist, biased characterizations of Hurricane Katrina survivors in the news media as looters and criminals. These and other racially polarized news items are the products of a media machine that consists of White males pontificating about the plight of African Americans and other people of color while excluding the same from the discussion.

The media, as an institution, shapes the perceptions of how America views people of color. Without the voices of people of color, the media sensationalizes racial conflicts and controversies, such as Don Imus, without exploring the historical reasons behind these events. Without Blacks, Latinos, and Asian Americans as guests and hosts on prime-time cable news programs, issues affecting communities of color—urbanization, poverty, education, health care—are not given the attention they deserve and are analyzed from a one-sided point of view. It’s time that the news media recognizes that “the public” does not refer solely to White Americans, but that the persons reporting on and commenting about the news should be representative of the diversity of the American population.