The mass media have been dealing with their role in a pluralistic society since the 1968 Kerner Commission report criticized the news media for presenting information from a white male perspective. Though the report focused on the portrayals of African-Americans, the news media have also used it to gauge their progress in their portrayals and hiring of people from other racial groups.Journalism educators actively began to address this concern when the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (ACEJMC) in 1982 required journalism programs to make effective efforts to recruit, advise, and retain minority students, staff, and women faculty members. Known as Standard 12, this requirement was expanded in 1992 to include curriculum offering courses that prepares students "to understand, cover, communicate with, and relate to amulticultural, multi-racial, and otherwise diverse society" (Ruggles, 1993).This research will focus on the courses devoted entirely to sensitizing Dr educating students about the media's relationship with groups that have experienced long-term discrimination and oppression: women, non-white racial groups, gaysllesbians, and the disabled. These are the types of courses that might be titled, "Race and Gender and the Media," "Race and the Media," "Diversity in the Media," or "Communication and Gender." This research seeks to find out the nature of such courses: What are their objectives? What must students do to earn a grade? What are the in-class and/or out-of-class activities? This research also seeks to find out the strengths and weaknesses of the courses and to assess the extent to which journalism programs are either offering such courses or integrating diversity issues into other journalism classes. For the purpose of consistency, and conciseness, the term minority will be used to refer to these oppressed groups, and the general term for these courses will be courses devoted to diversity.

This study analyzed the contextualized reporting about the black church in newspaper coverage of the 2008 US presidential primary campaign, during which inflammatory sermons by Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Senator Obama’s pastor, threatened to undermine Obama’s campaign. Given that the news media has been criticized for failing to adequately contextualize the black church in the controversy, we examined articles from major US newspapers for their use of two news routines, selection of news sources and explanations of the black church, to provide an understanding of Wright’s sermons. Journalists used Obama and Wright as sources in the stories more than black church sources (80% vs. 62%). Stories also depicted Wright’s church relationship with Obama and Wright’s achievements (50%–61%). Journalists’ and Obama’s explanations of the black church (59%–61%) were comparable to depictions of Wright’s sermons, their tone, and Wright and Pfleger as campaign problems (56%–67%). In the controversy’s latter phase, depictions of Wright and Pfleger as problems occurred more than black church and Obama’s explanations, but depictions of Obama’s break from Wright occurred more than Wright’s defenses. Journalists used several strategies to incorporate black church explanations into their stories; implications for teaching writing routines are discussed.

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