Color, Caste and the Public Sphere

How Racial Injustice Undermines News Sources and News-Based Inferences

“…But, unfortunately, there are other such explanations that involve subjects' mental attitudes. Some of these are that journalists will tend not to inquire into racial injustice related areas because such stories challenge their preferred worldview and that journalists and editors decide to exclude stories about racial injustice because such stories do not rise to the level of what they consider newsworthy (Dixon, 2017;Dixon & Williams, 2015;Frissel et al, 2017;Hall, 1997;Somani & Hopkinson, 2018).…”

“…One glaring example of underrepresentation (Frissell et al 2017) is that despite improvement across the journalism industry since the 1960s (Sylvie 2011), in 2016, the New York Times' political reporting team was composed of 90% whites, 10% blacks and no Latinx or Asians (Chideya 2018). But news organization management often assigned, say, black reporters to cover what management believed were "black" topics (Somani and Hopkinson 2018). And even those few black reporters who are not assigned to such positions, often report on issues of race in ways that are consistent with how major new organizations have tended to report in the domain of racial injustice information (Robinson and Batzen Culver 2016).…”

Black Broadcast Journalists: Implications of Mentorship and Race in the Newsroom

“…Network television newsrooms are unique workplaces for Blacks to navigate. Straddling the lines between entertainment, corporate America and public knowledge, these private, independently operated businesses, encompass their own distinct workplace organizational and cultural practices (Somani & Hopkinson, 2018). Diversity has been a top priority in U.S. corporations, but intentions to achieve a racially diverse workforce at top levels has been met with several issues, including the challenges of mentoring across racial lines, negative stereotypes, peer resentment, role modeling, and public scrutiny (Thomas, 2001).…”