The (Portland) Oregonian recently published an article on the challenges low-income people face when trying to buy healthy food. The paper focused on Portland resident Lesli Calderon to help illustrate the story.
In the comments section of the piece, some people wanted to know Calderon’s ethnicity and legal status, and wondered why The Oregonian didn’t mention them. The paper’s Sunday opinion editor, George Rede, asked me to write about the issue.
I note in my column that deciding which diversity-related information to include in a story depends on the story at hand:
Journalists bear a responsibility to seek and publish the truth as they see it. That requires a dedication to fairness, thoroughness and transparency. Readers should seek to remain abreast of current issues. That requires approaching the news with care, holding journalists accountable and informing journalists about information the reader knows and the journalists don’t. The honest and conscientious interaction between the two yields a more comprehensive, vital and lively form of journalism.
I found that some news organizations have addressed the issue by adopting style and reporting guidelines related to racial/ethnic identification:
The Dallas Morning News, for example, requires that any descriptions about suspects in crime stories should provide enough physical traits that would be helpful in identifying the individual. If the description is too vague, the newspaper prefers to not use it.
Rafael Olmeda, a journalist at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel who was recently president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, says he wants to know the journalistic purpose before he uses a racial, ethnic or status piece of information.
Identifying subjects in stories presents a continual challenge for journalists. Do we describe subjects the way we see them? Do we describe them the way they want to be described? Do we describe them the way our audience wants them described?
It’s easier to ask these questions than to provide answers to them. As journalists, we want to be accurate in the way we describe someone. But accuracy takes us to just the first level. It helps us to seek out facts, but not necessarily context.
In many ways, context helps us determine which facts will help us portray the most authentic picture we can. What do we put in? What do we leave out? What helps the audience understand the story as completely as it needs to be told? If the Oregonian story had been about low-income minorities who face challenges when trying to buy healthy food, then it would most likely have been appropriate to include Calderon’s ethnicity. But that’s not what the story was about; it was about all low-income people.
The approach news organizations take regarding this issue depends on the clarity they want to bring the story they’re publishing, producing or broadcasting. Reporters and editors need to consider what information is needed to deepen the audience’s understanding of the story they are telling. Naming the race and ethnicity of every minority in every story won’t do that.
What policy does your newsroom have when it comes to identifying race and ethnicity in stories?
