By Mark Memmott
USA Today
Published: 6/15/05
Excerpt:
Why would national media ignore minorities? Among the most important reasons is a lack of diversity in newsrooms, say Robinson, Lerman and Keith Woods, dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists.
“I’m not complaining about the story out of Aruba. I’m complaining about the stories that don’t get told” because many reporters, editors and news producers identify more with people like them, who are white, Woods said.
The American Society of Newspaper Editors estimates 13% of journalists at newspapers are minorities (including Hispanics). In TV newsrooms, minorities make up about 22% of the workforce, according to the Radio-Television News Directors Association. About 32% of the U.S. population is non-white or Hispanic.
Woods and others say the media mislead the public about “typical” victims. FBI statistics show that men are slightly more likely than women to be reported as missing, and that blacks make up a disproportionately large segment of the victims. As of May 1, there were 25,389 men in the FBI’s database of active missing persons cases, and 22,200 cases of women. Blacks accounted for 13,860 cases, vs. 29,383 whites.
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