Journalism, Broadcast

By: Pamela Newkirk

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Journalism, Broadcast

In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson's National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, in a stinging indictment of the news industry, condemned the broadcast and print media for their exclusion of African Americans in the newsroom and their failure to convey the complexities of black life. “The media report and write from the standpoint of a white man's world,” said the report. “The ills of the ghetto, the difficulties of life there, the Negro's burning sense of grievance, are seldom conveyed.”

In the year the report was issued, only a handful of black men worked in overwhelmingly white newsrooms and Diahann Carroll made television history by being the first black woman to star in a network television series: surely few in 1968 could have fathomed the day (thirty-some years later) that Oprah Winfrey, a black woman, would be one of the biggest names in the television industry and that another black woman, born in New York's fabled Harlem community, would run NBC's Los Angeles station, KNBC.

Black Women Gain a Voice

By the turn of the twenty-first century black women were making their mark in a variety of positions before and behind the camera. Paula Madison, the president and general manager of KNBC, the number-two market in the country, was among an elite group of black women at or near the top of major broadcasting stations around the country. With more than four hundred employees and a reach of 16 million viewers, Madison was, in 2003, one of the most powerful African Americans or women in television. When she was named to the position in November 2000, she was the first African American woman to become general manager at a network-owned station in a top-five market. In addition, in 2002 Madison was named regional general manager for the two Telemundo television stations in Los Angeles acquired by NBC that year. But she was not alone as an African American woman in a top position in the broadcasting industry; she was joined by, among others, Pamela Thomas Graham, the president and general manager at CNBC, the cable finance and business network. With three degrees from Harvard—the college, law school, and business school—Thomas Graham had already cut her teeth as a pioneer by becoming the first African American partner at the prestigious McKinsey & Co. and as president of CNBC.com.

“I'm not suggesting legions, but when we look at news directors, station managers, there's a pretty significant number,” Madison said in a personal interview in 2003. “There are many, many more African American women in the pipeline to ascend to the senior most positions in television.” Occupying some of the most coveted positions in television—from Oprah Winfrey's multimedia empire to Star Jones of ABC Television's The View; Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS's Washington Week in Review; and Michel McQueen Martin at ABC's Nightline—black women have proven themselves a viable commodity.

However, despite these obvious strides by individual African American women in the decades since 1968, African American women, like African Americans as a whole, continue to be underrepresented in broadcasting, particularly in top management. A 2002 survey of the Radio-Television News Directors Association indicated that in that year, whites represented about 70 percent of the nation's population but held nearly 95 percent of television's general management posts. Whites also held 90.8 percent of news director jobs, compared with 2 percent held by African Americans, men and women combined. Even as more African Americans became far more visible in front of the camera—they held about 12 percent of news reporter and anchor positions in 2002—the numbers dropped significantly in decision-making positions such as executive producer, managing editor, and news director. The network nightly newscasts remained the sole province of white men with the exception of the weekend anchor position held by ABC News' Carole Simpson, an African American woman. Simpson made history when, in 1989, she filled in for anchorman Peter Jennings, becoming the first woman of color to anchor the network nightly news during the week. Simpson had already been the first African American woman network anchor as the anchor of ABC's weekend newscast.

Elsewhere on television, African Americans, were, like other racial minorities, woefully underrepresented. In 1999 Kweisi Mfume, president of the NAACP, threatened to boycott the major networks to protest the virtual exclusion of racial minorities in the new fall lineup. While the networks signed an agreement committing to greater diversity, two years later there was little discernible advancement.

Early History of African Americans and Television

Still, the achievements of Madison, Ifill, Winfrey, and others signal progress, particularly if one considers the challenges and roadblocks that paved their path throughout the history of television. As J. Fred MacDonald points out in Blacks and White Television since 1948, the early days of television saw no black newscasters, correspondents, or black announcers, even as African American entertainers, particularly comedians and singers, enjoyed high visibility. “On the surface, early television seemed to be almost colorblind,” writes MacDonald. “The new industry frequently featured black celebrities …. Many felt that TV promised a new and prejudiced-free era in popular entertainment.”

In 1950 Ebony magazine reported that television offered better roles for blacks than other media venues. That same year, Ed Sullivan, the popular host of CBS's Toast of the Town, declared that television played a crucial role in the civil rights movement by taking it “into the living rooms of America's homes where public opinion is formed.” The following year NBC published guidelines promoting the equitable portrayal of minorities on television. However, as the profit motive increased, the early promise of equality faded. Television was a $2 billion business by the end of the 1950s, notes MacDonald, and “in light of disastrous financial repercussions that might follow the realization of old expectations, past pledges had to be reconsidered.”

With notable exceptions, portrayals of African Americans largely remained stereotypical or limited to comedic roles. And it would take many years for African Americans to gain a foothold in television news. So while Pauline Frederick, a white woman, would in 1953 became the first newswoman to work full time on network news when she was hired by NBC, it would take until 1962 before a black male, Mal Goode, broke the color barrier. Not until the end of the 1960s would a handful of African American women, including Norma Quarles at Cleveland's NBC-owned station and Melba Tolliver at ABC's New York station, follow men and white women into television news.

The Unrest of the 1960s and the Activism of the 1970s

The late Robert Maynard, a prominent African American journalist and editor and publisher of the Oakland Tribune, once attributed the progress of all black journalists to the televised images of the Watts riots of 1965 that resulted in millions of dollars in property damage and thousands of casualties. Maynard maintained that the “frightful scene” in the south-central neighborhood of Los Angeles made editors throughout the United States “aware for the first time that there might be an imperative for even the token desegregation of their newsrooms.”

The riots in Watts would soon spread to dozens of cities across the country, resulting in President Johnson's commissioning a panel, led by Senator Otto Kerner, to study the nation's racial problems. Among the areas explored was the role the media played in fueling the unrest. While the report did not blame the media for causing the riots, it said that distorted and inadequate coverage of African Americans in both television dramas and news coverage had contributed to black alienation and despair:

"The Commission's major concern with the news media is not in riot reporting as such, but in the failure to report adequately on race relations and ghetto problems and to bring more Negroes into journalism.…In defining, explaining and reporting this broader, more complex and ultimately far more fundamental subject, the communications media, ironically, have failed to communicate. (Kerner Commission Report)"

The report also criticized as “shockingly backward” the media's record of hiring, training, and promoting African Americans and said the claim that qualified blacks could not be found “rings hollow from an industry where, only yesterday, jobs were scarce and promotion unthinkable for a man whose skin was black.” In response, the commission called for “fair and courageous journalism, commitment and coverage that are worthy of one of the crucial domestic stories in America's history.”

The commission report garnered headlines from every major news organization, including the New York Times and the Washington Post. An editorial in the New York Times on 2 March 1968 stated:

"It is a warning that transcends all considerations of partisan or group interest—a warning that total national commitment and sacrifice in the cause of genuine racial equality is the price of America's survival as a society built on order and justice."

While the report contributed greatly to the expansion of opportunities for African Americans in the news media, it was not the first or last time that the television industry would come under sharp criticism for its treatment of African Americans. In October 1962 the Committee on Integration of the New York Society for Ethical Culture, a nonsectarian humanitarian group, had found in a two-week study of television programming that of 398 half-hour units of viewing, blacks appeared in only 89 units, the bulk of these being irregular appearances as singers, dancers, or musicians or as the subjects in hard news and documentary programming. Such limited and stereotyped exposure was, it said, “psychologically damaging” to the image of blacks.

Even earlier, in 1947, the Hutchins Commission on Freedom of the Press, a group comprising white academics, had noted the routine stereotypical coverage of African Americans in the media. Its study, “A Free and Responsible Press,” recommended the projection of a representative portrait of America and chastised the stereotypical portrayals of racial minorities.

"If the Negro appears in the stories published in magazines of national circulation only as a servant, if children figure constantly in radio dramas as impertinent and ungovernable brats—the image of the Negro and the American child is distorted. The plugging of special color and “hate” words in radio and press dispatches, in advertising copy, in news stories—such as “ruthless,” “confused,” “bureaucratic”—performs the same image-making function."

The report added: “The truth about any social group, though it should not exclude its weaknesses and vices, includes also recognition of its values, its aspirations, and its common humanity.”

But while the Hutchins Commission was largely ignored, the National Advisory Panel, commonly called the Kerner Commission, had in its favor the weight of the president who commissioned it. Shortly after its release, the Johnson administration announced a federal policy that would withhold broadcast operating licenses to stations that deliberately practiced employment discrimination. The policy was adopted in 1969 and expanded a year later to require stations to file annual reports detailing their minority recruitment efforts. The data would be used to monitor compliance. In adopting the new policy, the Federal Communications Commission relied on the broad mandate of the Communications Act of 1934 that empowered the agency to protect the public interest by ensuring that stations reflected the viewpoints of the communities they served. Under the new mandate, the percentage of minorities in broadcast news increased to 9.1 percent by 1970, according to the Federal Communications Commission data. A number of measures followed, including one that required licensees with more than fifty full-time employees to file detailed employment profiles. Despite challenges by the National Association of Broadcasters, the policies were upheld in federal court until they were finally struck down in 1998.

In 1974 the National Black Feminist Organization took aim at the portrayals of blacks on prime-time shows, noting that few black women were cast as professionals, paraprofessionals, or working people. Three years later, in August 1977, the United States Civil Rights Commission released its report “Window Dressing on the Set: Women and Minorities in Television,” which concluded that the broadcasting industry had hired women and minorities, but had not sufficiently promoted them. It said that while the number of women and minorities had increased between 1971 and 1975, “contrary to the impression one may form from these data, minorities and women have not necessarily made significant employment gains at these stations.”

White males continued to hold the overwhelming number of decision-making positions and outnumbered minority and female correspondents by almost nine to one, the report found. It also said that women and minorities rarely covered stories of national significance and that they tended to cover news related to women and minorities. In 1979 the Annenberg School of Communication of the University of Pennsylvania reported the findings of its ten-year study of television programming. It concluded that minorities were routinely stereotyped in network shows. So, even as the number of African Americans and women slowly increased, the impact on coverage appeared minimal. In addition, little attention was paid to the toll integration took on African Americans in the workplace. While the culture clash was significant for all African Americans, African American women would face unique challenges.

Discrimination

Melba Tolliver was a television reporter at New York City's ABC affiliate when, in 1971, she was assigned to cover the wedding of the president's daughter, Tricia Nixon, in the White House Rose Garden. The day before the wedding, Tolliver reported to work with her hair styled in an Afro. Her ethnically unique hairdo caused the producer to call the news director, who told Tolliver her hairstyle was not appropriate for her work. Tolliver proceeded to Washington to cover the wedding, still wearing an Afro. Her scheduled appearance on a local morning show the next morning was canceled and she was summoned to a meeting with the vice president and general manager for news and her news director. For three days, Tolliver was banished from the television broadcast. The deadlock was broken when the situation was leaked to a New York City newspaper. The attention provoked viewers to write the station to support Tolliver's right to wear an Afro. “It proved them wrong,” Tolliver later said.

"They desperately feared they'd lose part of the audience because people would see me as a Black Pantherette. They were just wrong. They didn't lose ratings. They probably gained."

Nine years later, Dorothy Reed, a television reporter and co-anchor at KGO-TV, the ABC affiliate in San Francisco, was suspended for two weeks for appearing on air wearing cornrows. In statements to the press, Reed said her suspension was “a case of white male-dominated management deciding how I should look as an acceptable black woman.” She said her hairstyle “gives me a tremendous amount of pride and reflects my heritage.” Her suspension resulted in protests outside the station offices and front-page headlines. A settlement was finally reached which required the station to pay her for the two weeks if she dispensed with the colorful beads that adorned her hair. While Reed won the battle, she was, for months, the target of racist hate mail, and when her contract expired, it was not renewed. “When I was let go, I could have demanded a reason,” Reed would say later. “I didn't have to let that go but at that point it was so painful I just wanted to get away from it.”

A Black Female Television Reporter, the first African American woman hired in this capacity by Channel 11 (owned by the Daily News). The photograph was taken in June 1974.

© Bettye Lane

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Black women broadcasters would face other exceptional challenges. In 1985 Harry Porterfield, an African American anchorman at CBS-owned WBBM in Chicago, was demoted to make way for a returning newsman. The move sparked a boycott of the station spearheaded by Jesse Jackson, the founder of Operation PUSH. While the issue initially appeared to be one of race, it quickly became a gender battle when Henry Hardy, the chief negotiator for Operation Push, was quoted as saying: “White America has always sought to undermine black men and sometimes use black women as a double minority.”

Hardy's statement rankled many African American women broadcasters who were, like men, sorely underrepresented in the industry. Max Robinson had been the only African American, male or female, to regularly anchor a network newscast, which he had ceased doing several years earlier. (Although Carole Simpson, at ABC News, had sat in for Peter Jennings, she then returned to her weekend anchor slot.) In 2003 the three anchor chairs at ABC, NBC, and CBS remained white and male. Increasingly, however, black women would be viewed by some as advantageous to stations since they were, in essence, a double minority. But as the numbers would show, both women and African Americans remained underrepresented in the industry.

The 2002 Radio-Television News Directors Association— Ball State University annual survey showed that the percentage of African American men and women in broadcast newsrooms was 9.3 percent, and, as said above, the percentage of news directors was 2 percent, while the percentage of reporters was 12.3 percent. Women as a whole comprised about 40 percent of broadcast news jobs. Meanwhile, a 2002 study of network nightly news showed that in 2001, 92 percent of all U.S. sources interviewed were white and 85 percent were male. Only 7 percent of the sources were black, according to the study commissioned by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting.

As the NAACP boycott threat indicated, African Americans did not fare much better on television shows in general. In 2000 NBC became the first of the networks to strike a deal with the NAACP to hire more minorities as writers, producers, and directors and to cast more African Americans and other people of color in lead roles. ABC, CBS, and Fox soon thereafter also pledged to diversify their shows. A year later, NAACP president Kweisi Mfume complained that there had only been modest gains. “By any reasonable standard, African Americans and all other races of people are underrepresented in almost every aspect of the television and film industry,” Mfume said at a press conference, reported in the Baltimore Sun on 19 August 2001. He again raised the prospect of a boycott. Out of thirty-five new shows planned for the fall 2001 lineup, two had African Americans cast in lead roles and both were sitcoms.

Still, there were isolated instances of progress. By the end of 2001 Angela Bassett, an Oscar-nominated actress, had starred in Ruby's Bucket of Blood, a television movie broadcast on Showtime, a cable network. Bassett was also executive producer of the movie. In early 2002 Bassett and Cicely Tyson starred in The Rosa Parks Story, broadcast on CBS, and black women starred in other television shows, including the Showtime series Soul Food and Girlfriends on UPN.

Although at the opening of the twenty-first century African American women were more visible and seen in a greater variety of roles in front of and behind the camera, the challenge for greater representation and fair and balanced portrayals of all African Americans remained an elusive goal in broadcasting as it would be in film, newspapers, and magazines.

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