Published: 10 April 2012
Region: USA
By Aidan White
A cull of jobs in the newsrooms of American newspapers in recent years has seen tens of thousands of journalists thrown out of work, but it is reporters and editors from minority backgrounds that have suffered most.
A report from the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) reveals that minority representation in the America press is down by 1.4 per cent to 12.3 per cent, even though minorities make up about 36 per cent of the population in the United States according to the latest census figures.
Worryingly, the report shows that the jobs cuts, which have come in the wake of an industry downturn because of Internet and online competition, are considerably worse for people from different ethnic backgrounds.
The number of newsroom staff in general dropped 2.4 percent in the past year, down from 41,600 to 40,600, but minorities suffered even more, with the number of minority newsroom workers down 5.7 percent, from 5,300 to 5,000.
Nearly one in three of the jobs lost affects someone from a minority. The figures confirm a trend over the past three years showing that the decline of minorities is significantly higher compared to the overall decline in newsroom jobs.
Equally worrying is the potential impact on news coverage of the loss of diversity among news staff.
“This is far from just a numbers issue,” says Ronnie Agnew, co-chair of ASNE’s Diversity Committee, “this is a troubling content issue. The decline will only stop when people in leadership embrace diversity as an essential part of their business.”
The impact of this change is already being felt with controversy within American journalism over the coverage of the controversial killing in Florida of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin and searching questions about the role media play in creating stereotypes about young black men.
As minority voices in media decline there is a danger that diverse and inclusive journalism will also suffer, creating yet more scope for ignorance and inaccuracy in media coverage of race relations, migration and often tense community relations across the United States.