Where Are The Black 'Newsmakers?'

Urban League Institute Executive Director Stephanie Jones recently drew headlines alleging that the national networks engage in 'Sunday Morning Apartheid.' A study she conducted over the past 18 months revealed that just eight percent of guests on major Sunday morning talk shows are African-Americans.

To Ms. Jones, the Sunday morning talk show line-up represents the most visible venue for critical talk on U.S. and world affairs. During the hours before the nation's 'most segregated hour of the week,' when people are preparing for church or just 'coolin', government leaders and issue experts come on these shows to tell us what we need to know. Or, what they want us to know. Due to their popularity these political talk shows don't just reflect reality, they help shape it. They confer leadership and bestow authority. Blacks among "Meet the Press'" 4.4 million weekly viewers, "Face the Nation's" and "This Week's" 3 million each, "Fox Sunday's" 1.3 million and "Late Edition's" 613,000, rarely see their realities and leadership reflected on these programs.

Of more than 2,100 interview opportunities, African-American guests, either newsmakers, journalists who question newsmakers or experts who offer commentary on issues and events, appeared 176 times. Of the 176 appearances, 122 were made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Juan Williams. Williams is an NPR broadcast journalist and regular panel member on "Fox News Sunday." Network officials said they rely on guests who are newsmakers, most of whom are white men in the top echelons of government. The producers of the five Sunday shows all lean toward official government voices as guests, such as senior members of congress and the cabinet. Show producers make 100 calls a week to a list of 30 prospective guests; a list the Urban League says is "unrepresentative" of the national population.

Though Sunday talk shows help Americans digest complex political issues, they have little record of directly addressing the myriad political and social issues confronting African-Americans. The shows' 'talking heads,' anchor, pundit, or other news personalities, are usually drawn from staffs of broadcast and print media giants. Civil rights leaders and issues are continually marginalized by these media entities. A study by the Poynter Institute cited research that news about minorities accounts for five to seven percent of all content, even though African-Americans and Latinos represent more than 30 percent of the U.S. population.

Television is a very powerful medium and greatly influences millions of people's lives each day. Roughly a third of the public (34 percent) regularly watches one of the nightly network news broadcasts on CBS, ABC or NBC. As has been the case for some time, network news viewers are an aging group. A majority (56 percent) of those age 65 and older regularly watch nightly network news. About a quarter of those aged 30-49 (26 percent) are regulars, while only 18 percent of Americans under age 30 regularly watch these news programs.

The mass media in the United States is extremely concentrated. Powerful corporations have enormous influence on mainstream media. Some nine corporations dominate the media world: AOL-Time Warner, Disney, Bertelsmann, Viacom, News Corporation, TCI, General Electric (owner of NBC), Sony (owner of Columbia and TriStar Pictures and major recording interests), and Seagram (owner of Universal film and music interests). All of these companies each do more than one billion dollars worth of business.

So, will Ms. Johnson's study be a case for more Blacks in the employ of established white media to become new talking heads? Blacks that work for the major newspapers and broadcast outlets will hardly buck corporate media companies' pattern of marginalizing African-Americans and their issues. If more culturally-attuned Black voices are to be heard on Sundays they'll have to come from civil rights groups, such as the NAACP and Urban League and from black-owned media outlets. Some 74 percent of African-Americans are primary or secondary consumers of ethnic media. Views from such people will be much more in line with what Ms. Johnson is trying to accomplish, rather than what she's going to get from new Black faces with the same old white voice.

(William Reed - www.BlackPressInternational.com)