The Kerner Commission Then and Newsrooms Now
By Chanel Cain
What struck me the most about the “One Tenth of a Nation” film we watched in class was how much the Black press had built for itself. I am only now understanding the biases I was taught. Through my time at Howard, I learned that what I learned as objective truths may have in fact been skewed towards a particular lens, the white lens to be exact. I believe that is in part due to white newsrooms being viewed as the first draft of history, even while the Black press was writing their truth as well.
The Kerner Commission agrees with me on that front. Through its examination of racism’s roots in America, it lampooned the white press because it had “ too long basked in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective.”
From the beginning of this nation, rich white men have controlled many of the narratives that are still believed today. Without anyone from varying backgrounds to challenge these ideas, they will simply persist. The Kerner Commission laid this blame at the feet of the press. As discussed in class, newsrooms need to reflect the community they are reporting about.
For veteran journalist Paul Delaney, who entered the newsroom prior to the commission’s release, the trend of refusing diversity to preserve whiteness was blatant.
“When I graduated from Ohio State University in 1958, I wrote to 50 daily newspapers. Only two responded, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and West Virginia’s Charleston Gazette, with courteous rejections saying they were not ready to hire Negroes,” he wrote in an article for USA Today.
As he progressed through several majority white newsrooms throughout his career, he found progress to be slow, and oftentimes halted by higher ups. While at the New York Times, one of his editors tried to create a balance where for every white person highered, a person from a marginalized group would also be hired. In response, other editors simply refused to fill those positions, thwarting the effort entirely.
It is baffling that the Kerner Commission’s admonishment that “the journalistic profession has been shockingly backward in seeking out, hiring and promoting Negroes,” wrang true then and still rings true today.
In a 2018 study done in partnership with the Google News Initiative, it found that the majority of news rooms are still a majority white and male.
Link:https://googletrends.github.io/asne/?view=0&filter=race
In fact, the majority of newsrooms still over represent whiteness compared to their local demographics. The impact this has on coverage is undeniable.
The job of a journalist is to tell the unbiased truth. The truth in this matter is newsrooms have made little to no progress since the Kerner Commission was released. As I move forward in my career as a journalist, I find these points the commission made still ring true today:
Publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of Negroes as a group within the community and as a part of the larger community.
Integrate Negroes and Negro activities into all aspects of coverage and content.
Recruit more Negroes into journalism and broadcasting and promote those who are qualified to positions of significant responsibility.
Someone has to be the one to tell these stories. The Black press pioneered proper representation when no one else would look the way of the Black community. I believe as a Black journalist, I must embody those values no matter what my newsroom looks like. If no one else will make the change, then it is up to us to keep persisting.
Chanel Cain, Writer and Social Media Producer 