TV Newsrooms Lag on Diversity

TV NEWSROOMS LAG ON DIVERSITY
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Paige Albiniak]
According to the Radio-Television News Directors' annual study of diversity, blacks in TV newsrooms are at 9.5%. And 4.2% of all TV news directors are African-American. Also, the study states, overall minorities in TV newsrooms are at their second-highest level ever: 22.2%. Likewise, 13.2% of all TV news directors are minority, the second-highest that number, too, has ever reached. But with the total U.S. minority population at 33.6%, all employment numbers fall short. “The number of people in broadcast news has declined in general,” says Gary Wordlaw, a former news director and now general manager of CBS-owned WUPL New Orleans. “So the number of minorities looks greater proportionate to the total number. There's been no significant change for years." To do that, there are clear steps that TV stations and the companies that own them can take, some executives say. First, the industry needs to make it easier to get promising people into the employment pipeline by identifying and training them earlier and by offering them paid internships.
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