"Sunday Morning Apartheid:" 61% of Sunday talk shows had NO blacks

[beaconess]

According to a new report by the National Urban League:

• Sixty-one percent of all of the Sunday morning talk shows featured no black guests;

• Eighty percent of the broadcasts contained no interviews with black guests;

• Eight percent of the more than 2,800 guest appearances have been by black guests;

• One person—Juan Williams, a commentator for Fox News—accounts for 40 percent of all appearances by black guests;

• Three guests—Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Juan Williams—account for 65 percent of all appearances by black guests;

• The vast majority of interviews with black guests other than Rice and Powell focus on partisan political issues such as the 2004 Elections, rather than broader policy issues such as the economy, national security, and foreign affairs;

• Rice, Powell, and Williams have appeared almost twice as often as all other black guests.

To read the full report, go to: http://www.nul.org/publications/policyinstitute/Apartheid_Report.pdf

[marmar]

1. People like John Conyers or Barbara Lee aren't going to give them....

the answers they want to hear!

:dem:

So they go with the predictably safe panelists.

[beaconess]

2. This goes beyond political ideology

Black conservatives don't get on these shows either.

[Doctor_J]

3. Shit. I see alot of face time for Michael Steele in the near future

and Larry Elder.

[Doctor_J]

4. And where are the black Dems?

please don't tell me Juan Williams is a Dem. He's on Fox "News" for Chrissakes. Where's Conyers? it's not like he's done anything newsworthy lately :sarcasm:

[beaconess]

5. According to the report, Juan Williams accounted for 40% of the

appearance by Black guests on these shows!

And Juan Williams, Rice and Powell accounted for 65!

[Donald Ian Rankin]

6. What percentage of the populace of the US is black?

Also, what happens if you factor in the wealth of guests - it seems not implausible that some/all of underrepresentation of blacks is due to the combination of the underepresentation of the poor and the higher degree of povery among blacks, although I don't have any evidence to that effect.

[beaconess]

7. It doesn't matter - this isn't about demographics or economic status!

No one is suggesting that the people appearing on the networks must reflect the demographics of the population. The issue is whether African Americans are represented at all on these shows.

But even if the shows should mirror the population, they still fall short. African Americans comprise 13% of the population. However, according to the report, less than 5% of the guests on these shows have been black (36 out of 752 guests).

More interestingly, this report shows that 313 of the 514 - 61% - shows broadcast during the two year period studied had NO BLACKS ON THEM AT ALL, i.e., the audience is being presented with the views, opinions and analysis of Whites only.

This has nothing to do with poverty, or education, or knowledge. There are plenty of highly educated, well-informed, knowledgeable, insightful African Americans who have points of view that would greatly benefit the entire audience.

I'm sure if suddenly all of these talk shows had nothing but Black guests, it would be clear that there's a problem and not assume that it was based upon something lacking among Whites. Why do you assume that the dearth of Blacks on these shows is the result of some shortcoming among Blacks?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

8. The short answer is that I don't.

For one thing, I wouldn't describe being poor as a "shortcoming". For another, I didn't assume anything; I asked a question. I'm also not questioning that there's a massive problem with inequality in America, I'm questioning whether or not the underepresentation of blacks on talk shows is a primary or secondary manifestation of that.

To argue that it's primary - i.e. caused by the people selecting guests making race one of the factors they take into account - is by no means absurd, but nor is arguing that it's secondary - i.e. caused by the guest selectors taking into account factors that correlate with race.

To answer your last queestion, if the talk shows had nothing but black guests then obviously I would assume that the problem was primary; if all skin colours were reversed and they had nothing but black guests I wouldn't.

In this case, given the fraction of American politicians who are black and my (possibly erroneous, given that I'm in the UK, in which case it's more likely to be primary after all) belief that most talk show guests in America are politicians, I suspect it's largely secondary, and the real issue is "American electorate discriminates against black politicians" rather than "American talk show hosts discriminate against black guests".

[beaconess]

9. I understand your point, but don't agree

If this were simply a matter of there not being enough "qualified" Blacks, e.g., Black politicians or Black journalists, I would agree with you that the lack of Blacks on these shows was a secondary problem. However, even though there are far fewer Black politicians than White, partly because of population numbers, partly because of discrimination, this does not explain why so few of them appear on these programs.

For example, 43 of the 535 Members of the House and Senate are African-Amerian. African-American Members of Congress - 8%. Yet, according to the National Urban League's report, while Senators and House members appeared more than 700 times, Black Senators and House members appeared only 16 times - 2%. Of the more than 113 Senators and House Members who appeared, only seven - were black. Thirty-six of the 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus never appeared on any of these programs during the period studied.

Also very telling is the fact that, when they do put Blacks on their shows, they usually marginalize them by focusing their interviews on so-called "black" issues - civil rights, poverty, drugs, sports, drugs AND sports, etc. The report shows that Blacks are rarely presented to discuss the economy, national security, etc. And with the exception of Powell and Rice, Blacks are not interviewed about Iraq, leaving the impression that Powell and Rice are the only Black people in America qualified to discuss the war.

So, while you are right that "American electorate discriminates against black politicians," the networks take it a step beyond by further discriminating against the Black politicians who DO manage to get elected. In fact, it could be argued that the networks failure/refusal to put Black politicians on their talk shows actually CONTRIBUTES to the electorate's discrimination since, by excluding Black politicians from their broadcasts, they give the impression that Black politicians are not as qualified to discuss important issues (other than civil rights).

Your approach also fails to take into account the near absence of Black analysts in the roundtable discussions - which are usually done by broadcast and print reporters and opinion writers who the networks select. The country is full of Black journalists - at the networks, major national papers, and regional papers across the country - who are more than qualified to analyze the issues of the day. Yet, the networks continue to present all-white panels week after week after week.

Sorry, but I can't let the networks off the hook by allowing them to hide behind the excuse that it's not their fault because the pool they're drawing from is segregated. Yes, the pool is segregated, but there are still plenty of African Americans swimming in it. And even if that weren't the case, they have a responsibility to broaden the pool from which they draw their guests.