Diversity should be a main priority in journalism

By Alexis Faire

Diversity has always been a hot-button topic in journalism, the media and even the country. With the country constantly changing as more people populate and migrate, the U.S. needs voices for addressing issues related to gender, race and sexuality to come from people who experience it firsthand. As a person who wears several different hats – journalist, woman and African-American – it’s better for the media to have representation when reporting.

It’s important to have perspectives from journalists with different backgrounds because that’s how an outlet can successfully cover those topics. When you have a panel of men discussing women’s rights without having a woman chime in, that doesn’t successfully cover the topic. If you have a Caucasian journalist discussing or writing a story about people of color and spewing every stereotype possible, that doesn’t help the issue either ­– it makes it worse.

In 2016, a Columbia Journalism Review article reported that even with the most diverse newsrooms in the country less than 50 percent of minorities were working journalists. Yes, times have changed and diversity occurs more often than it did maybe 20 years ago, but there’s still room for improvement.

If diversity improves media outlets and newsrooms, why haven’t things changed?

One reason could be that outlets have been relying on the tenacity philosophy. With this, the organization would rely on tradition in order to make decisions for the outlet. Is that what’s best for the organization and its audience? The people in charge might think so, but that doesn’t mean it accurately covers all of the issues it should.

In my opinion, if a news organization doesn’t include diverse journalists or sources, it’s disrespectful and lazy. That’s not to say that diverse people should be included just for the sake of saying an organization has diverse people. The organization should constantly strive to find diverse people because their voices should be heard, too.

In 2015, The New York Times received backlash because it reassigned its only race and ethnicity reporter to an assignment covering a courthouse in the Bronx, according to Poynter. The reporter, Tanzina Vega, eventually became a digital correspondent for CNN.

This is the opposite of what should be happening in newsrooms today. Because Vega was the only reporter for that beat, it made me question why The New York Times specifically wanted her to cover a beat in the Bronx. Did the organization not have another reporter to cover the beat?

Removing Vega from her original beat, thus silences the voices that could’ve been shared through her writing and giving the organization that diverse content it needed to relate to different people.

Without having diversity in journalism, stories could be misconstrued. It could be from personal prejudices or maybe just a lack of information on the topic.

In school, as journalists, we’re taught that we should keep an open mind when it comes to different issues. Does it mean have to agree with everything? No. But you should be willing to accept any and all opinions.