Lack Of Diversity In The Media

The Media’s Lack of Diversity: The media, at its heart, lacks diversity in ownership, representation, and coverage. To begin with, racial minorities own and report in a disproportionate amount of the media in comparison to racial majorities, like caucasians. According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), African-Americans owned 0.33% of all television stations and 1.6% of all radio stations when the population was comprised of 13% African Americans. On top of this, in newsrooms themselves, only 12.8% of the workforce is comprised of minorities (FCC). According to Milton Coleman, a former president of the American Society of News Editors, “At a time when the U.S. Census shows that minorities are 36 percent of the U.S. population, newsrooms are going in the opposite direction.” (FCC) Coleman, being an African-American himself, noted this as he saw a poor representation of minorities in the …show more content…
The lack of minorities, especially African-Americans, in the media severely limits their representation. Without a workforce of minorities in the media, it is rather easy for newscasters and television station owners to inaccurately represent minorities or not represent them entirely. According to the FCC, “many studies have indicated that mainstream media do not adequately cover African-American and other minority communities.” They go on to remark that “some experts believe that this is linked to hiring practices and a lack of minority voices at the editorial table.”(FCC) As a result of this, the African-American population in the U.S. hardly sees themselves represented and many majority races go blind to their struggles or conditions in favor of their own. This lack of representation or inaccuracy of representation contributes to enforcing stereotypes. Many races have the tendency to stereotype other races and without minorities there to defend their representation, people are exposed to stereotypes through the media, which they