No Diversity on National TV News
Despite calls for change from the media and the viewing public, women and people of color are still grossly underrepresented in our country’s newscasts. On the heels of the national controversy sparked by Don Imus’ racist remarks last month, Media Matters has released two studies exposing the persistent lack of diversity on television news.
The first study, “Locked Out: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on Cable News Continues,” shows how few women and people of color appear on the five cable networks (CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and Fox News Channel). In fact, besides featuring more African-American guests during the Imus scandal, members of all minority groups were “scarcely seen” as guests on the shows airing between 4 p.m. and midnight. And women comprised as little as 20 percent of all guests. The study also found that there were no minority hosts on the shows airing after 4 p.m. on any of the five networks and just a small percentage of female hosts.
The most recent report, “Sunday Shutout: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows,” documents how women and people of color are rarely featured on the influential Sunday talk shows. Their analysis of NBC’s Meet the Press, ABC’s This Week, CBS’s Face the Nation and Fox News Sunday found that men outnumber women by a 4-to-1 ratio. And there were between seven to nine white guests for every minority guest, depending on the show.
When combined with the results of the Out of the Picture study, which found that only a tiny percentage of women and people of color own broadcast TV stations, an appalling lack of media diversity is revealed — both on and off the air. Only 3 percent of the broadcast television stations are owned by minorities, and 5 percent of the stations are owned by women. This imbalance has spawned mainstream media that don’t represent the views of most Americans — but make huge profits off the public airwaves.
Our country needs media policies that give more women and people of color access to our airwaves. Before the FCC considers rules that would place more control in even fewer hands, it should first address its mandate to ensure media diversity.
