MEDIA WATCH

Study finds voices of color are scarce on urban public radio

By Steve Rendall and Will Creeley

“[Public broadcasting] should provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard...[and] help us see America whole in all its diversity.”
— 1967 Carnegie Commission Report, which served as the basis for the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967

Created by the Public Broadcasting Act and signed into law by President Johnson in 1967, the government-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is legally required to “constitute an expression of diversity and excellence” through programming “that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.” It was also mandated to promote “locally relevant” programming that is “reflective of America’s common values and cultural diversity.”

But progressive media historian Robert McChesney (Alternative Radio, 11/99) says the CPB has “gone almost nowhere near those principles,” adding, “What groups in society is [the CPB] trying to give voice to? It would not be the dispossessed, the marginalized, those outside the power structure. It’s giving voice to the business community, the entrepreneurs, the upper middle class, the intelligentsia.”

Most of CPB’s financial support for public radio is distributed through Community Service Grants, which are often a station’s single largest source of revenue (typically between 10 percent to 15 percent of a major station’s budget). To be eligible for these grants, stations must fulfill particular requirements.

With larger audiences and bigger fundraising—both from listeners and corporate underwriters—CPB grants increase. For many public radio stations, efforts to expand—to maximize CPB funding through increased ratings, corporate support and listener pledges—are paramount, overriding the original need to “constitute an expression of diversity and excellence.”

To this end, many public radio stations adhere to the philosophy of audience researchers like David Giovannoni, whose Audience Research Analysis firm “holds contracts with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public Radio [NPR], Public Radio International, and almost every major NPR member station in the country,” according to the New York Times (11/11/01). Emphasizing the importance of ratings, Giovannoni encourages public radio stations to replace “lower-performance programming with higher-performance programming,” which often means canceling “niche” local cultural programming in favor of more mainstream NPR news and talk fare.

Accordingly, when surveying the programming on public airwaves in seven distinct urban markets across the nation, one notes a remarkable sameness. Not only did every station studied by Extra! broadcast both Morning Edition and All Things Considered, but in four of the seven markets studied — Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Washington — these shows each air twice, on two separate NPR member stations.
The survey also found that that the dominant voices on the leading public radio stations in seven US urban markets are overwhelmingly white and predominantly male.

The survey, which looked at the ethnicity and gender of the stations’ daytime hosts and news anchors, found that 73 out of 83 were non-Latino whites (88 percent). Fifty-seven of the daytime hosts and anchors were male (69 percent).

Six of the hosts were African-American, two were Asian-American, and two were Arab-American. (Hosts who appeared on multiple stations were counted once for each station.) Just one Latino host appeared during any station’s daytime broadcasts, while no Native American hosts showed up in the survey.

The dominance of white, male voices contrasts with public radio’s professed mission of inclusiveness, especially when considering the diversity of the metropolitan areas the stations serve.

Diverse cities, homogenous hosts

The survey included weekday shows that aired from the beginning of “morning drivetime” to the end of “afternoon drivetime” — from 6am until 6pm. Drivetime — when many commuters are listening to the radio in their cars—generally gets the highest listenership during the day, and the midday hours in between typically have considerably more listeners than the evening or late night hours (Arbitron.com, “Radio Today 2001”).

Extra! chose seven prominent, geographically disparate cities, and then looked at the leading noncommercial station with a news and public affairs format in each city. The stations surveyed were KCRW in Los Angeles, KQED in San Francisco, WBEZ in Chicago, WNYC in New York City, WAMU in Washington, DC, WABE in Atlanta and WLRN in Miami.

While all the stations are affiliates of NPR and subscribe to other program services as well, each is locally controlled and independently programmed. Each of the seven stations airs NPR’s main news programs, Morning Edition and All Things Considered, during daytime hours, so those shows’ anchors were counted in our study.
To compare the stations’ most prominent voices to the communities the stations serve, we used the US Census Bureau’s Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), which provide demographic information on central cities as well as their surrounding suburbs. While the average station surveyed had daytime hosts who were 87 percent white, the metropolitan areas served by these stations averaged 45 percent white.

While the stations reached a population that was, on average, 19 percent African-American, their daytime hosts and anchors averaged just 7 percent African-American. More strikingly, the cities served by the radio stations studied were on average 25 percent Latino, but only 1 percent of the hosts and anchors at the stations studied were Latino.

The stations reached a population that averaged 9 percent Asian-American, but only 2 percent of their daytime hosts and anchors were Asian-American.

Sixty-eight percent of hosts and anchors were male, serving areas that were, on average, 49 percent male.

Aggregate numbers for the seven stations reflect a lack of diversity, but individual stations varied significantly.

For the full report, please see the Sept. / Oct. 2002 issue of Extra! at http://www.fair.org/extra/0209/white-noise.html

Source: FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

Bobby Medford: a tale of two papers

By Sean Marquis

Oct. 30 (AGR)— On Wednesday Oct. 23 the Mountain Xpress broke a story about a domestic violence incident which occurred on Oct. 1, in which Jeffrey Medford - son of Buncombe County Sheriff Bobby Medford - was named as having been involved, but no one was arrested. Three days later on Saturday Oct. 26, the Asheville Citizen-Times (AC-T) ran its own story on the incident.

What follows is a brief accounting of some of the discrepancies between the two articles:

• Xpress stated that there were two 911 tapes of the phone call made by a neighbor to report the incident but Xpress was only able to obtain one from Buncombe County Emergency Services. But of the other: “Xpress has been denied access to the Buncombe County Sheriff’s Department’s 911 tape — a violation of North Carolina’s open-records law.” Xpress printed the transcript of the tape they did have.
• AC-T said that “Xpress alleged the sheriff’s department had not been forthcoming about the incident.” AC-T did not report on the veracity of this statement, nor does it appear to have even questioned the sheriff’s department about it. AC-T did though, say that, “The sheriff’s department cooperated with the Citizen-Times’ request for information.” From a reading of the two articles it appears AC-T did have access to the tapes which Xpress was denied.
• Both Xpress and AC-T used 911 information stating that the incident was initially reported at a little after 12pm on Oct. 1. Also both accounts then have the alleged victim driving off and leaving the neighbor’s home from where the 911 call was made.
• The Xpress then draws attention to two different police reports, one by Buncombe County Deputy Helen T. Hall, who interviewed the woman at the hospital which states “time reported” as 1:53pm. This contradicts the 911 record and the report of Woodfin Police Department Sgt. Rob Austin who put the same woman at the scene of a car accident (which she caused some time after driving off from her residence, according to Austin’s report) also at 1:53pm. Austin filed the report six days after the accident allegedly occured and, according to Xpress, would not say why an ambulance was called to the scene to take the woman to the hospital even though Austin wrote in his report that there was “no injury to either party.” When asked specifically about it, Austin replied: “That’s not something I can get into. I can’t answer that question, sorry,” Xpress reported. Once at the hospital, the woman was interviewed by deputy Hall in regards to the alleged domestic violence incident. AC-T did not mention any of these contradictions.
  

• In a sidebar, Xpress includes the transcript of their phone call with Sheriff Medford, who after four quick questions and answers cut off the interviewer and said: “‘Now don’t pick on my son, OK?’ Xpress: ‘I’m not attempting to pick on your son.’ Medford: ‘Now listen to me all right? Now, do you story, OK? But now, you’re gonna have enough problems coming out of Morganton, that I don’t have to cause you any. OK? Now, I’ll talk to you later, son.’”
• AC-T appears to have spoken to a much more mild Medford and included a nice quote that ended: “I don’t have one bad thing to say about anybody. Bless their hearts.”
• 
  AC-T focuses much attention on political aspects of the incident being as Medford’s election rival, Mike Ruby, is using it as a campaign issue. AC-T even tries to discredit a source used by Xpress in relation to this. AC-T said Xpress “quoted Ruby campaign supporter and contributor Don Reavis as saying an arrest should have been made [none was]…The article did not note that [Reavis] gave more than $250 to Ruby’s campaign.”
• After introducing Reavis and stating his law enforcement credentials the Xpress article states that Reavis, “was relieved of his position as the county’s top deputy when Medford took office…(Reavis examined copies of the reports with all names deleted, and was not informed by Xpress of any circumstances surrounding the case.)” Reavis then said, according to Xpress, that if the woman had visible injuries which corroborated her story then an arrest should have been made.
• Both AC-T and Xpress quoted sources saying the woman did have visible injuries, including cuts and bruises.
• Xpress said the neighbor who made the 911 call said the alleged victim: “showed her severe bruising from her knees to her abdomen and that [she] had stated that her boyfriend had tied her to a bed and beaten and kicked her for three days.”
• AC-T spoke with Jeffrey Medford. “Jeffrey Medford said he was involved in the dispute. But he did not hit [her]. He said the woman tried to hurt herself and he tried to stop her.”
  
• Xpress explicitly stated that they went to press with the story when they did because the sheriff’s department was refusing to hand over the 911 tapes and “Time is of the essence because a sheriff is permitted to destroy 911 tapes after 30 days.”
  

The Mountain Xpress raises some legitimate concerns
about the incident and the subsequent handling of it. The Citizen-Times, by relying on statements by Medford’s political opponent and the county Democrat and Republican party heads and by alleging Xpress’ misuse of Reavis as a source, plays up a political aspect of the story and brushes aside some serious questions.

On a final note, a glowing editorial in the Oct. 30 Citizen-Times endorsed Bobby Medford’s re-election bid.

The editorial even touched on the Oct. 1 incident and said in part, that the woman involved “had bruises and scratches when she was arrested later after a traffic accident…and [there was] no way to conclusively tie the woman’s injuries to Jeffrey Medford, there seems to be nothing improper in the department’s handling of the incident.”

The Citizen-Times and Bobby Medford: “Bless their hearts.”

NPR, NYT count out
anti-war activists

Oct. 28— National Public Radio and the New York Times arrived at the same conclusion about the anti-war rally in Washington, DC this weekend: The turnout was disappointing. But neither report matched reality.

The Times account on Oct. 27 was vague, reporting that “thousands of protesters marched through Washington’s streets,” adding that “fewer people attended than organizers had said they hoped for.” The report, which was under 500 words, appeared on page 8 of the paper.

On the Oct. 26 broadcast of Weekend Edition, NPR’s Nancy Marshall went even further to disparage the turnout by offering an estimate on the crowd’s size: “It was not as large as the organizers of the protest had predicted. They had said there would be 100,000 people here. I’d say there are fewer than 10,000.”

While a turnout of less than 10,000 might have been a disappointment, NPR’s estimate is greatly at odds with those of other observers. The Los Angeles Times (10/27/02) reported that over 100,000 participated in the march, while the Washington Post’s page A1 story (10/27/02) was headlined “100,000 Rally, March Against War in Iraq.” The Post added that Saturday’s march was “an antiwar demonstration that organizers and police suggested was likely Washington’s largest since the Vietnam era.” While both the Times and NPR reported the apparent disappointment of the organizers, none were named or quoted directly. Those who spoke to other news outlets expressed just the opposite; organizer Mara Verheyden-Hilliard told the Washington Post the march was “just extremely, extremely successful.”

Perhaps someone at NPR noticed: The next day Weekend Edition anchor Liane Hansen introduced a report about anti-war demonstrations by saying that “organizers say 100,000 protesters were gathered.” The New York Times did not run any follow-up article updating its estimate of the crowd size.

Source: FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

What a difference
four years makes:
Why UN inspectors left Iraq -- then and now

The chief UN weapons inspector ordered his monitors to leave Baghdad today after saying that Iraq had once again reneged on its promise to cooperate—a report that renewed the threat of US and British airstrikes.
—AP, 12/16/98

Information on Iraq’s programs has been spotty since Saddam expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998.

—AP, 9/7/02

Saddam expelled UN weapons inspectors in 1998, accusing some of being US spies.
—USA Today, 9/4/02

But the most recent irritant was Mr. Butler’s quick withdrawal from Iraq on Wednesday of all his inspectors and those of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which monitors Iraqi nuclear programs, without Security Council permission. Mr. Butler acted after a telephone call from Peter Burleigh, the American representative to the United Nations, and a discussion with Secretary General Kofi Annan, who had also spoken to Mr. Burleigh.
—New York Times, 12/18/98

America’s goal should be to ensure that Iraq is disarmed of all unconventional weapons.... To thwart this goal, Baghdad expelled United Nations arms inspectors four years ago.
—New York Times editorial, 8/3/02

Butler ordered his inspectors to evacuate Baghdad, in anticipation of a military attack, on Tuesday night—at a time when most members of the Security Council had yet to receive his report.
—Washington Post, 12/18/98

Since 1998, when UN inspectors were expelled, Iraq has almost certainly been working to build more chemical and biological weapons.
—Washington Post editorial, 8/4/02

Butler abruptly pulled all of his inspectors out of Iraq shortly after handing Annan a report yesterday afternoon on Baghdad’s continued failure to cooperate with UNSCOM, the agency that searches for Iraq’s prohibited weapons of mass destruction.
— Newsday, 12/17/98

The reason Hussein gave was that the UN inspectors’ work was completed years ago, before he kicked them out in 1998, and they dismantled whatever weapons they found. That’s disingenuous.
—Newsday editorial, 8/14/02

Source: Extra!, a publication of FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting)

Media Briefs

NYT photographer
staged picture

The New York Times acknowledged Friday, Oct. 25 that one of its staff photographers violated journalism ethics and company policy when he had a child pose for a news photograph that was published last month in some of the paper’s editions.

The controversial picture shows a 6-year-old boy aiming a toy pistol alongside a sign reading “Arabian Foods” outside a store in Lackawanna, NY, a suburb of Buffalo. The photo accompanied a Sept. 20 article about a group of Arab-Americans who have been accused of operating a cell of the al-Qaida terrorist network.

In a note to readers, Times editors said they had determined the photo was posed in “violation of its policy on journalistic integrity.” The editors also said the photographer “acknowledged that the boy’s gesture had not been spontaneous.”

Staff photographer Edward Keating, who was credited in the Sept. 20 editions with taking the photo and others that ran with the story, denied that he staged any of the pictures.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis said publication of the staged news picture appeared to be the first of its kind in recent memory at the Times. “We have no recollection of a prior occurrence,” she said.

It’s common practice to pose pictures that accompany articles about gardens, cooking, celebrities, and other topics found in features and entertainment sections. But experts say posing a picture for a news story is prohibited because it doesn’t reflect what truly happened.

Arab-American groups are angry about the episode because they say it reinforces stereotypes about immigrants teaching violence to their children. (Newsday)

Project Censored updates most
censored news

Project Censored, the media watchdog based at Sonoma State University, has released an update of the year’s most “censored” news stories for 2002.

The additions include:

• FBI violates civil liberties (In These Times, 7/8/02, “New FBI, Same Old Problem,” by Doug Ireland)
  
• US government funds anti-abortion clinics (In These Times, 8/19/02, “Clinic Crisis,” by Eleanor Bader)
  
• Israel supported Hamas from its inception until the early 90’s (Covert Action Quarterly, Winter 2001, “Israel and Hamas — Dancing the Zionist Waltz,” by Rezeq Faraj)
  
• Farmworkers suffer for Taco Bell profits (Asheville Global Report, 6/13/02, “Coalition Urges Taco Bell Boycott,” by Brendan Conley)
  
• Domestic sweatshops (Clamor, July/Aug. 2002, “American Made: Sweatshops in the USA,” by Casey Boland)
  
• The four steps of World Bank assistance (Sentient Times, Apr/May 2002, “The Four Steps of World Bank Assistance,” by Greg Palast). (Project Censored)