Radio Newsroom Investment

The latest data about newsroom diversity brought outrage among journalist organizations such as UNITY: Journalists of Color (a consortium comprising the national minority journalism membership organizations: Native American Journalists Association, Asian American Journalist Association, National Hispanic Journalist Association and the National Association of Black Journalists).

The data, again from an RTNDA/Ball State survey in 2004, show that the number of journalists of color working in local radio declined from 11.8% to just under 8%. The minority population of the U.S. , according to the survey, is approximately 33%.9

UNITY responded that it was “discouraged by the fluctuation of the percentage of journalists of color working in local radio… The percentage of people of color in radio has dropped 50% since 1988, when stringent EEOC” —Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — “rules were eliminated. Journalists of color made up 16% of the radio workforce that year.”10

Hispanics are the largest minority in the U.S.; by the end of 2004, the country’s more than 41 million Hispanics were roughly 14% of the total population.11 And it is a population that radio broadcasters have become increasingly interested in. Hispanics also make up the largest percentage of the minority radio news work force, 6%. African Americans, Asian Americans and Native Americans each constitute less than 1% of that work force.

In addition, the numbers were better and had improved for Hispanics in terms of news directors. Compared to 2003, the percentage of Hispanic news directors increased some 6% to 8.8. Native Americans, on the other hand, made up just 2.2% of news directors, down from 2.7% in 2003, and African Americans and Asian Americans, based on survey results, remained statistically absent form those posts on a national scale.

The average number of minorities on a radio news staff was less than one (.3).

The statistics raise more questions when looked at in relationship to minority audiences for news/talk and information programming. Neither commercial nor public radio audiences for that format include a large segment of either black or Hispanic listeners. The commercial audience has only 7.6% black listenership and 5.9% Hispanic. Public radio listenership is even lower, only 6.1% black and 5.2% Hispanic.