White Male Pundit Power (The Nation)
Ari Melber
New piece on an old problem:
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion/327878/white_male_pundit_power
(The plain text is below, though the original piece has links and pics if you use the above link.)
White Male Pundit Power
06/09/2008
Ari Melber
It's still all about the white men.
Hillary Clinton's loss has renewed critiques that American political
media is slanted, sexist and dominated by men. While Clinton and Obama
broke barriers in the Democratic primary, swiftly dispatching white
male Senators with more government experience, the race was still
refereed, scored and narrated by white male commentators, an
influential constituency in presidential politics. Pundits talked a
lot about gender and racial progress during the campaign, of course,
but the elite opinion media continues to employ, groom and promote a
commentators corps that is disproportionately white and male.
The most traditional location to reach the political establishment,
the Washington Post opinion section, is brazenly male-dominated.
Seventeen of the 19 columnists are men; only three of the columnists
are racial minorities. Guest op-eds could present more voices, but
they rarely do. This year, only 12 percent of the Post's guest pieces
came from women, according to a May count by ombudsman Deborah Howell.
At the New York Times, eight of the ten weekly columnists are men; one
is black. (The Times also recently created a bimonthly graphics
column, a post filled by a black commentator.) And in an industry
review last year, about one out of four columnists were women at the
largest syndicates around the country, according to Editor and
Publisher. As Times columnist Nick Kristoff lamented last month, even
as reporting staffs diversify, white men dominate American punditry
"from newspaper columnists to television talking heads."
The disparity is striking on air. Most anchors, producers and writers
in television news are women, according to the Radio and Television
News Directors Association, yet the vast majority of prime time
hosts, who dominate campaign coverage and frame presidential debates,
are white men. That includes all the Sunday morning hosts, all the prime time hosts on
MSNBC,
and all but one of the prime time hosts on CNN and FOX.
The Democratic primary did briefly boost the diversity of the pundit
pool - all those segments about race and gender would have been eerie
with the usual lineup. "Both MSNBC and CNN this election season have
given new prominence to a handful of contributing commentators from
varied backgrounds and perspectives: blacks, Hispanics and women," the
Times reported in April. "Whether such moves signal real progress in
diversifying the punditocracy or merely reflect the needs of a
particular news cycle is the question." And while the networks
obviously should not bench diverse commentators until "diversity" is
in the news, the booking history for political shows is not
encouraging.
According to a recent, two-year study of the four major Sunday talk
shows by Media Matters, out of over 2,000 guests, 77 percent were men
and 82 percent were white. The top rated show, "Meet the Press," also
led the pack in male representation, at an embarrassing 85 percent.
Latinos were almost completely absent, comprising one percent of the
guests. Latinos make up about 14 percent of the population, and the
study ran through 2006 and 2007, when immigration policy was often in
the news.
Many women and minority commentators must also battle ideological
discrimination. All four Sunday shows booked more conservative pundits
than liberals in 2006, according to a Media Matters study. On ABC's
This Week, for example, conservative pundits dominated by 36 percent
to 19 percent. So liberal guests end up competing for fewer spots.
Black commentators are already underrepresented. And then, since most
black commentators lean left, their booking odds plummet further.
(Only seven percent of black Americans self-identify as Republicans,
according to Pew.)
In fact, a 2005 Urban League study of the Sunday shows found that a
staggering 69 percent of all the appearances by black guests were made
by just three conservatives -- Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and
Juan Williams. The study found that appearances by black commentators
"other than Rice, Powell and Williams account for less than 3% of all
guest appearances on the Sunday morning talk shows." And out of over
600 bookings during the same 18-month period, you could count the
invitations for black women on half your hand. After Rice, only two
other black women appeared: PBS' Gwen Ifel and Democratic strategist
Donna Brazille.
documented and criticized, of course. Susan Estrich, a writer and
ubiquitous political pundit in her own right, sparked the last debate
in 2005, after blasting the testosterone coursing through the op-ed
section at the Los Angeles Times. Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post's
editorial page editor, jumped in the fray by declaring, "there ought
to be more women on op-ed pages in general. Over time, I intend to
make that happen." (Apparently he did not have a three-year window in
mind.) The Nation's Katha Pollitt has constructively published lists
of female writers who would make great columnists (or pundits), just
to help out any media search committees. Next month, minority bloggers
are gathering at the "Blogging While Brown" conference to network the
burgeoning black blogosphere - a new and largely neglected talent pool
of opinionated commentators for print and television debates. And some
writers say even Clinton's loss could spur gender progress. Anna
Holmes, a self-described "woman of color" who blogs at Jezebel.com,
recently penned a Times op-ed urging Hillary Clinton to give a major,
post-campaign address about "sexism in American life." That speech
could contrast the public's demonstrated support for women in actual
politics - from her strong showing to the rising number of women in
Congress - with the exclusion of so many women and minorities from
political media. And readers, like voters, can continue to press for a
political system and public discourse that actually represents the
public.