More Inclusive

B. More Inclusive

1. Make inclusiveness a priority. Adopt a two-pronged strategy: general and specialized in programming and control.

CPB president Patricia Harrison says her agenda can be called the three Ds: dialogue, digital and diversity.29 Since its inception, public broadcasting has been dedicated to serving all communities. The Public Broadcasting Act says public media should “serve unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities.” CPB, PBS and NPR have undertaken many projects to improve the inclusiveness of its staffing and its programming. But public media leaders acknowledge more can be done and also note the fact that the country is becoming more diverse, not less.

“If the military can integrate, why can’t public broadcasting do a better job?” asks CPB chairman Wilson. He says beyond the rhetorical commitment there should be active ways to make public broadcasting more welcoming to diverse communities.

Grow the Audience, CPB’s project for public radio, states that inclusiveness is part of the fabric of public media and calls on colleagues to deepen their commitment to pluralism, diversity and inclusiveness.

The diversity goals of public media should start with the audience—that is, are diverse audiences that can be served by public media being served? Inclusiveness can be pursued on two tracks. One is an overall commitment to inclusiveness in organization and content. The other, as the Grow the Audience report recommends, is to encourage differentiated efforts and support of programming and stations developed and controlled by communities of color. These efforts could be developed in partnership with other community resources, including other public media organizations.

In May, CPB launched a Diversity and Innovation Fund of $20 million over two years to benefit PBS’s program service. The goal is to attract younger and more diverse viewers and media makers. But, as Jacquie Jones, president of the National Black Programming Coalition noted, that sum is a fraction of CPB’s over-all budget.

The Juan Williams firing cast an unflattering light on NPR’s efforts to reflect diversity in staff and content. Even before the Williams episode, NPR had adopted goals to improve diversity in content, audience, workplace environment and hiring and recruitment by 2012. Recently, NPR elevated its chief diversity position to the vice president level and hired Keith Woods, the respected dean of the Poynter Institute. On the local level, Minnesota Public Radio has appointed an “editor for new audiences” to build connections among diverse Minnesota communities. NYPR has partnered with CPB on a “Workforce Diversity” program which will add a new community engagement ambassador to its community engagement team.

2. Increase diversity of news and information staff and content at national and local public media organizations.

The people in a newsroom are the key factor in producing programming that is relevant and inclusive, that “sounds like me,” in the words of the Grow the Audience report. Without a diverse staff, a news organization is in danger of appearing insensitive or ignoring important stories.

Recruiting, hiring and retaining a diverse news staff are not issues exclusively for public media organizations. A 2004 summit of network and local broadcast news executives and the presidents of five minority journalism organizations enumerated these best practices:

• Develop a pool of candidates for potential openings and build relationships over time.
• Be willing to wait longer and look harder to find well-qualified, diverse candidates.
• Hold managers accountable for hiring diverse staff.
• Develop partnerships to increase your applicant pool by linking with UNITY and its partner organizations, professional associations and university journalism programs.
• Be aware of whether your newsroom climate is welcoming to new recruits and make improvements if needed.
• Help new hires make the transition to the newsroom and the community.
• Use internships to find new talent.
• Establish mentoring programs to aid advancement.30

Content efforts should include both general and differentiated programming. Stations should audit content frequently to track progress and gaps. Inclusiveness should be defined to encompass age, education, income level, political and religious identity as well as gender, race, ethnicity and sexual orientation. Investing more in digital engagement can reap benefits in reaching an audience that is younger and more multicultural.

The CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund will provide resources for more diverse programming. CPB has funded Independent Television Service to create documentaries diverse in content and production. CPB also supports a number of ethnic radio production organizations.

NPR recently canceled a program for diverse audiences for budget reasons, but still produces Tell Me More, a daily talk show hosted by Michele Martin and designed to “capture the headlines, issues and pleasures relevant to multicultural life.” As part of its diversity initiative, NPR is conducting audience research and undertaking efforts to broaden its list of experts to discuss issues such as national security, politics and the arts.

Keeping track of the diversity of voices is essential. NPR’s ombudsman recently analyzed its on-air sources and commentators and found that only 26 percent of sources and one of 12 commentators were women.31 The media watchdog group, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) reported in October that PBS’s public affairs program guests are “strongly dominated by white, male and elite sources.”32

Most of the top-performing public radio news and information stations are located in markets with diverse populations and are making efforts to reach out to them more. The Takeaway is a four-hour per weekday national program currently heard in 60 markets. It is jointly produced by New York Public Radio and Public Radio International, with editorial collaboration from The New York Times and the BBC. One of its goals is to reach a more diverse audience. In New York, The Takeaway has more black listeners than Morning Edition, according to NYPR president Laura Walker. She said the staff of, and contributors to, The Takeaway are among the most diverse in public radio.

Among public television stations, WNPT won recognition for its documentary series, “Nashville Nextdoor Neighbors,” on immigrant communities from Bhutan, Kurdish Iraq, Somalia and Spanish-speaking countries.

3. Engage communities in gathering information, offering viewpoints, highlighting priorities and bringing issues to the surface.

Digital platforms make it possible to engage communities in new ways. American Public Media’s Public Insight Network database is a superb tool for bringing in a wider diversity of expertise.

NYPR’s Brian Lehrer Show incorporates the audience directly into content production and delivery, using call-ins, live events, social media and crowdsourcing. In the wake of the economic crash, the Brian Lehrer Show launched a multiphase, multimedia project, called Your Uncommon Economic Indicators, focused on the human, and more tangible, realities of the economic collapse, asking the audience to share in words, images, and video how the economic crash was impacting their local neighborhoods. This was followed up in two other phases, “Recovery Road” and “Help Wanted.” As an example of crowdsourcing, the show asked listeners to post the cost of a marketbasket of goods at local shops to examine pricing disparity across the city. With help from CPB, NYPR has launched the project at other public radio stations.

4. Partner with journalism schools to engage young people in public media.

About 47 percent of public media licenses are held by universities and other educational institutions.33 They are well positioned to connect with young people on campus, especially where there are journalism and communications programs.

Yet many university stations do not encourage student internships or have no relationship with the journalism department. University licensees should be required to establish internships for students.

The New America Foundation, in a policy paper “Journalism Education in Flux,” recommends partnerships between public media and journalism programs as part of its vision of seeing journalism schools become “anchor institutions” in communities as producers of news and information.34 A more engaged role for journalism schools in what the paper calls the “emerging information ecosystem” is an obvious fit where the schools or their parent institutions hold public media licenses.

5. Create a corps to promote digital literacy in underserved communities.

One of the most intriguing ideas launched this summer by the National Black Programming Consortium with support from CPB is Public Media Corps. Like Teach for America, the program would recruit new college graduates to go into communities to teach digital skills. The corps will employ fellows with technical and media skills to “promote and extend broadband adoption in underserved communities.” By serving as residents in public broadcast stations, libraries, high schools and non-profit community centers, the fellows will develop web-based and mobile applications on topics of community interest, train community members in the use of digital media and document that use for further study. The pilot program is serving African American and Latino communities in Washington, D.C., and is being operated in partnership with public television stations WHUT and WETA and public radio stations WEAA and WPFW. If the pilot program is successful, it could serve as the basis for a broader program.

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