May 23, 2006
Queens, NY (May 23, 2006) -
The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic
Development at St. John’s University’s School of Law held a
path-breaking interdisciplinary conference recently on racial
diversity in the media entitled: “Rethinking the Discourse on Race:
A Symposium on How the Lack of Racial Diversity in the Media
Affects Social Justice and Policy.” The conference focused on
issues of media justice and how to achieve fair and accurate
representations of people of color in the broadcast, cable, print,
and online media. During the conference, Malkia Amala Cyril, the
Director of the Youth Media Council, defined “media justice” as “a
change model,” which promotes grassroots advertising and projects
an image of public ownership.
Photo Gallery
Approximately 100 academics, policy professionals, and media
activists attended the conference. Two keynote speakers
addressed the issues that confront diversity in the media today.
The first keynote speaker was Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. Commissioner Adelstein
stated that the FCC has failed to act on several proposals from its
Diversity Committee.
He noted that these proposals would help remedy the under
representation of people of color in media ownership. In addition,
Commissioner Adelstein called for scholars to develop studies and
submit them in the upcoming FCC remand proceedings on media
ownership.
The second keynote speaker of the conference was Professor Patricia
J. Williams, the James L. Dohr Professor of Law at Columbia Law
School. Williams described the changing media landscape in which
students get their news, not from newspapers, but from the web,
television and blogs. She noted that media discussion of diversity
is generally a proliferation of stereotypes. Professor Williams
highlighted how the media fixated on Representative Cynthia
McKinney’s hair instead of the issue of racial profiling and on
whether the National Anthem should be sung in Spanish rather than
immigration reform.
Over the course of the two-day conference, scholars and
policymakers discussed studies that showed inequities in the
coverage of Hurricane Katrina, and in other television news and
entertainment programming. Several panelists presented evidence of
free market failures that inefficiently allocated and distributed
programming to members of racial minority groups.
At the conference, Leonard M. Baynes, Professor of Law and The
Director of The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and
Economic Development announced the creation of the Media Diversity
Listserv that allows academics, media policy professionals, and
media activists to share ideas and develop a community around
issues of media diversity. To join the listserv, please visit the
subscription web page.
Additional Information
The media scholars and experts suggested a variety of measures to
increase media diversity including:
- employing social activism and protest;
- establishing community broadband and WiFi networks;
- revising the journalism code of ethics to cover racial bias in
reporting;
- developing a minority anti-defamation coalition to answer hate
speech;
- documenting the ways that local news is not broadcast in the
public interest;
- using the civil rights laws to challenge race and gender-based
casting decisions;
- amending the Communications Act to expressly require that the
communication networks safeguard diversity as is done in
Canada;
- interpreting the Communications Act so that the broadcasters
are treated like common carriers so they are required to carry
programming of others;
- establishing an evidentiary basis to restore the FCC Equal
Employment Opportunity rules, which required broadcasters to
establish goals for hiring more diverse workforces; and
- compiling a list of studies that identify the link between
negative media stereotypes and governmental action.
The conference was supported by a grant from The Ford
Foundation’s Knowledge, Creativity and Freedom Program.
The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic
Development hosts a searchable database of approximately 500
abstracts written by scholars and media policy experts on racial
diversity in the media. Please visit the Race and Media Diversity
Database.
View the photo gallery.
Contact Information
Leonard M. Baynes, Professor
of Law and Director of The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights
and Economic Development
(718) 990-6032
baynesl@stjohns.edu
St. John’s University School of Law
8000 Utopia Parkway
Queens, New York 11439