The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development

at  

St. John’s University School of Law

Supported through a grant from the Ford Foundation’s Knowledge, Creativity, and Freedom Program[1]

Call for Participation

Rethinking the Discourse on Race: A Symposium on How the Lack of Racial Diversity in the Media Affects Social Justice and Policy

Submission Deadline: January 15, 2006

On April 28 and 29, 2006, the Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development (“The Ronald H. Brown Center”) will hold an important conference to explore the lack of racial diversity, and distorted representations, in the media. The mission of the Ronald H. Brown Center is “to engage in legal studies, research and outreach focusing on issues that affect the lives of underrepresented people while simultaneously educating law students to be leaders on issues of racial, economic and social justice.” One of The Ronald H. Brown Center’s specific initiatives is to “educate the news media and the public to promote understanding and focus political and community efforts on the need to eradicate racism and social inequalities.”

 “Rethinking the Discourse on Race: A Symposium on How the Lack of Racial Diversity in the Media Affects Social Justice and Policy,” sponsored by the Ronald H. Brown Center, will investigate the subject of racial diversity in the media and in media policy.  The conference is being organized by Professor Leonard M. Baynes, the Director of The Ronald H. Brown Center, who previously served as a scholar-in-residence at the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) during the administration of William Kennard. In this capacity, Professor Baynes worked exclusively on media diversity issues. Since joining the St. John’s law faculty in 2002, he has written several path-breaking law review articles examining these critical issues and proposing innovative and cutting-edge regulations to address under-representation in the media.

The Ford Foundation is funding this dialogue aimed at generating new thinking about racial diversity in the commercial and noncommercial entertainment and news media and its effect on social justice and media policy. In this dialogue, we seek to incorporate the input and opinions of a diverse array of interested stakeholders, including scholars, legal experts, journalists, and journalism critics. We would like the conference participants to critique the misperceptions evident in the media coverage of Hurricane Katrina (and in other news stories and entertainment programming), to analyze and document the tremendous influence that media have over the thinking, social policies and directions of our democratic society, and to propose reforms that can take place in academia, the media, and social policy to correct the lack of diversity and media distortions.

We encourage participants to address seven important general areas:

(1)  What examples of media coverage, including but not limited to the coverage of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, demonstrate the absences and misrepresentations of people of color in the media?

(2)   How do current policies or practices of the media industry in casting, writing, directing, and producing affect the representation and depiction of people of color in news, entertainment, and public television.  What reforms are needed to facilitate more socially responsible coverage of people of color and to enact policies sensitive to the value of racial diversity in all aspects of the media?

(3)   Since the demise of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, how has media coverage of people of color impacted social justice and public policy in the U.S.? Give examples of how media misperceptions of people of color misinform policy decisions or provide examples of how the media have been helpful in transforming policies. What policies need to be in place to facilitate more socially responsible coverage?

(4)   What curricular policies or reforms in academic disciplines such as communications studies, journalism, law, and other relevant social science and literary disciplines are needed to address the lack of racial diversity in the media and media policy.

(5)   What is the status of proposed rules and regulations before the Federal Communications Commission in regulating racially diverse content, ensuring diverse media ownership, and diverse media employment? What role should the Federal Communications Commission play, if any, in these matters?

(6)   Given that a media company’s audience size directly correlates to the rates that advertisers charge, what methodologies would insure that people of color are accurately and fairly measured in terms of their media consumption?

(7)   Are media absences and distorted depictions of people of color discriminatory, indecent, or the equivalent of hate speech?  How do we counter regulatory paralysis at the FCC often caused by overly stringent First Amendment ideology or an FCC de-regulatory agenda? Should the broadcast television industry be re-conceptualized as a conduit requiring equal access to all citizens?

Proposal Guidelines:

n      Letters should not exceed 1500 words in length.

n      Include a 250-word biographical sketch of research expertise.

n      Include a bibliography of your writing and/or publications on this topic to date.

n      Submission deadline: January 15, 2006.

n      Acceptance notification: February 15, 2006.

We invite scholars of all relevant disciplines, advocates, community organizers, and media and social policy professionals engaged in developing concepts, methods, or data relevant to media diversity and policy to submit a short letter that lays out your interest in participating in a conference addressing policies affecting media and racial diversity. These letters should not exceed 1,500 words. Also include a brief biographical sketch of research expertise (no more than 250 words please) and bibliography of your publications to date as attachments.  Authors of accepted letters will be invited to participate in the Conference scheduled for April 28 and 29, 2006 at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, New York. In order to participate in the conference, participants agree to also write a paper or produce a videotape documentary, which needs to be submitted before the conference. Viewpoints, videos, and papers presented at the meeting will be included in a final report.

Proposals should be submitted electronically to the Conference homepage at http://www.stjohns.edu/racemedia or via surface mail to:

Leonard M. Baynes

Professor of Law and Director

The Ronald H. Brown Center for Civil Rights and Economic Development

St. John’s University School of Law

8000 Utopia Parkway

Queens, New York 11439

Attn: Media & Diversity

Background for Proposals

Unfortunately, negative perceptions of racial minorities are tightly woven into the fabric of U.S. society. Popular support for policies, such as affirmative action, rehabilitation of felons, or economic assistance to the poor, has declined because of these negative perceptions. See e.g. Martin Gilens, Why Americans Hate Welfare. Nonetheless these negative perceptions are continuously reinforced by media absences and misrepresentations in news and entertainment programming. What the media choose to support and report on, however, may be determined by policies that are often obscured from the public’s scrutiny.

This symposium is designed to explore the individual strands of how media and media policy combine to create negative perceptions among the public, the impact of these perceptions on social policies, and the role of higher education curriculum/programs in developing awareness in journalism, media studies, and communications education at undergraduate and graduate levels. The symposium will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars who have conducted research on the media and media policies from the perspectives of the law, cultural studies, the social sciences, journalism, and communications studies. Our concern is to unravel these strands to create a critical body of knowledge aimed at generating solutions to the problem. An expected outcome would also be more support by the general public, scholars, and the media community for racial justice and media democracy in the United States.

The commercial news and entertainment media have historically misrepresented or failed to cover members of minority groups.[2] People of color also have been woefully unrepresented both behind and in front of the camera. In the 1960s, the Kerner Commission and the Civil Rights Commission called the media to task for such failures.  These failures and misrepresentations become increasing problematic, given that the percentage of minority groups in the United States will reach 50 percent of the population in 2050.

Recently, Americans expressed surprise at the tragic scenes broadcast in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many viewers saw for the first time (or at least for the first time in a long time) many poor people, who were disproportionately African Americans. The disparities in poverty coincided with distortions in media coverage. For example, during the Hurricane’s aftermath, two pictures initially appeared on Yahoo’s website that were telling of the racial divide in media coverage. One picture caption described black survivors as “looting,” whereas similarly-situated white survivors were described as “finding” provisions. The media initially described the Superdome, where mostly-black hurricane survivors huddled until they were rescued, as unsafe and a place where murders, rapes, and robberies were rampant. In fact, one of CNN’s headlines read: “Relief Workers Confront Urban Warfare.” This biased coverage may have affected policy and hampered relief efforts. In fact, this negative coverage was directly responsible for the National Guard being ordered to “shoot to kill” those whom they perceived as breaking the law during the hurricane. Later, the New Orleans Times Picayune investigated the public safety issues in the Superdome and the looting and found that the crime that took place was overstated.[3]

            Hard-core news is not the only area where the media have been remiss. The entertainment media have historically had few minority actors, writers, and directors and little minority-focused content.  In the fall of 1999, the television schedule was announced, and none of the twenty-six, then-new shows starred an African American or any other minority in a leading role, and few featured minorities in secondary roles. Civil rights and advocacy organizations such as the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza decried this lack of diversity and ultimately prompted the major networks to establish an infrastructure to address diversity issues.  In 2005, the television schedule includes considerable more diversity among new scripted shows. In fact, of forty-three new shows, thirty-two regularly feature Latino/a, African American, or Asian American actors.[4]  This increase in representation raises further questions about the complexity of the minority characters, whether the minority characters are in lead or supporting roles, and whether the television narratives are minority focused. In addition, a recent study by The Ralph Bunche Center for African American Studies at UCLA suggests that much more work needs to be done behind the television camera. The Bunche Study found that less than 10 percent of the television writers are members of racially diverse groups. Moreover, the writers of racially diverse backgrounds often work exclusively on minority-themed sitcoms.  As a consequence, when these shows are cancelled, employment opportunities disappear. The lack of diversity among writers of non-minority-centered television shows may preclude cultural themes from being woven into the fabric of those shows. The media images presented by news and entertainment media affect how people of color (and the public, and media policies associated with them) are viewed; it is imperative that we continue to explore the impact of these patterns in representation and employment and to encourage policy reforms that will ameliorate these long-standing conditions.