Posted July 1999

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What's Missing in This Picture?
By Kenny Irby, The Poynter Institute

Photojournalists, your attention please.

I want you to accept the following assignment: Survey your photo department or the attending press corps at your next assignment.

What do you see?

What kind of people dominate the pool?

What’s the mix like?

Take a few mental pictures. Create compositions. Store these images in your memory bank.

During a recent trip to the National Collegiate Athletic Association Basketball Championship final four competition, I was struck by the obvious lack of photographers of color at courtside. While I peered down from the upper deck at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Fla., I could identify only one person of color in the photographers’ area.

For the past six years, of the 45 or so photojournalists who have covered the "big dance"–an event where young African-American athletes compete as whites fans cheer and applaud–there may have been two or three, surely no more than four, photojournalists of color. And yet this is not unlike the White House Press Corps or the Overseas Press Pools or the investigative teams in many newsrooms. These areas remain almost exclusively white and male dominated.

Think back to the mental images you stored in your memory bank. How many people of color can you recall as journalists, or even as subjects of the coverage.

As you mentally review your images, consider that it is now 31 years after the 1968 Kerner Commission Report that exposed the deplorable state of race relations in America. The report cited the media’s contributions to the violence of the era by failing to inform the public about race relations and routinely depicting African-Americans inaccurately. With the aid of the media, America had created a race of Ralph Ellison-like invisible people.

The disparity between whites and people of color in the world of journalism has failed to improve significantly since the Kerner Report was issued. Many of its findings ring true today.

In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors (ASNE) set a goal for the year 2000: to achieve in its hiring the same percentage as the national minority population. While noticeable growth has been recorded in larger metro dailies, most smaller publications of 50,000 or less still employ no people of color.

Frustrated by its own failure to meet its year 2000 goal, ASNE recently abandoned it. Instead, in 1998, it replaced it with a new commitment: that American newspapers should "reflect the racial diversity of American society" by no later than 2025. By that time, some estimates put minorities at 40 percent of the U.S. population

This disparity has not gone unnoticed by the National Press Photographers Association. Back in February 1994, it issued a report, authored by Sacramento Bee photo editor Merrill Oliver, that illustrated the failure of our news organizations to include minorities in the news or as part of the staffs. They remain mostly white and male dominated.

Consider these facts:

Have you realized what’s wrong with your picture?

If your picture is fair and inclusive, there will be people of color represented on both sides.

Unity ’94, which brought together the national conventions of four minority journalism associations, demonstrated to our media institutions that the excuses of the past have no validity. There are indeed thousands of qualified journalists of color. Unity ’99 will confirm this.

Unity ’94 indisputably demonstrated that senior management who are serious about filing entry-level and decision-making positions with people of color at competitive salaries can do so.

One solution to this problem is fairly simple: Advertise with non-traditional sources such as the National Association of Black Journalists, National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, and the Native American Journalists Association. And be prepared to compensate and assign these members equally and fairly.

If we heed the recent charge of C.T. Morton, former editor of Photojournalism Mgr., we can make a difference. Visual journalists believe that the power of the single image far outlasts the written word. Many of history’s most lasting events are forever etched into the minds of mankind as indelible visual moments.

By using our three tools–photography, how it’s used, and the choice of the photojournalists who make the pictures–we can change the picture and inject diversity. The composition of our photographs can change by varying the perspectives, opinions, and faces in our newsrooms,

By expanding our understanding, we will improve our products.

The late publisher and editor of The Oakland Tribune, Robert Maynard, once commented, "We, the journalists, cannot tell the story of America until all of America is involved in the storytelling."

 

 

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