The American Media and Race Relations in an Interdependent World: A Report on the Shorenstein Center Conference on Race and the Press

Abstract

The Shorenstein Center’s Conference on Race and the Press offered a timely and searching exploration of issues currently receiving scrutiny by scholars, journalists and increasingly, the citizenry at large. Featuring discussion among several distinguished editors, reporters, and scholars and a keynote address by former President William Jefferson Clinton, the conference revolved around such key issues as these: • Are the news media doing an adequate job covering the news of a progressively more diverse society in which members of the long-dominant white, Euro-American ethnic groups are heading toward minority status? • If the media exhibit deficiencies in covering multicultural America, exactly what should be done, and how much can be done given the economic pressures that constrain all media organizations? • Should news personnel consciously take race and ethnicity into account when choosing and reporting the news, or are ethnic identities best left out of journalists’ calculations? Perhaps for the first time since the landmark Kerner Report of 1968, the impacts of the media on race relations have become matters of public controversy. Several forces have converged to place media and race on the agenda. First, President Clinton’s Initiative on Race (1997–98), although foreshortened by the controversies that engulfed the administration in its latter years, stimulated frank public discussion of race across the country. More recently, several scholarly books written with a broader audience in mind have investigated the nexus of race and media. The 2000 Election, with its disputes over disparate treatment of African American and Hispanic versus Anglo voters in the decisive state of Florida (and elsewhere), also drew attention to power differentials among groups and the media’s role in sustaining them. In addition, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) has placed improving media images of blacks near the top of its agenda, and other ethnic organizations have followed suit. Finally, data from the 2000 U.S. Census point to an even greater than expected acceleration in the ethnic diversity of the country. This point reinforces a central theme of President Clinton’s speech, which emphasized globalization and interdependence as forces spurring the need for inter-ethnic harmony within and outside the United States—and for media that recognize these imperatives.