The Myth of Post-Racialism in Television News

Libby Lewis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317607250
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: African American Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

This book explores the written and unwritten requirements Black journalists face in their efforts to get and keep jobs in television news. Informed by interviews with journalists themselves, Lewis examines how raced Black journalists and their journalism organizations process their circumstances and choose to respond to the corporate and institutional constraints they face. She uncovers the social construction and attempted control of "Blackness" in news production and its subversion by Black journalists negotiating issues of objectivity, authority, voice, and appearance along sites of multiple differences of race, gender, and sexuality.

1 Professionalizing and Palatable “Blackness”

DOI: 10.4324/9781315748832-2

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me … because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. … I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves. … You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you.¹

—Ralph Ellison

After earning his undergraduate degree in print journalism and a Master's degree with an emphasis in broadcast journalism, Ed says he “still had to say, look, I'm over here.”² Despite having to prove to his White male bosses that he “can speak intelligently,” “complete a sentence,”³ and outshine the competition in his market, Ed, a television news reporter in the southern United States, continues to struggle against being “a phantom” in the mind's eye of the bosses, who place him under “more scrutiny” than his White coworkers. Although the Jason Blair⁴ debacle did not help, he has never been a stranger to being “on edge,”⁵ having to prove himself and struggle from the margins of the television news business.

The first thing that comes to my mind as a Black man working in the newsroom is that I am held to a different standard. I am scrutinized a little more. I can't prove that that's mainly or solely because I'm Black, it's only what I perceive–my perception. And you know, if it's true to me, then it's true. … My first job, I distinctly remember them calling me everyday or even when I'm out on my stories, (asking) “okay, how are you doing, did you get this, did you get this?” and I'm like yeah, yeah. …⁶

Management's lack of confidence is telling as he struggles against being “held to” a notion of “Blackness” that in this case writes upon his body: irresponsible, lazy, unintelligent, and other dehumanizing markers. Over time, he has learned how to meet the challenge of management's constant surveillance and to work harder than the rest—or as Sojourner, a Black woman journalist in a top five market put it, “work harder than you've ever worked in your life, ever, and when you think you're working too hard, you better work harder.”⁷

As one of only two black reporters in a predominantly Black demographic market, Ed describes the frustration of having to constantly reiterate the details of his workday to his bosses. He has to walk a fine line, being careful not to show too much frustration over the repercussions of being a journalist while Black. Choosing to work harder and do a better job than his White colleagues despite the lack of recognition becomes the means through which he copes with this unspoken fine line. This becomes one of the ways in which to speak without saying or being silent⁸ about the racism he is experiencing from news management in its tendency to hyper manage his news gathering process. He struggles against racism without saying explicitly that he is opposed to the management practice of hyper surveillance, or being silent about management's pattern and practice of holding him to more scrutiny than his White colleagues. He invests heavily in the old saying, “Seeing is believing” in the hopes that the hyper scrutiny ends so that he may begin to be recognized for his value in the newsroom and get closer to opportunities of promotion. Although he became more comfortable with setting boundaries around what he was and was not willing to do without being compensated, Ed's value continued to go unrecognized and he was not promoted within that television station.

Ed was more than ready when his agent found another placement for him in a larger market. However, soon after his first few months on the job, he was faced with the same brand of scrutiny and says decidedly, “I think I need to be there a little longer before I start telling people what I'm not going to do.”⁹ Similar to the challenges faced by individuals testing the waters of a new job, the “triple bind”¹⁰ of race,¹¹ gender, and sexuality¹² categories produces an intensified struggle over representation of “Blackness” for journalists.

Ed learned early on what is at stake being “the minority” and not just labeling himself minority, but seeing, feeling, experiencing on a daily basis what being “the minority” means for him as a Black man both personally and professionally. He recounts his participation in organizing a reception for Pulitzer Prize judges saying he was “looking out over a sea of about a hundred people and seeing nothing but White men.” His tone shifts as he relives the intense fear, the terror of what his eyes were telling him about the future in his chosen profession. He then places an emphasis on the empirical evidence of the pervasiveness of racism and sexism by tonally marking the terror, reiterating, “I mean these were editors from across the country, nothing but White men!”¹³ Nothing but White men, this “nothing,” this “no man's land,”¹⁴ this terror of dwelling in no man's land, fuels his desire for visibility. White men possessing “a peculiar disposition of the eyes”¹⁵ seeing their own reflections of success is what seems to be the insurmountable wall Ed must navigate successfully if he is to convince them that he does exist and is an asset to the profession. He pushes the point further saying,

there were two women, there was—God rest her soul—the publisher of the Washington Post, Catherine Graham was there and then some women from the Washington Times, she was the managing editor of the Washington Times—everybody else were middle aged if not older, stood thirty to sixty year olds, White men, which made me realize that we've come a long way but until this room can at least get thirteen in there out of a hundred—we only had one, and then no Black woman. … So we are underrepresented … which means some of our stories are not getting told.¹⁶

Ed understands the value in exercising strategies and tactics¹⁷ as a means to contend with a hostile working environment. But, he is also aware that “sometimes you can't show difference,”¹⁸ and, as his father taught him, you can “never let anybody, especially a White man, have control over how you feel” because “you can't control what he says; but you can control how you react to it” which, he admits is “easier said than done.”¹⁹

This chapter examines the racialization of work in television news as a process of backlash stemming from the government's pressure on White men to diversify newsrooms across the U.S. White men holding dominant positions in the media have developed new forms of control in response to government diversity interventions. The ways Black journalists continue to struggle against this backlash is examined in this chapter through candid conversations with Black journalists working in the television news industry.

Ralph Ellison's use of the term “inner eyes” corresponds well with the experiences of Black and marginalized journalists who are navigating social spaces in which their presentation of self is constantly under attack or review. Ellison views “the inner eyes” as a mechanism through which one's perspective about what it means to be human under the terms and conditions of Whiteness is shaped. The inner eyes are what guide us to what is “acceptable”; they orient our behavior. They also provide a compass to help navigate a hostile reality. Achieving upward mobility in television news requires knowing how to gain access to rewards in the form of promotion, salary increase, and other forms of reward. Journalists oriented toward reaping these rewards employ “tactics” of knowing on the fly when and how to speak in opposition to oppressive media management practice. Most journalists understand that such a stance is critical to continued employment.

The Branding of Black Journalists

Before on-air journalists—or what is commonly referred to as “talent”—begin their careers in the news business, there are certain things they usually do to get recognized. Choosing a talent agent is usually the first step. Once hired, part of the process of branding²⁰ and marketing on-air talent is shooting several promos (promotional videos) highlighting one's skill set, focus, and/or news beat within the scheme of a newscast. Whether marketed as an anchor, a roving, investigative, or other specialized reporter, the hire is branded in ways that are consistent with the cultural assumptions of the viewing public. After the television network branding process is established, placement within the network and its affiliates is scripted and promoted. Whether marketed as the perky journalist to wake up to in the morning or the hyper-professional primetime face of the network affiliate's evening newscast, the hire is expected to embody and wear the brand of the network.

Once the new hire has been professionalized, branded, marketed, processed, and placed, the so-called honeymoon is over, especially for Black journalists. After they are hired, Black journalists must navigate the road toward palatable “Blackness” paved by the network affiliate team of image consultants, talent agents, and media managers. This is the time when the other shoe drops and Black journalists are expected to make self-adjustments quickly. The inner eyes guide the self-adjustments to the rules of engagement operating within the newsroom if journalists are to be recognized by management as valuable. The interconnectedness of their racialized, gendered, and sexualized positionalities makes this a critical time for Black journalists as they begin tailoring specific strategies to survive and thrive in a predominantly White male heteronormative newsroom culture. This process reveals the psychic and symbolic violence of professionalizing practices that Black journalists navigate in order to be recognized and accepted within their field.

Audrey Smedley's work is useful in understanding the construction²¹ of race in North America that Black journalists continue to struggle against in a variety of ways. In her discussion of how different races rank in society, Smedley argues that race provides the unspoken guidelines for daily interaction between persons defined as being of different races. The newsroom culture provides the unspoken guidelines for daily interaction among journalists from different walks of life. How open Black journalists are about the ways in which they self-identify may complicate when and where they gain access to opportunities for promotion. As one of few if any Black journalists at a given television station across the United States, most come to realize that learning quickly how to navigate the space as a marginalized, raced, gendered, sexualized subject is key to longevity in the business. The notion of Blackness circulating in the media relies too heavily on the common stereotypes, which in turn, limit the possibilities and continue to shape the opportunities available to Black journalists.

The Art of Self-Policing: How Black Journalists Navigate Strategies of Containment

Despite the odds, Ed remains hopeful and continues to struggle over the contentiousness of their power²² over him. After all, he is convinced of his skill, talent, professionalism, and humanity and considers his struggle over recognition and visibility a consequence of living while Black. Ed's way of coping in a hostile and dehumanizing environment has helped him navigate media management's “strategies of containment” (Fiske 1987, 283) that work against Black journalists geographically, socially, economically, and politically. Such attempts at controlling different perspectives both in the newsroom and in the newscast manifest in a variety of ways.

Strategies of containment are often perpetrated geographically in determining the hire's news “beat,” or assignment. Strategies of containment affect journalists socially in terms of the types of promotional events in which they are expected to participate; image consultants are used to train journalists on appropriate and inappropriate language,²³ policing social practice in public space and private time, and representing “Blackness” in static terms. These strategies affect journalists economically through an intricate system of reward and punishment. This system manifests in various ways including through management's practice of placing Black journalists on the least desirable shifts, a topic that is explored in great detail in chapter 3. Strategies affect journalists politically in terms of policing objectivity under the terms and conditions of Whiteness governing newsroom culture and embodying the brand of a televi...