Within the Veil

Black Journalists, White Media

Pamela Newkirk

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2000
• Print ISBN: 9780814758007
• eBook ISBN: 9780814758779
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Winner of the National Press Club Prize for Media Criticism

Unmasks race-related conflicts in the newsrooms and the push for more equitable coverage of racial minorities

Thirty years ago, the Kerner Commission Report made national headlines by exposing the consistently biased coverage afforded African Americans in the mainstream media. While the report acted as a much ballyhooed wake-up call, the problems it identified have stubbornly persisted, despite the infusion of black and other racial minority journalists into the newsroom.

In Within the Veil, Pamela Newkirk unmasks the ways in which race continues to influence reportage, both overtly and covertly. Newkirk charts a series of race-related conflicts at news organizations across the country, illustrating how African American journalists have influenced and been denied influence to the content, presentation, and very nature of news.

Through anecdotes culled from interviews with over 100 broadcast and print journalists, Newkirk exposes the trials and triumphs of African American journalists as they struggle in pursuit of more equitable coverage of racial minorities. She illuminates the agonizing dilemmas they face when writing stories critical of blacks, stories which force them to choose between journalistic integrity, their own advancement, and the almost certain enmity of the black community.

Within the Veil is a gripping front-line report on the continuing battle to integrate America's newsrooms and news coverage.

Companion website: http://www.nyupress.nyu.edu/authors/veil.html

INDEX

Page numbers followed by letter t denote tables.

ABC: first black correspondent, 63–64

Grossberg interview on, 32–33

Johnson’s tenure at, 74–75

lack of black characters on, xix

Robinson’s career at, 87–90

visibility of minority correspondents, 193

ABC affiliate in New York: discrimination suit against, 115–16

dispute over Tolliver’s hairstyle, 81–83

ABC affiliate in San Francisco, dispute over Reed’s hairstyle, 83–87

Abolitionist newspapers, 40–41

Abrams, Robert, 152

Activism: boycotts, 62, 208–11

decline in, 210–12

need for, 217–20

Washington Post Magazine recall, 210–11

Adams, Sam, 80

Advertising, discrepancies between white-and minority-owned stations, 207–9

Advocacy journalism, 99, 134–35

Affirmative action, backlash against, 195–96, 200

Africa coverage: race weighting and, 33–35

restricting black journalists from, 158

Today Show, 33–35

Afro hairstyle, dispute over, 81–83

Akron Beacon Journal,“A Question of Color,” 14–15

Albany Argus, 39, 46

Albany Journal, 46

Alexander, Clifford, Jr., 113

Alkins, Leonard, 183

Allen, Robert L., xi–xii

Alpert, Jan, 126–28

Alterman, Danny, representation of Daily News plaintiffs, 98, 100, 102, 123

on aftermath of case, 126, 133

defense of Hardy’s career, 119–20

Hardy’s criticism of, 130

opening statement, 103

questioning of Blood, 105–6, 121–22

questioning of Oliver, 110

Amcast, 207–9

America in Black and White: One Nation Indivisible (Thernstrom and Thernstrom), 196

American Association of Physical Anthropologists, 2

American Broadcasting Company. See ABC

American Colonization Society, 39

American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, 85

American Lawyer, 130

American Mercury, 50, 52

American Press Institute, 79

American Society of Newspaper Editors: commitment to diversity, 4, 92

Friendly’s remarks to, 78–79

media criticism by, 56

“The Newspaper Journalists of the ’90s,” 193, 212

reneging on 2000

employment goals, 36, 196–97

work...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreward
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Timeline
• ONE Within the Veil
• TWO Into the Mainstream: A History of Strife
• THREE The Bumpy Road into the Newsroom
• FOUR Slaying the Dragon
• FIVE Private Dilemmas, Public Strife
• SIX Double Standards and the “Double-Special Burden”
• SEVEN The Kerner Legacy
• Appendix
• Notes
• Index
• About the Author