Following my completion of the local news assignment, the majority of the information I found did not surprise me. First off, I was not surprised that out of all seven days that I covered, only once was there a minority lead reporter covering a story. Being in Oklahoma, which is not a very diverse state in comparison to that of California where there may be a greater diversity in representation of minorities in the newsroom, it was expected to see white news anchors doing the nightly news. Secondly, the people committing the crimes, when identified, were a mixture of male and female, as well as white, black and Hispanic. Two of the crimes were husband and wife combination and both were white. Probably the biggest case that I covered was the story about the African-American female who had robbed four banks in the Oklahoma City area. The FBI was involved in this case. I did not really notice any particular bias towards the criminals from the news anchors. No matter the sex or color of the offender, they reported them based on the facts and didn’t make the minorities crimes seem worse than those of whites. Although the Oklahoma television stations do not show much diversity at the news desk, they do not tend to stereotype or call out any sex or race for being criminally inclined. This project for me was an eye opener. I am from Dallas, and even though it is a southern state, it is clearly more diverse in the newsroom, than Oklahoma City. On any given day and time you can find white, black and Hispanic anchors doing newscasts. The same goes for St. Louis, where my grand mother lives. On channel 5 in St. Louis, Art Holliday, who is an African American male, is one of the lead anchors in the morning and pretty much all of my family in St. Louis watch channel 5 because of Art. Although the coverage in Oklahoma City is non- bias when it comes to coverage, I think they could do a better job of diversifying their newsrooms.
Thanks
ReplyDeleteBeing from Dallas as well I definately understand what you are saying about diversity in the newsroom in dallas. Although it too could probably be more diverse, Oklahoma City is struggling in the diversity department.
ReplyDeleteI did not do this extra credit assignment but I do watch the news and think that you are right when you say that the news reports based on the facts. If there was a crime they are going to report on that crime no matter what color their skin is. I once saw an intense car chase on the news and when the car commiting the crime finally pulled over, an older white male who resembled the average white working middle class male emerged.