Sunday, July 25, 2010

Dearth of Blacks in Mainstream Media

Next segment of Reliable Sources had 3 African Americans, a new world record? Toward the end they got around to Sherrod but they discussed the overall dearth of black faces in MSM, a much better discussion IMO. Intro & snippet:

KURTZ: Something really striking happened when I tried to book the segment you're about to see about minorities and the media.

I talked to several very prominent African-American journalists who said they would love to come on the program but the subject was just too sensitive to discuss publicly, or their bosses did not want them speaking out in public.

Look at the people who have gotten the latest primetime hosting jobs in cable news: Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC; Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker at CNN. They join people like Sean and Bill and Keith and Rachel and Anderson. They join the Sunday show hosts and the evening news anchors and the principal network morning hosts. Not an African-American face among them except for GMA's Robin Roberts.