Well they have done it again. By “they” I mean the mostly white male honchos at National Public Radio. You may not have heard about it, yet. This is par for the course for NPR. Back in 2008 I wrote “NPR cutting black journalist Farai Chideya“. More about the history of all this in a bit-but first, the latest.
NPR’s “Tell Me More” which is hosted by Michel Martin, will be no more as of Aug 1. It is the only NPR program specifically targeted at a “diverse audience” as they put it, meaning African Americans.
Lots of times we don’t put faces to the voices we hear on the radio. So you may not know who Michel Martin is.
A brief bio:
Michel McQueen Martin is an American journalist and correspondent for ABC News and National Public Radio. After ten years in print journalism, Martin has for the last 15 years become best known for her news broadcasting on national topics.
A Brooklyn, New York native, Michel Martin attended St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire as part of the fifth class of females to graduate from the formerly all-male school. In 1980, Martin graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College of Harvard University, then pursued post graduate work at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington D.C.
After working the local news beat for The Washington Post and becoming White House correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Martin joined ABC News in 1992. At ABC, Martin has reported for Nightline, and was awarded an Emmy for a report that aired on Day One. In 2001, she hosted the PBS show Life 360. Since April 2007, she has hosted Tell Me More for National Public Radio (NPR). As the host of Tell Me More, Martin focuses heavily on topics of race, religion, and spirituality. Upon the announcement by NPR of the cancellation of Tell Me More, to be effective 1 August 2014.
There are some things you can do-and Danielle Belton over at The Snob has been leading the charge.
Say “No” to NPR Making “Tell Me More” No More
You can send NPR an email here.
You can send NPR a few choice tweets here.
You can post some strongly worded posts on NPR’s Facebook page here.
You can call the staff directory and ask for Paul G. Haaga, Jr., NPR’s acting CEO: (202) 513-2000
Or you can try emailing Haaga at phaaga@npr.org.
And you can send NPR some strongly worded mail here:
NPR
1111 North Capitol St., NE
Washington, DC 20002
I want to talk about the history of attempts to change the structural racism in Public Broadcasting (funded by your tax dollars). It’s a history I happen to know a lot about, because back in the 70’s I was employed by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as part of a system-wide effort to address the absence of minorities, and women in positions of responsibility at NPR, PBS and at the member stations.
When I first got started at a non-commercial, listener supported radio station it was as a co-host at WBAI-FM in New York City in 1969 for a Young Lords Party show called “Pa’lante“. WBAI is part of Pacifica, which founded listener-supported radio in the 1940’s in the Bay area of California.
Years later, I would become one of the founders of WPFW-FM, Pacifica Washington DC and help get it on the airwaves in 1977. I became the first black female program director in Public Radio in a major market, and our station manager was Gregory Millard, the first black male top exec at a full service station. WVSP in Warrenton NC was the first black-controlled public station to hit the airwaves We were also the only “minority controlled” Pacifica station, and had a format targeted at a primarily black DC audience, which we called “jazz and jazz extensions”. (see a Folio – Program Guide) We had a rich mixture of music, arts and public affairs. This was not standard public radio at the time. It was radical for even lefty Pacifica and met resistance internally. That’s a story for another day. After my tenure ended as PD, and later as acting General Manager, I was offered a job at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Though Pacifica had been around since the late 40s, later joined by other stations funded by listeners, it wasn’t until the late 60’s that the U.S. founded an official public broadcasting system.
Public Broadcasting History
The Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 (47 U.S.C. § 396) set up public broadcasting in the United States, establishing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and, eventually, the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio (NPR).
The act charged the CPB with encouraging and facilitating program diversity, and expanding and developing non-commercial broadcasting. The CPB would have the funds to help local stations create innovative programs, thereby increasing the service of broadcasting in the public interest throughout the country
The key words for me in the act were “encouraging and facilitating program diversity”.
Just what does that mean in the U.S., and more importantly how do you have diversity unless you have top staff and producers who are diverse?
By the late 70’s it was clear that public broadcasting had failed to fulfill that mandate.
CPB had undergone an extensive review of its hiring policies and programming practices, instituted by an investigative task force, and in 1978 issued “A formula for change : the report of the Task Force on Minorities in Public Broadcasting.” They issued a similar report on women.
One of the ways of addressing the complete lack of people of color (see Black Enterprise article) at the decision making level.
“Zero national shows produced by and targeted at Native Americans, Asians and Latinos. One black program. That black program, Black Perspectives on the News was carried by 77 of 276 stations. Of 583 decision makers at the local stations only 16 are nonwhite. That is less than 3%”
Part of the solution to the “problem” was a decision to institute a Minorities and Women’s Training Grant Program. Our office, was given a budget of 6 million dollars to award grants to induce stations to hire people of color and women, for key positions and we would pay half the salary and full “training” costs for those positions for two years. My description of this process was called “bribing the white station managers to make those hires”.
Fast forward to 2000. The Women’s Task Force and women’s training grant program worked – for white women.
Minority job share doubles in pubcasting, but still lags behind progress of women
Members of minority ethnic groups have not advanced as rapidly as women into higher positions in public broadcasting over the past two decades, despite significant efforts within the system to make both programming and the workforce more multicultural.
In public television, 12.5 percent of full-time officials and managers are members of minorities; 18.1 percent in pubradio are, according to 1998 employment data (table at right). Those percentages are double what they were in 1978, when a CPB-funded task force looked at minorities in public broadcasting and found that “the scarcity of minority programs can be attributed directly to the insufficient number of minorities employed in public broadcasting, particularly in decision-making positions.”
Minority employees in public TV and public radio
Percentages of All full-time jobs Officials and managers**
. PTV PR PTV PR
1978 13.9 12.6 6 9
1998 18.8 19.6 12.5 18.1
2006* 27.8 20.3
Sources: 1978 data from “A Formula for Change: A Report on the Task Force on Minorities in Public Broadcasting”; 1998 and 2006 data from CPB’s annual reports to Congress on minority programming and employment.
* 2006 data added in update of this page, 2007. Figures are for combined public TV and radio employment.
**As defined by the FCC, including general managers, station managers, controllers, chief accountants, general counsels, chief engineers, directors of news, research and promotion, and these managers: facilities, sales, business, personnel and production.
In contrast, the percentages of women in fulltime jobs as officials and managers in pubcasting have tripled or quadrupled in about the same time, 1974 to 1998 [earlier Current article]. Women hold 43 percent of those executive jobs in public TV and 38 percent in radio. Twenty-four years earlier, women filled only about 10 percent of those top pubcasting jobs.
To put the recent employment numbers in perspective, minorities comprised 26 percent of the total 1997 U.S. labor force, but held about 19 percent of all pubcasting jobs and 15.2 percent of the officials/managers positions.
For women, the equity gap has narrowed faster. While women comprised 46.2 percent of the 1997 work force, they held about the same percentage of all pubcasting jobs and about 40 percent of executive-level jobs.
Although public broadcasting prides itself on its diversity efforts, the field’s employment of minority officials/managers is in the same ball park as the broadcasting industry at large–14.2 percent, as figured by the FCC in 1998. (The four minority groups tracked by the CPB and FCC are African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders.)
The public tv solution vis a vis programming was to form “minority consortia” to produce programs by and for PBS. I was present for the formation of the Black, Native American, Latino and Asian, Asian-Pacific consortia. At the time, poc producers were excited, and it was wonderful to meet with so many creative people of color with important stories to tell.
The monies provided to those consortia-never overly generous-are also being cut.
CPB reduces aid to longtime grantees
I realize that NPR, PBS and CPB have been targets of the right wing, and Republicans in Congress. But that does not, and cannot excuse the fact that the public airwaves are a public trust, and last time I looked people of color are part of that “public”. We are almost 37% of the U.S. population. Rather than cutting back on programs targeting our diverse “minority” populations, NPR needs to do more. Simply having a blog, or a program featuring jazz is insufficient.
Let NPR know what you think about their colorlessness.
Cross-posted from Black Kos
