People of color on your local news?

[MIDWESTDIVA]

I'm curious, what is the racial makeup of your local news stations? Kansas City has Black male and female news reporters and/or meteorologists/film critics on every station, and a couple of Latinas. I am always amazed when I visit other cities and watch the local news. Particularly when all of the news anchors are white males. The only black folks on the tv are wearing handcuffs.

[straightBOS]

Channel 4-WBZ- CBS affiliate
Has several Black female anchors, on the weekends,I believe the news is anchored by two black females.

There are also one or two Black anchors on the other stations. There are also several Latino, but only a few Asian anchors on the other stations.

Also, the stations have "ethnic-specific" shows, Urban Update, Centro (which is aired in both English and Spanish) and an Asian-centered show (can't remeber the name).

[SeriousSigma22]

That's a very interesting question in the DC Metro area all of the stations have several African American Female anchors during the various hours, however, the local stations of NBC and ABC have African American male anchors during the prime times or rather early evenings. CBS has an Indian American from Near East Asia (India) and NBC has two reports that are Asian, and maybe one Latino! The media still primarily utilizes the services of the old Caucasian males to present the news to us on a daily basis.

Serioussigma22

[NinjaPoodle]

Off the top of my head, KRON (NBC affiliate now local) has a female Af-Am anchor, Pamela Moore. KPIX (CBS afiliate) also has an Af-Am female, Dana King. KPIX, KRON, and KGO (ABC affiliate) have several Asian American female reporters between the three of them.

WTMJ4 - NBC affiliate in Milwaukee is about half and half. I can't speak for the rest of the channels, because I have really, really bad reception and pretty much only get that one channel

[TRSimon]

I usually check the makeup of anchors when I visit new cities. When I first visited Portland, the morning news was all white males (I think on the ABC affiliate) I was really shocked because I had never seen that before.

With the diversity that the Detroit Area has, I was shocked to visit there and find the lack of diversity on the local news (except when it came to stories of folks going to jail), but the thing that shocked me the most was last week when this AA woman in Detroit had left her kids in the car and they died, they went to Livonia (the whitest city in the nation) and asked for the opinions of residents for the news story. I was like, can we even try to look like we are being fair here? They could have called David Duke up and seemed more objective.

I have read that there is a backward trend going and that the American news media are becoming more prejudicial and sexist. Based on my experiences, I am sad to say that this is true.

-TRSimon

[SeriousSigma22]

Sorhor TRSimons, sorhors, and friends,

I can agree with that statement about the media industry reverting to their old hiring practices. Last summer I read the book "White Bucks and Black Eyed Peas" by Marcus Marbry basically this young brother describes his mistreatment and struggles with prejudice, discrimination, and racism when he worked with this prominent news magazine. The things that he goes through as a black man in this predominately white male occupation causes the reader to really wonder if times are ever going to change for people of color. The book is basically about a black male coming of age in White America during the end of the 20th century. Folks if you want to read a really good I would recommend this one.


Serioussigma22

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