The reality of diverse hiring in public media
For many public radio and television organizations, the goal of creating a more diverse and inclusive workplace can seem like an uphill battle. Despite the best intentions of many leaders, the challenges of hiring and retaining diverse talent still remain a significant obstacle in many organizations. How can we get beyond it?
Research suggesting the media is getting more diverse and a Current survey on why people leave their jobs have prompted conversations. Diversity, equity and inclusion in public media discussions are among them.
DEI has been a regular topic in OIGO. This edition, we will explore the reality of diverse hiring in public radio and television in a two-part essay. This round, let’s discuss the various obstacles that may prevent public media from creating a more equitable and welcoming work environment for all.
Let’s acknowledge the good first. There have been improvements over the years. Some were profiled in the OIGO year-end wrap. Organizations are seeing a mix of results as far as staffing, and are reporting it. NPR and PBS are the biggest in space. Some, like KQED, are getting into diverse staff composition. The recent Corporation for Public Broadcasting report notes diversity numbers remain flat. But knowing the numbers is vital.
Also, content through the likes of the Latino Public Broadcasting, among others, has helped make our community’s voices more visible. Even though audiences nationwide have slipped, the effort to foster diversity continues.
But, hey, we’re talking about staffing. ¡Vamos! What are the big issues?
Legacy diversity struggles. This one has been covered exhaustively. Public media has a whiteness problem, with inadequate representation of people of color in leadership, staffing, newsrooms, voices on air, sources, coverage and audiences. Unfortunately, the numbers speak for themselves. While Hispanic staffing numbers have bumped up slightly in CPB’s latest report, it isn’t commensurate with the population
Much has been said about long-standing diversity mistakes in the system. Accountability is certainly valuable. I believe the more provocative question is why. Perhaps like you, I may agree with the analysis of Audience 88, the generative public radio study that the public media C-suite of the time took as a cue to super-serve white, educated audiences. In talking with people in public media newsrooms, offices and elsewhere, however, it would seem contemporary factors are very much in play.
Observations I have heard include the following:
HR at a lot of stations isn’t what it could be. On the recruiting side, there may be resistance to updating policies to be more attractive to candidates; a lack of networks known to HR; and updating how we talk about roles in ways that don’t privilege our traditional constituency. For institutional licensees, HR is beholden to the larger body, but the need for improvements overall is overdue.
Reframing our wants and needs. Representation matters, of course. Yet having an idea organizationally for what that representation means matters too. Do we have a better reason to recruit Latinos than that it makes the organization appear more representative? Much diverse recruiting is done around what public media wants, but we rarely talk about it as a need. Talking about needs then forces us to articulate specifics on initiatives, qualities, et al. Hispanics can be part of, but that’s the point.
Union relationships can make things complicated. People of color at outlets with unions have said DEI is a conflicted subject. Unions have been great over the years at speaking up. In some instances, though, where seniority and protections go to those who’ve traditionally staffed public media (e.g. white, middle class people), I’ve been told, creating opportunities for young people of color is daunting. Not a union criticism, but one of power.
Priorities. The internal demand for diversity often gets lost in public media amid external priorities. Jim Brady sums this up as an issue of speed, volume and quality. People oftentimes despair at the lack of Latine content and engagement. For lot of (understaffed) organizations, the daily to-do list looks like this:
Providing content to be competitive with other platforms, and enough that the audience expects.
Doing it relatively fast, so we’re (again) competitive with others and don’t lose trust with the audience that turns to us.
Serving it up with the qualities of public media, which might feel like swimming upstream in a river filled with clickbait as well as salacious content.
Add in language debates and lack of relationships and the picture becomes clearer. Now extrapolate this to the aforementioned staffing matters.
The catch? As Joe Marchese astutely says, commercial media has evolved. The biggest outlets understand that they not only have the power to command attention, but also to create habit and influence culture. Public media hasn’t quite caught on to it yet; our language remains wrapped by in commercial media’s failures. Yet different media outfits are striving to build trust and community too.
In this lens, the lack of priority in Latina/o/e/x and diverse recruitment broadly starts to make more sense. Everyone is pushing hard on delivery to members and audience, but no one thinks of diverse recruitment in the same way.
Reconsidering what’s possible. We need to openly talk about public media’s tendency to rationalize shortcomings around hiring people of color and young people as leaders. The most common examples are raised in the Current study, at least indirectly.
Something I have heard often is that leadership may decide low pay and leaving are a given. Thus, those simply come to pass. Biases such as desirability of location; and the notion that we can’t be competitive with “better opportunities” further cloud our ability to be honest.
It might be true that destination cities are many candidates’ dreams. It also might be true that fill-in-the-blank public media organizations can’t pay what the New York Times does. It could also be true that a community or station is homogenous and coming there could be a culture shock. Instead of making these our obstacles, how are we talking about solving these problems? How are we actively making our stations and communities places people of color connect with and feel like they belong? (Don’t say your content or events, please.) What’s the plan to make wages and our scale more attractive? Let’s rethink how we talk about this work.
Hiring a diverse workforce, especially for public media, is important for many reasons. There are a number of challenges, however. From not having the tools to assess the candidates' skills and qualifications accurately, to employee training. In order to overcome these challenges, we need to invest in better training and development, but also put more of our attention to finding answers. This will help public media organizations to become familiar with the challenges that diversity and hiring poses locally. 🟢
Continuará en la próxima OIGO…
Cafecito: stories to discuss ☕
PBS says American Historia, a three-part series on Hispanic history hosted by John Leguizamo, has been greenlighted and will be out in August.
Related: PBS has launched Ignite Mentorship for diverse filmmakers.
Chicas Poderosas is offering a free course in March to teach “journalism, financial sustainability, fundraising, project management, collaborative leadership and anti-colonial narratives.” Details here (Spanish).
The Latino Media Network’s purchase of 18 stations from Univision is done. You may recall when word of the sale generated Congressional press conferences, thinkpieces and more.
LWC Studios announced a new podcast on Latina health in the Chicago area. Get the details and pitch process here.
Felicidades a Rebecca Fernandez, who comes to public media from the City of Orlando, and joins a newly created content leadership group at WMFE/WMFV.
El radar: try this 📡
Focus Black History Month content on Latinx intersections. KTVZ is among many outlets carrying reports of Latina/o/e/x groups that celebrated MLK Day. With Black History Month almost here, such coverage reminds us that February is a good moment to talk about Black and Latinx connections as well as Afro-Latino communities.
Ask how egg prices are affecting Latine stores. WIOI in Cleveland produced a report on how the spike in the cost of eggs is impacting Hispanic store owners and consumers. I expect there are many opinions of this where you are.
Explore Latina lowriding. This topic got attention from Axios this week, but KPCC and KQED covered it last year. The perception has long been that the lowrider car culture is exclusively men, but more women are changing it. Que onda in your town?
Check in with your city’s Latino outreach staff. Community licensee WFHB did that, Many cities bigger than Bloomington have Hispanic-oriented offices. Such catchups seem like a golden opportunity to discover story ideas and content opportunities.
See wherefore MAGA Latinos. MSNBC covered this issue during the House Speaker drama some weeks back, The growth of Hispanic Republicans is overrepresented in coverage, but the number of them affiliated with Donald Trump’s political wing isn’t. Is this an issue of interest in your state?
We’ll continue the diverse hiring dialogue in the next OIGO on February 3. You can buy me a coffee if you’d like to support the newsletter. 🥤