RACE LENS: White, White, Don’t Tell Me

Tell Me More would be no more, NPR announced in May 2014.

National Public Radio broke the news in May that it was cancelling its popular show Tell Me More, hosted by Michel Martin and heralded by critics like Jeff Yang (Daily Dot, 5/30/14) for featuring guests “who look like America, rather than the straight white males who are turned to by most media—including other programs on NPR.” “We’re not stepping away from our commitment to reach a diverse audience,” NPR’s Lynette Clemetson explained (Current, 5/27/14). But “we’ve got to come at it from a different angle.”

Part of that approach seems to be the hiring of a new (white) CEO, Jarl Mohn, known as a “turnaround specialist,” whose explicit goals include changing the perception of NPR that “it’s old, it’s East Coast and it’s white” (The Root, 5/10/14).

But based on the clumsy attempts to address the majority-white programming and listenership at the Los Angeles affiliate where he was board chair, NPR‘s historic issue with its lack of diversity isn’t likely to be fixed by the new boss.

New NPR CEO Jarl Mohn, a “turnaround specialist” hired in part to make NPR seem less white.

NPR‘s overwhelming whiteness has lingered on, generally intact, for years. A 1993 FAIR study (Extra!, 4-5/93) of popular NPR programs revealed an almost exclusively white lineup of commentators. Even in urban markets, where you might expect a change-up on the racial dial, NPR stations have mostly failed to reflect the diversity of the public the network is supposed to serve (Extra!, 9/02).

NPR‘s super-white reputation isn’t only limited to its commentators and hosts—its listeners are mostly white, too. While NPR ombud Edward Schumacher-Matos (4/10/12) admitted as much in 2012, he called the question of racial representation “irrelevant” because of “the sophistication of the audience.” But listenership is not just a cause of programming, it’s also a consequence—which means attempts at diversity could potentially change the racial dynamics of both programming and listenership.

This dynamic was highlighted by the awkward experiment at local NPR affiliate KPCC/Southern California Public Radio attempted in 2012. Mohn, a former private equity investor was the board chair at KPCC at the time when the station attempted to remake programming to attract Latino listeners.

Under something called the One Nation project, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting offered grant money on condition it be used to “encourage ethnic diversity”—terms KPCC under Mohn chose to fulfill, not by creating new programming for and with Latinos, but by turning its highest-rated news program, the Madeleine Brand Show, into Brand & Martinez—plopping a former Latino sports talk host, A Martinez, next to white, upper-middle class Brand.

The experiment lasted four weeks before Brand quit. Some viewers were turned off as well: “Seriously?” wrote one commenter (LA Weekly, 11/1/12). “A story on tortillas followed immediately by a story on hot chilies? It’s like a bad, vaguely racist joke.”

Martinez was given another white co-host and that show, Take Two, has in fact become a hit with a markedly more nonwhite audience—40 percent (Maynard Institute, 5/9/14).

In that regard, the experiment worked. But making one high-profile Latino hire, with no news experience, might not strike some as “the model” for diversifying the whole network, as Mohn claims.

And what do they even mean by “diverse audience”? When CPB researched “Latino audience potential” (LA Weekly, 11/1/12),  they seemed to focus more on what they wanted than what Latinos might need.  Like Goldilocks, researchers set aside “recently arrived immigrants,” because they had “no awareness of public radio” and felt “generally well-served” by Spanish-language radio. “First-generation Latinos” were acknowledged to be “solid consumers” of news and music, but were written off for having “complexities that can make it a difficult market for public radio to reach.” Who knew this diversity stuff could be so complicated?

“Second- and third-generation Latinos” were deemed “just right” for public radio—which apparently chooses its listeners, and not the other way around.

It’s hard to diversify public radio when acclaimed black-led programs are cancelled because of their “advocacy” for the poor.

This Goldilocks attitude seems to pervade NPR‘s approach to diversity. Tell Me More isn’t the first acclaimed show NPR has axed that was hosted by an African-American personality and covered diverse issues: In 2012, Chicago Public Media cancelled Smiley & West, hosted by Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, saying its “advocacy” for the poor and focus on inequality didn’t fit well with the station’s goals of being “reasonably balanced” (Extra!, 2/13).

But being public radio means the right fit shouldn’t be for NPR and its series of white leaders to decide. It also isn’t something market research can steer you to. It’s NPR that must fit itself to the public—the diverse public, including those pesky “complexities” and viewers who don’t listen to public radio—perhaps for good reason. Even as the network tinkers with its programming, it will never solve the diversity riddle by coloring within its own lines of what diversity should look like