NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen: ‘NPR already knows’ that it has a diversity problem. (photo: James Wrona/NPR)
National Public Radio ombud Elizabeth Jensen (NPR.org, 7/22/15) responds to FAIR’s study of NPR commentary, saying, “I find the specific numbers in the study somewhat arbitrary, even though the broad sweep of its conclusions pretty much echo what NPR already knows.”
She provides a fair summary of FAIR’s findings:
The overwhelming majority of the commentaries were arts criticism. The study found 14 “regular” commentators (that is, those who had more than one commentary in the study period.) Eleven were men, and all but one (NPR TV critic Eric Deggans) were non-Latino whites. Out of the 111 segments FAIR found in total, 7 percent were from one of the three female commentators and 11 percent were from Deggans, who is African-American. So, a total of 82 percent of the regular commentaries were from white men.
NPR‘s Jensen seemed to suggest that cooking writer Bonny Wolf’s commentaries should have been counted in FAIR’s study even when they fell outside of the study’s timeframe. (photo: Jesse Baker/NPR)
But Jensen is critical of the study for studying only NPR‘s main news programs—All Things Considered, Morning Edition and the Weekend Edition shows—and for focusing on “regular” commentators, by which we mean commentators who appeared more than once during our study period. Jensen presents figures for women and people of color her office found doing one-shot commentaries during the study period—12 women, 10 people of color—without letting us know how many such one-shot commentaries her office found in total, which amounts to presenting a numerator without a denominator.
(She also raised doubts about the exclusion of Bonny Wolf, a commentator who only had one commentary during the study’s timeframe, because Wolf had other commentaries that were outside that timeframe—which seems rather an odd criticism, unless you reject the idea that studies have a beginning and an end.)
Jensen further questioned our definition of commentary as single-voiced perspectives:
Should only monologues count in the case of arts criticism? Or for that matter, political commentary? As the study notes, NPR‘s political commentary is largely handled through conversations—not monologues—with regular Friday guests. Sometimes a conversation is just a more interesting way to engage with a viewpoint or plays to the strengths of a particular commentator.
FAIR’s report did look at NPR‘s Friday point/counterpoint segments, and found them to feature even less diversity than regular commentaries—with punditry that was 97 percent male and 83 percent white. But we defined “commentary” the way we did, as segments with a single voice, because otherwise it would be hard to draw a line between commentators expressing opinions and sources being interviewed. And the point of focusing on commentators rather than sources is that while NPR can always argue that its decisions about sources are circumscribed by the realities of the world, its choice of commentators is limited only by whose perspectives it finds worth listening to.
It is always possible to second-guess what was left out or left in by the design of a study. To the extent possible, we wanted to make this study as comparable as possible to FAIR’s two earlier attempts to analyze NPR‘s commentator roster. This allows us to say that the preponderance of white males in NPR‘s commentary is not a new problem—they were 85 percent of regular commentators in 1991, 60 percent in 2003 and 71 percent in 2015—and is not steadily getting better over time. This suggests that the problem is not lack of awareness or of enough time to change, but that of all the things NPR looks for in commentators, ethnic and gender diversity are fairly low on the list.
We appreciate Jensen’s acknowledgment that “having overwhelmingly white viewpoints does not reflect enough of the country.” But the fact that that is not the central reaction of NPR‘s ombud to a study finding that 82 percent of her network’s regular commentaries are by white men—and that she chooses instead to focus on how the numbers could have been crunched differently—gives us little hope that if we repeated this study again in another decade we would find results that are markedly different.
Jensen’s complete response to FAIR’s study can be read here.
Jim Naureckas is the editor of FAIR.org.
You can send comments to NPR ombud Elizabeth Jensen via NPR’s contact form or via Twitter: @ejensenNYC. Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective.
While I understand and commend FAIR’s approach to seeking a more proportional representation of ethnic and sexual backgrounds among the commentators on NPR, my fear is that they’ll ultimately relent to those demands with a more varied cast of talking heads, out of whose mouths will come the same timid approach to the news that meets the approval of the economic class that runs the government. One need only count the blondes on FOX to see how quantity doesn’t necessarily mean quality.
NPR has the same problem all the major media have had since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling of 2010. It attempts to present both sides of political discussions, the views of Democrats paired with the views of Republicans. The Republican Party, however, has been compromised by campaign contributions.
Yes, I know, the Democratic Party is not far behind, and eventually it won’t matter who the media book. But currently NPR is routinely matching left-wing white male commentators who attempt to tell the truth with right-wing white male commentators who are being paid to lie.
More outrage, please!
Look at all the comments the dunderheaded “Ombudsman” elicited at the NPR website. Most of all the commenters were idiot white conservative Americans, who missed the central point of the FAIR micro-survey: NPR is a racist (capital) R institution.
This is not a light charge. Again, though a quick study, NPR was shown to be a nearly lily-white, racist institution. The Ombudsman could not, in her own racist way, acknowledge the thrust of that charge, so she had to parry it with absurd trivia about interviewees as opposed to commentators, or some such evasion.
Yet the commenters here “diversity” and think it solely applies to ideology, as if conservative ignorance carries some obligation to be funded by otherwise rational people. This is not what FAIR is showing is happening at NPR: it is a racist institution because it skews so white in a country saturated with white presumption and arrogance.
Can the ombudsman appreciate the severity of that charge? Other media figures are losing tens of millions at the drop of one N-bomb – what about an institution that carries forth the banner of prejudice by favoring one socio-cultural tradition so clearly? Of course, the other large media institutions are overtly and categorically racist, like FOX and its allies, so I guess NPR feels it should be given a racism pass.
When does NPR interview these so-called left-wing white males? I NEVER heard anyone left-wing on NPR, just liberals.
I look at overall how NPR is doing, not the statistics of who is doing it, thought that does have some weight. Were it not for NPR a lot of people would not even be interested in who says what. Why look at things that are working and try to bash them, which is so much of what FAIR does by sheer numbers and thoughtless reverse arguments. The mentality of FAIR is childish. If that is what they want to bring to NPR, maybe better to just let it run itself.
I would like to highlight the fact that statistics do not make racism.
Racism is actively working towards the destruction and downfall of a given race or towards the dominance by racist means of a selected race. NPR is neither.
Get that, NPR is not racist. The message is what is important. One would think people might have learned that and gotten it through their heads when the election of a black President brough us by far the most Conservative Democratic President in modern history.
Please alert the NPR Ombudsman that their ‘branding’ as a commercial free provider is laughable, that their philosophy about what constitutes actual newsworthy news as opposed to ‘incessant human interest’ reporting is different from actual useful news. Their political reporting promotes Republicans, downgrades the Teaparty influence, while it denigrates Democrats and ignores progressives. However, they can start with admitting that they run commercials and that their Board of Directors consists of mostly Corporate heads, that their lack of investigative reports begets increased radio fundraising mainly due to of their drop in listeners. If NPR and precisely ME, ATC and WE want to be of service to the nation, they should actually do what they ‘advertise’ which is to report important, (not trendy or headline news) they need to stop the conversational approach to reporting their trending news, cease so much of ‘headline news’ and investigate and report on corporate malfeasance, present a balance in their political reporting, and maybe employ humans to write and refresh their news stories without making them sound like flotsam. Finally, I don’t believe that she actually cares about the proposed “Mission” of NPR or it’s current frightful incarnation. Just sayin. I understand that the BBC is under attack for the same ‘liberal bias’ although they are trending towards younger audience. Sigh.
John Q, I would love it if the so called political analysis on ME, ATC and WE’s were balanced, it is not and has not been balanced or useful since Jesse Jackson uttered (apologetically), “Jaime Town.” I have been listening since 1983 and I promise you, the reporting and NPR’s mission has been dumped, in favor of web income, corporate profit, and the relentless promotion of the republican agenda and their candidates. You would not know that Bernie Sanders or any Democrats were running for president by listening to ME, Mara Liasson, (my old favorite Cokie Roberts) and the newbies who are towing the non-news and biased reporting, line, but I guarantee that you will here most of the wacko utterances of Trump and any republican candidate and congressional opponents to President Obama, with almost no opposing viewpoint from progressives or democrats. It’s a shame, because NPR, as it became more polished, diminished in usefulness. I am not alone in this realization. Just count the numbers of commercials between ‘trendy and human interest stories’; how much market-based programming has replaced labor-oriented news, and finally, how much reporting is actually presented by reporters without a conversational format to lessen its importance. Just sayin.
And what of FAIR’s staff–what is the breakdown? Jim N. seems to write a fair number of the commentaries….
NPR has drifted to the “safe center” from its earlier days (and my own listening began in 19732). As well, it more likely reflects the preferences of belief that are represented by an educated predominately white audience. This has made it shine like a beacon to those advertisers (uh, excuse me– “sponsors”) who have chosen to send their “messages of sponsorship” to NPR stations… where it’s VERY easy to see who they are “targeting”. There’s also a sense of an apologetic sufferance of very right wing diatribe… and that’s Really a sore point for me. And, comments that I have sent to NPR- including the ombudsman- have occasionally been reviewed and ‘answered’ by people who I must assume speak English as a second language… and have little or no knowledge of idioms, nor an appreciation (recognition?) of irony.
This is what “success” looks and sounds like, folks… and, unfortunately, it’s about the only game in town. (I have to say “thank heavens for AS IT HAPPENS”, which hasn’t sunk to kowtowing to the Canadian “dominant paradigm”!) ^..^
Brux, racism comes in many different forms – and I guess they’ll be no wrapping it up in this forum.
But NPR is white, is caricatured as white, stays white, despite the mild tokenism you refer to. And yes, this was just as plain in the election of the “diversity” charlatan as “president.”
It’s just good to call out corporate hacks like the ombud when they try to fend off proven charges of being racist by claiming some diversionary tactic – and yes, FAIR was started by white folk – see how hard it is prove non-racism in a thoroughly race-saturated, disequal country? .
Here is my concern:
What is not considered in the arts coverage on NPR?
The revolution in all the arts, postism music, a back to basics music, Stuckism and other new movements in painting and art, thousands of independent filmmakers on youtube, thousands of zinesters – indy writers, virtually no coverage of new poets, or playwrights, etc.
That’s a lot of very great art and artists. But the problem gets worse.
What’s not considered is how important fair reviews are. NPR gives fair reviews to films, but never to any books or music. That treats books and music like refrigerator art where all is praised – that is not journalism. And while a few books and recordings are over praised, most are marginalized and are denied fair reviews.
beingtheredoingthat
I beleve that Jesse Jackson called New York “Hymie-Town”, not “Jaime Town” although, of course, it also has a lot of Puerto Ricans and other Latino/as.
I find the behavior of these corporate media “ombudsman” to be rather peculiar.
The original Swedish concept of an “ombudsman” (ombudsperson?) was supposed to be am employee of a corporation or governmental agency whose job was to bring and defend the citizen’s grievances to the corporate or government agency leadership. But all the ones I seen (NPR, WaPo, NYT) spend most of their time writing snarky pieces in defense of that leadership against the aggrieved!