MSM televised news outlets are fond of tagging conservatives as racists. But they only need to look at their news anchors, past and present, to see their own bias. For example, recall the three network news anchors that traveled to Baghdad with candidate Barack Obama?
In fact, track network anchors back to the infancy of televised news, and, while there’s been occasional gender diversity, the color of the faces, with the brief exception of co-anchor Connie Chung, has been snow white. Richard Hubbell, Douglas Edwards, Bob Schieffer, Walter Cronkite, Chet Huntley, David Brinkley, John Chancellor, Howard K. Smith, Frank Reynolds, Barbara Walters, and so on…overwhelmingly white folks. And, mostly guys. According to the Museum of Broadcast Communications:
Aside from abortive attempts to team Barbara Walters with Harry Reasoner and more recently, Connie Chung with Dan Rather, national news presenting has been a white male preserve. However, local anchor teams have long represented diversity in the community through a news couple of different race and gender, supplemented by reporters on the sports and weather beat and in the field. Even in the local context, however, gender distinctions are vital. The highly publicized case of Christine Kraft, anchor of KMBC-TV in Kansas City, Missouri illustrates the willingness of executives to dismiss women considered “too old” or “too unattractive” to fill this highly visible role. Such judgments are rarely, if ever, made in cases involving male anchors, who are seen to develop “authority” and “gravity” as their physical glamour fades.CNN broadcasts news around the clock and, with more on-air opportunities, introduced more diversity (e.g., Bernard Shaw). But even in the post-Obama period, with many more black and brown faces on the air, CNN still has a mostly white cast of teleprompter readers.
Cable network news commentators are mostly white, like Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann. And, cable financial news shows are, by and large, delivered by white faces.
A review of the two FOX News channels is omitted here since the Obama administration doesn’t consider FOX a true member of the TV news journalists’ club. But isn’t FOX’s Charles Payne the most prominent non-white, business news commentator on TV?
Maybe we need to go to the news services to find diversity. How about the Associated Press? Here’s their President.
No joy there. Another white Tom.
So what about the President and CEO of PBS? Surely there must be a person of color there.
So here’s the question: How come the talking heads of the MSM news outlets have often directly and indirectly labeled conservatives, like the Tea Party supporters, as racists? Have they no mirrors?
Big Journalism
