Report Rates Diversity Poor in Washington Press Corps
Thursday, August 5, 2004 at 12:17PM
TheSpook
The reporters who write about the White House
and Congress for the nation's newspapers are overwhelmingly
white and do only a "fair" to "poor" job of covering race-related
issues, according to a survey released yesterday by Unity: Journalists
of Color, a consortium of four minority journalism associations that is
staging a convention in Washington this week. The survey, "Diversity in
the Washington Newspaper Press Corps," shows that white journalists
make up 90 percent of reporters and editors in Washington bureaus,
while less than 70 percent of the U.S. population is white.
Minority journalists -- Asians, African Americans, Hispanics and Native
Americans -- make up less than 12 percent of bureau reporters, while
minorities represent more than 30 percent of the population. [more]