CBC: More Diversity Needed On Shows

By Mike Soraghan  |  The Hill  |  Link to article
June 15, 2009

Members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) say there is a lack of diversity on the Sunday political talk shows.

The CBC is more powerful than ever. Its members are chairmen of four congressional committees, and a former CBC member is now in the White House. CBC contends that more minorities should be invited to appear on the influential shows.

“I’m not pleased at all with the diversity issue as it relates to talk shows,” CBC Chairwoman Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said in an interview with The Hill. “We have, what, 17 subcommittee chairs and four full-committee chairmen? These members are brilliant; they know their stuff. They’re powerful and they should be part of the Sunday morning talk shows.”

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), secretary of the CBC, calls himself a “fan” of the Sunday shows, but said he’d like to see change.

“The morning talk shows need to increase the number of African-Americans,” Butterfield said. “Not only for diversity, but it would also be good for the ratings.”

The comments come three years after a study found a striking lack of black participants on the shows. The original study was completed before Democrats took over Congress in the 2006 elections, which put many more black and Hispanic lawmakers into positions of power.

But some legislators say that hasn’t been reflected on the shows.

Lee said the CBC, composed of 41 House members and Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.), is working on the issue and has been in communication with the producers of the shows.

The criticism comes as racial issues play an increasingly prominent role in Washington politics, with the first black president, the first Latina Supreme Court nominee and immigration reform on the national agenda.

The CBC’s statements are echoed by the original authors of the study at the National Urban League Policy Institute.

“We’ve seen incremental change,” said Stephanie Jones, the institute’s executive director. “They’re not where they need to be.” Jones’s institute found that black guests made up only 8 percent of the total appearances on the shows. The institute is in the midst of updating its study.

Titled “Sunday Morning Apartheid,” the 2006 report analyzed ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” CBS’s “Face the Nation,” CNN’s “Late Edition,” “Fox News Sunday” and NBC’s “Meet the Press” from Jan. 1, 2004 through Dec. 31, 2005.

Despite its conservative-leaning reputation, Jones noted that “Fox News Sunday” delivered much of the diversity, noting that National Public Radio’s (NPR) Juan Williams is a regular guest.

“There’s at least one show every Sunday where you’re almost guaranteed to see an African-American panelist,” said a Fox News source.

Jones said that after the study, the Urban League reached out to the networks. NBC has been the most responsive, she said.

The late Tim Russert, then the host of “Meet the Press,” met with the group and acknowledged a problem, she said.

As a result of that receptiveness, she said, “Meet the Press” recently brought on Rutgers University economist William Rodgers, an African-American, as a commentator.

“They’re bringing on new voices,” she said. “They need to keep working on it.”

Other African-Americans who have been on “Meet the Press” this year include Tavis Smiley of PBS, former Rep. Harold Ford Jr. (D-Tenn.), Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and NPR’s Michele Norris.

Jones said she found it especially galling when conservatives blamed much of the economic meltdown on policies intended to help minorities get home loans, and there seemed to be no minorities rebutting the charges on screen. It prompted Jones to fire off a letter to the network presidents last October.

“It is unlikely that this and other such irresponsible comments would go unanswered if there were more diversity in your political and policy discussions,” Jones wrote at the time.

Roll Call tracks lawmakers’ appearances. The CBC member with the most appearances this year is Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), with two. The only other CBC member on the list is House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.), who appeared once on “Fox News Sunday.” No Hispanic members are on the list.

This past weekend, not one minority lawmaker appeared on the Sunday shows. All seven of those who appeared are white and six are male. A majority of the Congress is composed of white males.

Representatives of the shows say that the CBC is looking only at lawmakers rather than including panelists. The shows say they have made real progress on diversity by including minority commentators like Donna Brazile and Cynthia Tucker. An ABC source said that 13 of  23 “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” shows this year – 57 percent – have included at least one African-American, often several.

“We’re always striving for diversity. We’re very mindful of it,” said Ian Cameron, executive producer of “This Week.” “Several of our regular contributors are African American, and we’re always looking for new voices.  It’s something we’re constantly focused on, because it’s important and people wouldn’t watch us if we didn’t reflect the country.”

Betsy Fischer, executive producer of “Meet the Press,” said, “I think if you look over our program guest list in the past year or so, you will find many diverse voices — in terms of gender, race, idealogly and geographic representation. We are proud of our commitment to diversity as we try to present the most informative program of newsmakers and analysis each week.”

Sources at some of the shows note that their bookers are more likely to seek out senators, because there’s more debate and legislative uncertainty in the upper chamber. Burris is the only black senator and has at times dodged the limelight because of a Senate Ethics investigation into the circumstances of his appointment.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.), a former CBC chairman and the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, said he organizes church and Sunday golf around the talk shows.

“When I watch these shows, I think, ‘I know my caucus better than that,’” Clyburn said. “I think, ‘That’s not a full discussion of my party’s agenda.’ “

However, he said, it’s not just blacks or Hispanics who are missing, but also regional diversity.

“The talk shows are not diversified enough along those lines,” he said. For example, he said, many were surprised in the climate debate when Southern Democrats came out strongly in favor of nuclear power. That’s because no one had been talking to them.

“These are big nuclear states,” Clyburn said.

Eric Deggans, the TV media/critic for the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, doubts Butterfield’s claim that inviting more minorities would lead to better ratings.

“Those shows’ audiences are those shows’ audiences,” he said.

Deggans, who often appears on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” said it’s an issue of journalistic quality. Especially on racially charged issues, viewers don’t get a full picture when all the guests are white, he said.

“The Sunday after [Supreme Court justice nominee] Sonia Sotomayor was announced, I didn’t see any Hispanics on. There may have been one or two, but I didn’t see them,” Deggans said. “There’s a whole side of the issue you don’t get.”

But even if its members aren’t well-represented on Sunday talk shows, the CBC is well-represented in the corridors of power, at least on the House side. And they have a distinct take on the big agenda items for the year, including healthcare reform.

Many CBC members aren’t as enthusiastic as many of their fellow liberals about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) signature cap-and-trade bill to address climate change. They’re worried that electric utilities could pass on the costs to their low-income constituents in the form of steep rate hikes.

“Everything that’s going to be charged to the companies, they’re going to pass it on to the customers and I just don’t want to see utility bills so high that working people can’t afford them,” said Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas).

Butterfield, who pressed this point in the Energy and Commerce Committee, notes that 15 percent of the allowances will be dedicated to helping low-income families avoid spikes in their bills.

He voted for the bill in committee, but added, “There’s still room for improvement.”

On healthcare, the CBC wants Democratic leaders to look beyond the idea of universal coverage to rectifying what they see as historical disparities. They joined together last week with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Asian American and Pacific Islander Caucus to demand that such disparities be addressed in the healthcare debate. They also recently pressed their point with Nancy-Ann DeParle, the director of the White House Office of Health Reform.

“For us, insurance issue is not enough — these access issues are also important,” said Del. Donna Christensen (D-Virgin Islands).

CBC members also say the disagreements of last year’s presidential primary season are behind them, and were overstated.

Some members committed early to Hillary Rodham Clinton.

“There was no rift at all,” Johnson said. “We have a great feeling across the board about what we’re here for. We don’t question each other about that.”

“It is true we had differences of opinion during the primary, but we did not have a rift,” he said. “Our differences have been transformed into a positive working relationship.”