Confronting possible racial bias in coverage

Newspaper editors are inclined to liken the unpredictable flow of news to being dealt a wild card on a daily basis. Their duty is to play their hand with the "skill and character" defined in the credo of former publisher Frank Batten Sr. While the integrity of The Virginian-Pilot's editors is impeccable, their decisions on news presentation occasionally come under assault, often from individuals whose integrity is equally unassailable.

Editor Denis Finley speaks of news judgment, of the relative value of stories and the inevitable difficulty in parsing editorial decision-making. Processing and presenting the daily mix of news is abstract.

And too often, managing editor Maria Carrillo knows, the news will cause pain for an individual or group. She is acutely sensitive to matters of race and ethnicity: Her Cuban ancestry makes her part of the 4 percent Hispanic population in Hampton Roads.

Finley, who is white, and Carrillo ask that judgments be made on the total newspaper rather than on any single story. Even in that context, however, both acknowledge that The Pilot could do a better job in depicting race and diversity on its pages. They are in sync with local minorities who believe that the newspaper can improve on its diversity score.

It is a delicate issue that is highly subjective, depending on who's weighing in on the matter.

Both sides measure the issue with different yardsticks and speak different languages in describing its contours.

For Finley and Carrillo, the ideal newspaper functions as a mirror. Metaphorically speaking, Carrillo asks readers, "Do you see yourself in the newspaper?" She is aware that some readers answer no.

People of color, particularly African Americans, want more than a mirror. The formula they use to judge the newspaper is whether it creates a construct of community that reaches beyond the dominant culture - beyond the 61 percent of the Hampton Roads population that is white. Their test is as much an accusation as a question: "Why is the newspaper biased against black people?" Blacks comprise 31 percent of the regional population.

From the inside, the question seems both harsh and unfair, especially because of the overall balance that The Pilot usually brings to its daily coverage of race and diversity.

Still, if a noteworthy achievement by someone black is overlooked, or the death of a prominent individual goes unnoticed, black people perceive it as a product of bias. Even though any one of a dozen reasons - none of which has to do with race - might have led to a particular news decision, "perception is reality," says Vivian Paige, a local black activist and blogger.

Most often, the flash point for African Americans is in crime coverage. They perceive a dichotomy in the portrayals of blacks and whites involved in crime. They want to know: Why are black suspects always identified by race when white suspects never are? Why are little blond white girls who go missing always given huge play but missing black girls are never considered big news?

Those judgments are based on a narrow and largely skewed picture of today's American newspaper. The past, however, is a different story. The only profile most blacks had in white newspapers until after World War II was depicted in a mug shot. But in the 1950s and 1960s, U.S. newspapers exercised their power on behalf of the civil rights movement by exposing the realities of discrimination. For better or worse, newspapers continue to possess that power.

Paige thinks The Pilot has not put that power to its best use in 50 years. While segregation has ended, the integration that followed remains superficial.

"We can all drink from the same water fountains and sit together in movie theaters, but most of us go home to our mostly segregated neighborhoods at night and attend our segregated churches on Sunday morning," she says. In that climate of "superficial integration," huge gaps in understanding continue to separate minorities from the dominant white culture, she observes.

Like Paige, Bill Thomas, associate vice president for governmental relations at Hampton University and a former banker, understands the newspaper's capacity "to send a powerful psychological message." That is why he pays close attention to The Pilot's portrayals of race and diversity. Recently, Thomas thought he caught the newspaper in one of those classic, "there-you-go-again" moments.

In the Jan. 19 paper, Thomas noted the postage stamp-sized, front-page photo of Ryan David Frederick, the white man charged with killing a Chesapeake police detective. Thomas saw it as an example of the minimalist approach the newspaper brings to covering white men and crime. He's certain that any black man charged with the same crime would have been depicted in a much larger photo.

Perhaps because that perception is Thomas's reality, he does not see the postage-stamp sized images that Carrillo says are just as likely to be used when the suspect is a racial or ethnic minority.

In short, the layers of nuance and relativity that surround news judgments defy one- or two-sentence explanations. Yet, a historic truth resides in the claims of racial minorities whose lives were for so long considered unworthy of positive attention.

Keith Woods is the dean of faculty at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla. He teaches seminars on race and divesity at newspapers around the country and has written widely on the issue. Woods says the black/white crime discussion takes place in every American newsroom. But that issue is a digression, he says, one that spares us from confronting the more difficult and dangerous conversation about how "race, history and experience always influence news judgments."

That preferences guide our lives is undeniable. But taking preferences to their logical next step is a walk down a one-way street that leads to the dreaded b-word: Bias. And if discussing racial bias, the conversation develops incendiary potential. Most people - regardless of race or ethnicity - are unwilling to confront their biases.

"The minute you concede any single bias, the closer you get to racism," in Woods' logic. So journalists reflexively raise the objectivity flag, he explains. "The automatic response is 'I have no biases.' But that is a lie."

Too often, how race, history and experience influence news judgments goes unexamined. But without that conversation, Bill Thomas will remain on the lookout for the next postage-sized image of the white crime suspect.

Woods is quite right in his observations that, "Power resides in the newspaper, and the people who operate the newspaper are in a position to take the first step." But without the good will and cooperation of all the Vivian Paiges and Bill Thomases of Hampton Roads, no progress is possible.

The Pilot is, in fact, taking a step in its continuing effort to cover the community better.

Three months ago, The Pilot brought together a group of readers from the region's minority communities to discuss the newspaper's coverage of minorities. Community advisory groups will begin a series of monthly meetings later this week. The plan is to focus on a particular category of coverage during each session.

Perhaps not coincidentally, the first discussion Carrillo plans to undertake is the newspaper's coverage of crime. That session and the ones that follow are likely to be both healthy and enlightening. I will be reporting on them in a future column.

Joyce Hoffmann is the public editor. Reach her at (757) 446-2475 or public. editor@pilotonline.com.