Pamela Newkirk

Pamela Newkirk is a professor of journalism at New York University and the author of Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media. The following viewpoint is taken from a speech she made for the Center for Integration and Improvement in Journalism, an organization that promotes ethnic diversity in the media. Newkirk argues that the nation’s newsrooms remain dominated by whites and that journalists who are members of racial minority groups continue to face bias and discrimination from their colleagues. Such prejudice hampers the ability of news organizations to accurately and objectively report the news and cover the lives of African Americans and other groups. News media organizations should continue to strive for racial and ethnic diversity through their hiring procedures and their media coverage, she concludes.

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