The discomfort that I and some other black journalists felt in the wake of the Blair fiasco exposed the frustrating degree to which we are still dependent upon others' ability or willingness to see us as individuals. What makes our plight so painfully clear are the appalling and bizarrely illogical reactions of various white journalists. For all their vaunted liberalness, they have in columns and editorials implicated Blair as an affirmative action blunderer by which all black hires should be judged. It's preposterous to suggest that one reporter's shortcomings indict all programs aimed at increasing newsroom diversity, yet some reputedly knowledgeable observers have argued as much....
I do feel some compassion for Blair, despite my annoyance. His flameout had to hurt, and I get no kicks from anyone's pain. If his disgrace has a bright side, it is that the consequent discussions about diversity in journalism will ultimately show how overwhelmingly white the profession remains.
Take magazines, for instance.
Except at the newsweeklies, most minority employees found at mass-media magazines are answering the phones and emptying the trash. Research the names on the editorial mastheads at GQ, Esquire, Vogue, The Nation, The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, Harper's, The American Prospect and The Atlantic Monthly--put them all together--and see if you can find enough minority writers and editors to use up all the fingers on one hand. That would be a far more useful exercise than merely raising a ruckus about race.
I especially loved the sweeping and erroneous bit about Blair representing the "standard by which all black hires should be judged." Who in the hell has written that? And then that part at the end, where he claims that raising a ruckus about the racial makeup of certain magazines would be a far more useful exercise than "merely raising a ruckus about race." Huh?
For another perspective, here's Joseph Perkins in the San Diego Union-Tribune:
"Did race have anything to do with the awful case of Brian Walski, the Los Angeles Times photographer who fabricated the photograph out of Iraq earlier this year?" asks a news release from the National Association of Black Journalists.
"Was it a factor with the two Salt Lake City reporters who sold a fabricated story to the National Enquirer for $20,000 in the Elizabeth Smart case?
"Was it a factor with Mike Barnicle, Stephen Glass, Ruth Shalit, Eric Drudis or the dozens of other white journalists who smeared the honorable profession of journalism and lied to their readers?
"Why should it be a factor here?"
Well, here's why: Those white journalists are seen as individuals. They are not viewed as members of a separate class or designated group, mainly because they were not hired through some special program that appears from afar to hold its beneficiaries to less demanding standards than those outside the program.
Indeed, the fact that the Times even has a minority program suggests that its editors believe they have to cut corners to hire minorities. It implies that, if the Times subjected minorities to the same hiring criteria as whites, the newspaper's reporting ranks would look like an audience at a Lincoln Center chamber music concert.
But here's the reality: There are roughly 6,500 black, Hispanic and Asian journalists throughout the fair land, according to the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
A newspaper that boasts the Gray Lady's prestige can certainly attract the best and brightest of those minority journalists without some stigmatizing program.
When the day comes that The New York Times and other news organizations practice colorblind hiring, when minorities are brought on staff as individuals rather than members of a special class, then the failings of one minority journalist – like Jayson Blair – will not reflect badly on all.
Amen to that.
