As many students around the country celebrate their graduations, be it high school, college or graduate school, some are embarking into the journalism world and becoming a new generation of journalists.

The underlying question is: will this generation have learned from the generation of journalists who preceded them and the ones before that?

In light of media issues regarding Don Imus’ remarks to Jayson Blair’s plagiarism and fabrication scandal, this new crop of journalists will hopefully have seen the responsibilities of what it takes to be a respected journalist.

Having a solid education is one factor for these new journalists, but another factor to help these new journalists is basic, and that is, mentors. There is always a need for mentors, particularly mentors who come from minority groups.

For one, many new journalists are themselves from different ethnic groups and need the encouragement that, they too, can succeed in journalism. In addition, mentors can serve as true role models, rather than those, such as Imus’ and Blair, who have shattered their respect and integrity in the journalism community as a result of being irresponsible.

In reference to the Imus issue, Gwen Ifill of PBS remarked that “With freedom of speech comes responsibility. The freedom of speech does not give freedom to shoot off character assassinations.”

Ifill raised an important point and such points are the kind of guidance that new reporters need to hear from veteran journalists.

In sum, mentors are needed to teach those responsibilities, be it ethic responsibilities to freedom of speech responsibilities. Hopefully through that, a new generation of journalists will emerge to change what’s going wrong with the media now and make it even better than anyone could ever have imagined.

This week a liberal media watchdog group released a report that revealed the guests on Sunday morning political news talk shows continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by male Caucasians, with only 7 percent of African-Americans and 1 percent of Latinos appearing on the programs. Media Matters for America also said about one in five guests on the programs was female. The shows included in the report are ABC News’ “This Week,” CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” NBC News’ “Meet the Press” and Fox News’ “Fox News Sunday.”

As I came across this report and other similar reports regarding gender and racial/ethnic diversity, I’m stunned of the statistics in light of the wealth of experts I’ve met through SPJ’s Rainbow Diversity Sourcebook. Many of the experts, who come from groups underrepresented in the news media, are highly educated, knowledgeable, articulate and accomplished individuals.

Take for instance, Gay McDougall, an African-American female who works at the United Nations. With degrees from Yale and the London School of Economics, she has helped organize and administer South Africa’s first post-apartheid elections and can comment on civil rights, conflict resolution, international politics, gender issues, among others.  Another example is Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, a professor at NYU, who is an expert on immigration, globalization and education. In addition, there is Abdul Karim Bangura, a professor at American University, who specializes in race relations, civil rights, Islamic issues, peace and conflict resolution, foreign policy, computer science and the Internet. Bangura holds four Ph.D.’s and can speak French, German, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and a dozen African languages.

I could go on and on providing more examples of qualified experts from various minority groups. The bottom line is that it really shouldn’t be disheartening that these experts, who have such valuable information to share, continue to be untouched by the media, particularly by the Sunday morning political talk shows. But, perhaps, such statistics may serve as a wake-up call. That is, a wake-up call that journalists can tap a whole wealth of experts that, in the end, will be beneficial for their stories as well as the news media as a whole.

The full report can be seen at http://mediamatters.org/items/200705140002