The SPJ Diversity Committee is pleased with The Associated Press’ decision to change the use of the term “illegal immigrant.”

However, the Diversity Committee has been behind the issue of dropping the term “illegal” for the past few years, spearheaded by former committee member Leo Laurence. And it was in New Orleans at the Excellence in Journalism Conference 2011 when I witnessed former Diversity Fellow and Vice Chairwoman Rebecca Aguilar address the SPJ board about her mother, who came to the United States from Mexico, and the pain it caused when she saw the term “illegal alien” used in the newspaper.

Rebecca Aguilar addresses SPJ Board about using term “illegal alien”.
Photo by Sandra Gonzalez

After hearing Aguilar’s impassioned speech, the voting convention delegates passed this resolution on voice vote:

WHEREAS, the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics urges all journalists to be “honest, fair and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting information” and;

WHEREAS, mainstream news reports are increasingly using the politically charged phrase “illegal immigrant” and the more offensive and bureaucratic “illegal alien” to describe undocumented immigrants, particularly Latinos and;

WHEREAS, a fundamental principle embedded in our U.S. Constitution is that everyone (including non-citizens) is considered innocent of any crime until proven guilty in a court of law and;

WHEREAS, this constitutional doctrine, often described as “innocent-until-proven-guilty,” applies not just to U.S. Citizens but to everyone in the United States and;

WHEREAS, only the court system, not reporters and editors, can decide when a person has committed an “illegal” act and;

WHEREAS, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists is also concerned with the increasing use of pejorative and potentially inaccurate terms to describe the estimated 11 million undocumented people living in the United States;

THEREFORE, be it resolved that the Society of Professional Journalists convention of delegates: urges journalists and style guide editors to stop the use of illegal alien and encourage continuous discussion and re-evaluation of the use of illegal immigrant in news stories.

Prior to this, it had been rejected by the Resolutions Committee.

The AP is now changing how it will describe people as journalists report stories involving the current immigration issue. According to Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll, here is what is behind the decision:

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

“Journalists and others can argue that the new style recommendation is less precise than ‘illegal alien’ or ‘illegal immigrant,’ but it’s important to note that a significant portion of country’s population regards those terms as offensive.  It wasn’t that long ago that keepers of journalism style, including The AP, fought dropping ‘Negro’ as a term for black or African-American people,” says SPJ President Sonny Albarado.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists also says these terms can be dehumanizing  and demeaning.

“AP is right to note that the English language evolves and that our everyday usage contributes to that evolution. I hope journalists and others continue this conversation about immigration and people who come here legally or illegally until we arrive at terminology most of us can agree on,” Albarado says.

We on the SPJ Diversity Committee agree and hope journalists will eliminate these types of terms from their copy as immigration is a huge issue we will be reporting on this year.

Sandra Gonzalez
SPJ Diversity Committee Chairman
KSNV Reporter
Las Vegas

From left: Malik Singleton, Nigel Duara, Britney Tabor, Sandra Gonzalez, Sherri Williams, Tony Hernandez.

The idea to establish a program for fellows to learn about the inner workings of SPJ through an immersion into teaching of the Society’s missions, culture and operations came to fruition seven years ago in a Las Vegas hotel that no longer exists. The Diversity Leadership Fellows Program would be an educational process starting at the beginning of the  SPJ national convention.  Selected fellows, who would be involved in many aspects of the conference, would receive complimentary registration and paid travel for the event.

Today, unlike the Vegas hotel where the first group of fellows met, the DLFP still exists.

Why?

SPJ has made it clear that diversity is part of its core mission and values, which is why SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi Foundation continues to fund the successful program. To that extent, the diversity committee has spent the past several weeks working with Lauren Rochester, SPJ’s awards coordinator, and Chris Vachon, SPJ’s associate executive director,  in selecting participants for the 2012 Diversity Leadership Fellows Program.

We are excited about the six newest fellows, and the awesome list of mentors who have volunteered to work with the fellows.  This year’s fellows include: 

• Nigel Duara, The Associated Press, Oregon/S.W. Washington Chapter, SPJ
• Malik Singleton, CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, Deadline Club Chapter, SPJ
• Sandra Gonzalez, Freelance Digital Journalist, New Orleans Chapter, SPJ
• Sherri Williams, Adjunct Faculty, Syracuse University, Freelance Writer, Former Board Member of the Central Ohio Chapter, SPJ
•  Tony Hernandez, Northwest Arkansas Times, Northwest Arkansas Pro Chapter, SPJ
• Britney Tabor, Denton Record-Chronicle, Fort Worth Chapter, SPJ

Bonnie Newman Davis

SPJ Diversity Committee Chair – 2011-2012

Photo Courtesy: Jackson DeMos, USC Annenberg School

The train has left the station – and the good ol’ boy network is recreating itself. That was the call to action voiced by a disgruntled audience member at Digital & Diversity, a town hall at UNITY ‘12 on what diversity means in the digital age. Despite new tools, technologies, and business models, newsrooms are nearly as monochrome and male-dominated as a quarter century ago, participants said.

White male entrepreneurs seem to enjoy implicit favor in venture funding and grants, they observed. Worse yet, the high-speed, high-volume news environment is prone to offensive slips like ESPN’s infamous headline, “Chink in the Armor” — a reference to NBA star Jeremy Lin and an uneven stretch of games for his New York Knicks. Merely through inattention to inclusion, old hierarchies and habits have come right back.

The troubled digital space, though, still holds great opportunity for creating more honest, inclusive coverage, some speakers pointed out. Groups who feel shut out from the news can tell their own stories. Identity-specific news outlets and blogs such as Latina Lista, Native News Network and Pam’s House Blend can quickly hold other journalists accountable, improving the quality of the context we all offer. Partnerships across race, gender and sexual orientation bring stronger, more interesting ideas into everyone’s content.

There’s still time to reshape the news, some speakers proposed, by weaving inclusion right into the structure of news gathering and delivery. Audience members identified six key areas for attention:

• Build inclusive coverage into journalism programs from introductory courses on up.
• Ensure that journalism education and internships are available across the demographic spectrum, through grants and fair application processes.
• Press funders and venture capitalists to reinvent applications and decision-making processes so that entrepreneurs from all backgrounds get an equal chance.
• Encourage other types of support for journalists of color, LGBT entrepreneurs and women to own their own news outlets.
• Obtain a commitment by existing news outlets – whether online only or legacy – to an inclusive management and staff, and track their progress.
• Insist on ethical coverage that pays attention to inclusivity and fairness, and ask hard questions about representation and accuracy.

Focus on a broken system, the audience insisted, not piecemeal problem-solving. About 100 attendees raised concerns and proposed solutions at the session, which was opened by Bill Celis, associate director and associate professor at the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. I helped guide the conversation with Dori Maynard, president of the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education in Oakland, Calif., and Evelyn Hsu, the Maynard Institute’s senior director of programs and operations.

Resources:
UNITY/McCormick Foundation Electronic Clearinghouse for News Diversity
ASNE Newsroom Census (See online category)
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics Digital Journalism Ethics Resources
The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education
Santa Clara University Journalism Program
USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism
Society of Professional Journalists Ethics Code

Sally Lehrman is a member of the SPJ Diversity Committee. She holds Santa Clara University’s Knight Ridder — San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Public Interest. Sally is also an author and independent journalist who specializes in covering identity, race relations and gender within the context of medicine and science.

Photo Courtesy: Paul Weiskel

Once again we find ourselves caught short. Why did it take news media across the country a couple of weeks to notice that a black teenager had been shot by a vigilante in a gated community? In our sometimes clumsy efforts to catch up (see NBC’s hideous editing error), some accuse the media of hyping the racial element.

That’s absurd, and here’s why. When three-quarters of black people surveyed consider racial bias a factor in the killing and in the non-arrest of the shooter, you’d better believe race is important to this story. It’s no secret that black parents fear for their children, knowing that suspicion routinely follows young males with black skin, wherever they are.  In a study of unconscious racial reactions, experimental psychologists found people of all backgrounds more likely to “see” a weapon in a black person’s hand when it’s actually a harmless object like a can of soda.

Distressingly, our own work is part of the reason why.  Decades ago, communication theorist George Gerbner first described the “Mean World Syndrome.” In his studies, he discovered that people exposed to heavy doses of violence on television developed an overblown sense of danger and fear about the world around them. Despite our best intentions, we’re part of that picture.

In the crime stories so favored by the local news, multiple studies have found that race plays a predictable but inaccurate role. White people disproportionately play the victim. People with darker skin disproportionately flash on the screen as suspects. News audiences have become so conditioned that even when no suspect is shown at all, viewers assume one — and he is black.

In one influential study, Frank Gilliam of UCLA and Shanto Iyengar of Stanford University altered the suspect’s race in crime news clips that they showed to about 2,300 participants. In the test group whose clip included no suspect at all, 44 percent recalled seeing a black perpetrator. Regular news watching also increased audiences’ support for punitive remedies to crime.

Separately, researcher Travis Dixon, now also at UCLA, found that African Americans are consistently overrepresented as perpetrators in local crime news. Not surprisingly, he also found that regular crime news watchers tended to perceive black people as violent.

Photo Courtesy: Paul Weiskel

In this moment, it’s important for the news media to step up to our responsibility to cover and spur conversation about America’s racial climate. Let’s also use this moment to consider hard questions about how we help to create it.

Digging Deeper into a Story

Some things you can do, based on experimental psychology research and other sources:

• Avoid snap judgments in your reporting; that’s when reactive biases are most likely to emerge.
• Form anti-bias strategies, like consciously pursuing stories about young African American men who are heroes or protectors of safety.
• Evaluate crime stories by the level of community impact, and place them in social context of root causes and potential solutions.
• Cross-check victim/perpetrator ratios by race within your own news reports. Do they reflect actual police statistics?
• Check your sources. Are you including perspectives across the fault lines of race, gender and age? Who is the affected community? Is there more than one?

Sally Lehrman is a member of the SPJ Diversity Committee. She holds Santa Clara University’s Knight Ridder — San Jose Mercury News Endowed Chair in Journalism and the Public Interest. Sally is also an author and independent journalist who specializes in covering identity, race relations and gender within the context of medicine and science.

One of the objectives of the SPJ Diversity committee is to provide story ideas that are important to our different minority and ethnic communities. We hope by sharing these ideas you will able to find them in your city and pitch them as a story to your news managers.

Today we’re featuring: Our Lady of Guadalupe Day on December 12th. Our blog is by Sandra Gonzalez, an SPJ Diversity Committee member and digital journalist.

STANDING ROOM ONLY

If you pass by most Catholic churches in the Latino community on December 12th, you’ll probably see huge crowds. That’s because people will be celebrating Our Lady of Guadalupe Day (“Dia de la Virgen Guadalupe”).

I’ll never forget the first time I covered this event as a television reporter in Bakersfield, California. It was very early in the morning before the sun came up, and the church was “standing room only”.

Celebrations and processions will be part of the story if you plan to cover this event. An event that is very important to many Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

Here is a procession that went through a Chandler, Arizona neighborhood. You’ll be able to see how this story can be very easy for any reporter to cover, and you don’t have to speak Spanish. It’s visual with a good people element.

WHO IS LA MORENITA?

Most Catholic churches with large Mexican congregations will most likely be holding masses and celebrations in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. It’s good to know the history behind this event.

According to Mexican legend, the Virgin Mary appeared to an Indian man, Juan Diego in 1531. She had Indian features, with dark hair and eyes, (which is why some refer to her as “La Morenita”/the dark haired one). She asked him to tell the bishop to build a church at the hill of Tepeyac, but the bishop didn’t believe him.

When Diego returned to the Virgin, she told him to go to a hill where it is barren and he would find some beautiful flowers as proof. Juan Diego found roses and gathered them up in his apron (“tilma”) and when he presented the roses to the bishop, instead there was an image of the “Virgen de Guadalupe” on his apron.

To this day that apron is on display in the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

That legendary event spurred enormous growth of Catholicism in Mexico, and traditions honoring Our Lady of Guadalupe continue here in the United States.

ON THEIR KNEES

When I covered this story in Bakersfield, I saw the intense devotion of those who believed in the Virgin of Guadalupe. People fell to their knees in the back of the packed church. Others walked on their knees to the altar in the front. It looked painful, but this was their way of showing love and devotion and that they were humbled before her.

HOW TO FIND THIS STORY

Your best bet is to drive into the Latino community in your city. Even if the Mexican population is small–there will still be a celebration. Who would think you’d find Our Lady of Guadalupe celebration in Appleton, Wisconsin. Here’s the video:

If you can find the story in Appleton, you can find it in your backyard.

MORE TIPS

1. Call your Catholic Churches in the Latino community.
2. Contact the Catholic Diocese; they may know someone you can talk to in the church.
3. People angle: You can find the people angle when you go to one of these celebrations.

If you don’t get to cover it this year; jot it down in your calendar for 2012. Good luck!

Sandra Gonzalez is a digital journalist for WGNO-TV in New Orleans. She’s a multiple award winner with more than 20 year experience.

Our diversity committee is made up of people committed in making a difference in the landscape of journalism.Today we’re introducing you to two more members.  They come from different backgrounds and opposite sides of the country.

George Daniels is a faculty member of University of Alabama. He’s also the former chair of the SPJ Journalism Education Committee.

“I joined the SPJ Diversity Committee because diversifying our newsrooms has been a perennial goal of mine as a full-time working journalist and now as a full-time journalism professor. 

In my current position on the journalism faculty at The University, I not only teach two courses that focus on issues of difference or diversity in the media, but I also have made topics/issues of diversity a part of the academic research that I do. 

SPJ cannot be the nation’s largest, most broad-based group of journalists if it does not reflect the breadth of experiences and backgrounds of those who populate our profession.”

Sandy Frost is is online investigative journalist for Newsvine.com in Tacoma, Washington.

“I was asked to serve on the diversity committee because of my work for the Western Washington Pro Chapter. It is my hope to help other journalists understand how words matter, no matter who or what they are covering.

 The concept of diversity extends beyond who we are to include those we love and how we identify. As the proud mother of a transgender son, I hope to bring a certain awareness for equal rights and justice, whether it’s health care, marriage, employment or housing. I also want to contribute to a greater understanding of American Indian issues.

 Recently,  a celebrity mother used the derogatory term ‘Indian giver’ to describe her daughter keeping her expensive wedding ring. Instead of getting angry or demanding an apology, let’s use situations like this as ’teachable moments,’ educate with compassion and move on. “  

GETTING TO KNOW THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Every year there are changes on committees. We’re just making sure that as members you know who we are and what we stand for. Please feel free to contact us if you have an ideas for our blog.  Stay tuned for the next committee member profiles.

Stop by again!

Rebecca Aguilar an Emmy award winning reporter based in Dallas, TX.  She has 30 years of experience, with 28 in television news.  She’s also a board member with the SPJ-Fort Worth Chapter and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

SPJ 2011 Conference

I was asked to sit on the SPJ Diversity Committee at the SPJ convention in New Orleans.  I met many of the members and was inspired by their determination to improve diversity in newsrooms and news coverage.  

Each one of the committee members has the goal of diversity in common, but they all bring different experiences and journalism passions to the table.  Though they are all very busy individuals; I wondered why volunteering to be on this committee was important.  There is much to learn from what they have to say.

WHY SERVE ON THE SPJ DIVERSITY COMMITTEE?

Curtis Lawrence is the chairman of the SPJ Diversity Committee and a professor of journalism at Columbia College in Chicago, Illinois:

“Back in the 1980s shortly after I graduated from college, I remember reading how the American Society of Newspaper Editors vowed to make newsrooms reflect the racial and ethnic makeup of their communities by 2000.  A lot has changed since then. For example, ASNE is now the American Society of News Editors, reflecting the national decline of newspapers. And a lot has stayed the same.

Curtis Lawrence

Many of the faces in our newsrooms still do not reflect the communities they serve. That’s why I feel keeping the diversity issue at the forefront of discussions about our changing  media landscape is crucial.Aside from my work with SPJ, I also am involved with encouraging and training young journalist of color in the Chicago area.

I co-founded an organization at Columbia called Columbia Links. We reach out to students in the Chicago Public Schools and train them in the basics of journalism. That’s where it will have to begin if we’re going to continue to change the face of journalism.”

 

Justin Chenette is an assistant morning producer and weekend web producer at WPFO-Fox 23 in Portland, Maine. 

“It is important that stories are told about people from all walks of life, not just the ones that are the easiest to source or the ones most prominent in our society. This ideology is the basis for my continued interest and participation in the SPJ Diversity Committee.

Only through the incorporation of diversity training or diversifying newsrooms, with highly qualified individuals with a dynamic range of backgrounds, can news operations truly report a cross section of the entire community in which they serve.  

Justin Chenette

 Our country is facing some tough issues many of which are very controversial social dilemmas. We have the issue of illegal immigration, gay rights/marriage equality, equal pay amongst the sexes; the list goes on and on. With each issue comes their own set of unique challenges for the journalists that cover them.

 Do you use the phrase illegal immigrant or undocumented worker? Do you use the term gay or homosexual? Opening the dialogue about these topics can spur an awareness of how the media portrays, correctly or incorrectly, millions of people.”

MEET MORE COMMITTEE MEMBERS

We currently have 17 members on our committee.  Find out who they are in upcoming blogs.

Thanks for stopping by!

Rebecca Aguilar is an Emmy award winning reporter based in Dallas, TX.  She has 30 years of experience, with 28 in television news.  She’s also a board member with the SPJ-Fort Worth Chapter and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.