NABJ Founder John C. White was inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame at the 2016 NABJ Convention in Washington, D. C.
NABJ President Sarah Glover presents the organization’ s Educator of the Year Award to Gail Wiggins, interim chair of North Carolina A & T State University’ s Department of Journalism & Mass Communication, on August 3, 2016.
“ I don’ t call myself an affirmative action hire, or a DEI hire,” he said.“ I’ m a rebellion hire.”
Davidson said he can hardly wait to get to Cleveland for this year’ s NABJ convention. He gives the organization credit for helping extend his long journalism career.“ When I go to an NABJ convention, I see a whole lot of energized, smart young Black journalists and I am inspired,” said Davidson, who is a columnist for The Washington Post.
Both Weaver and Davidson acknowledge that the same problems that led them to help found NABJ- racial barriers to employment, unequal pay for the same work and lack of promotions- persist.
The 2022 Pew Research survey found that Black, Hispanic and Asian journalists were less likely than White journalists to say that employees are treated fairly. Although experts say a more diverse newsroom results in better news coverage, fewer than half of journalists say their organization makes issues of diversity and inclusion a major priority. Little wonder that 63 percent of Blacks said the news they see or hear about Black people is often more negative than about other racial and ethnic groups, according to the survey. And eight in 10 say they hear news coverage about Black people that is racist or racially insensitive.
Even more concerning, the survey found that only 14 percent of
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Photos courtesy of NABJ / Jason Miccolo Johnson
Black respondents believe that news coverage of Black people will improve within their lifetime.
Weaver said improvements are occurring even if they are not always readily apparent.“ Compared to how things where when I was starting out – with only one black here, another there in a newsroom – we are now everywhere,” she said.“ We are creating and running our own media organizations. As we become more proficient with the new media technology, our impact will be even greater.”
But there is another challenge that NABJ must overcome if its efforts to increase the number of Black newsroom employees and improve the media’ s coverage of Black issues and concerns can produce significant results.
In January, Davidson wrote a column in The Washington Post about President Donald Trump’ s attack on diversity, equity and inclusion( DEI). Trump demanded an end to all DEI“ mandates, policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.”
The president followed up with a threat: any company doing business with the federal government that engaged in DEI would be punished by his administration.
In advance of Trump’ s declaration, Amazon, one of NABJ’ s prized partners, quietly removed several DEI-related policies from its public websites, including a pledge of“ solidarity” with its Black employees. It was an ominous sign that Jeff Bezos, the company’ s billionaire owner – and owner of The Washington Post – was moonwalking away from his diversity commitments.