“Too Little Ethnic Diversity In The Media”. Just a headline appearing in the screen of my news wire feed. During a normal working day at my newspaper Sp!ts, I would probably just regard such a story as ‘not newsy enough’, or maybe put it on the back up list in case there is a little gap on a page to fill in. But after almost a year of studies within the Erasmus Mundus Master in Journalism , I cant help but pay attention to the story.
I skip through the text as I read: “…. Monday published essay about media policy and diversity by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science… external research commission checked data gathered in the past ten years… they state that broadcasters have good intentions, but cope with a ‘lack of incentives’ to adopt cultural and ethnical diversity to their programmes in a structural way.”
When asked, a spokesperson of the Dutch public broadcaster states he agrees with the report’s conclusions: “Diversity is one of the public broadcaster’s main goals. We work very hard create improvement.”
Within my relatively new background in ‘journalism and cultural diversity’ all kinds of thoughts cross my mind. I find this interesting and I would like to read the report to be able to judge what to think of this little summary I got from the news wire. But is it to the interest of the readers of our paper? Sp!ts is a free national daily and is distributed mainly in public transport and other public places. The idea is that you spend no more than a few minutes on reading the paper to be informed about that day’s main news, gossip and ‘talks of the day’.
I check FOK, a Dutch news site who did post the story, and read some of the responses: “Already in my early days that political correctness of ‘Sesame Street’ drove me mad with that ‘multi-nonsense’, but now I guess ‘Islame Street’ will be next soon.” And someone else says: “Maybe this is something you can’t force.”
Two responses that trigger my thoughts on the role of media within multicultural societies, but as the deadline calls I have to decide I should leave it out. Although choosing is part of the job in any newsroom, I still doubt for a second. Judging from my Sp!ts ‘news criteria’ mind set, I know this story does not compete with the other articles we have to bring the next day. But although my daily practice has not yet changed, I do realise I am slowly but surely creating other ways to look at the news.
