Minorities and the Media / Gerald Astor.

Partly in response to the findings of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, partly as an outgrowth of its earlier efforts to widen monority opportunities and improve race relations, the Ford Foundation in the late 1960s and early 1970s supported a series of activities designed to enhance the content and the sensitivity of the media in relation to minorities. The projects took three main directions: (1) training of minority journalists; (2) opening broadcasting to more and better coverage of minority affairs by means of advocacy in the administration and interpretation of broadcast law; and, (3) supporting organizations committed to produce material about minorities and matters that concern them. This report summarizes the experience. Since 1967 a far greater number of nonwhites have had bylines in the press (though the American Society of Newspaper Editors reported in 1974 that probably no more than one per cent of the professional newsroom staff come from minority groups) and there are more minority-group members on television working as both journalists and entertainers. The communications industry may not become substantially more sensitive to the minority experience until members of the minorities attain policy-making positions, and so far very few have made it to the executive suites of the mass media. (Author/JM)

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