Racial Profiling in the Newsroom

Abstract

This article examines patterns of story assignments at a metropolitan daily newspaper. The study's content analysis documents a form of racial profiling in which African American reporters write stories mostly about minority issues, while white reporters write stories mostly about government and business. Interviews with journalists documented the widespread belief that experience as a member of a racial minority helps the newspaper provide better coverage of minority issues. However, journalists of all races spoke of racial diversity only when they were talking about minority reporters and minority-oriented topics. The hegemony of whiteness was such that none of the journalists appeared to have thought about the role of whiteness in the coverage of the largely white realms of politics and business.