Niggas and News casters

(Is "Newscaster" one word or two?)

Where are all of the young black people on the news?  I know you comedians out there will point out all of the crime reports and sports coverage but I’m not talking about that.  I’m talking about the anchors.  I’m talking about the reporters and the faces that we start to identify with information.

Here, in Kansas City, we have a few black people under 40 that hold it down.  They are led by Jonathan Carter of NBC, Mary Pulley of Fox and Kelly Jones on Channel 5.  They all do an exceptional job and I can’t knock any of them but in a city that is over 40% black, why are we only 10% of the faces on the news?

There are as many Asian women on the local news as there are black people.  I’m not going to knock the Asian ladies because they do a great job (Shout out to Xiao Xiao and Bonyen).  Everyone knows about white men and their Asian women fetish but since when is it okay to play into these crazy urges instead of reflecting the consumer base?

Some of you are going to say “But Cogito, Niggas don’t watch the news.”  But that isn’t even true.  Why?  Because niggas are more likely to not have cable and as many of us have shitty jobs outside in the elements, we tend to worry more about the weather. 

The situation gets even worse for Latin Americans.  The only young Hispanic on the air on a regular basis is the lovely Iris Hermosillo who doubles as an anchor and the weather reporter.  Ain't that a b****, she's made it and still has to do two jobs!  And, don’t even think about catching a broadcast in Spanish.  You may catch one with SAP available but most likely you are going to have to listen to AM radio to get any sort of Spanish language programming.  I assume that advertisers are going to realize, at some point, that Hispanics are America’s largest minority and the fastest growing segment of the population and replace those offensive black commercials with offensive commercials aimed at Mexicans.  That should be hilarious.

The issue here is that the news is major factor in the pedagogy (look it up!) of the citizenry.  If the only black people the suburbanites see are in mug shot photos, what the hell are they supposed to think?  The same goes for black children that only see criminals and athletes as representations of the race.  If you find out that you don’t have the skills to pay the bills, guess that makes you a bad guy.  As far as women in the hood go, they only get to see themselves as eye witnesses and hookers.  It is like all they are good for is screwing and tattling.  That is a one hell of a self image to overcome.

Some might say there aren’t any young brothers that go into the news business.  That is both true and false.  A lot of brothers don’t go in to the news business because they don’t realize that as an option when they are growing up.  Nobody on the news talks like an actual black person.  There are no “hood accents”.  There are black people that are imitating how white people talk and it all feeds into the idea of white supremacy.  White people don’t speak any more effectively than anyone else, they just sound like white people.  If we clear out the “White is right” mentality, we will see that they are just regular people communicating an idea, just like everyone else.  And just like most people, they aren't even telling the truth half of the time.

Second of all, every black person that has been to college knows a brother on the football team that majored in communications.  Not journalism, the J school is tough but coms is one of those notorious majors for athletes. 

But, I digress.  As long as young black people only see themselves on the news as either scoring points or committing crime, the news will perpetuate the myth of black and Hispanic inferiority and misleading the public is the exact opposite of what the news should stand for.  They are there to educate the public and inform the democracy.  If our democracy is going to be fully inclusive, so should our news.