By Ayesha Munawar
Two UC Santa Barbara film instructors say they are starting to see results from a letter writing campaign to news media executives that they launched last summer in an effort to improve coverage of racism and the Black community.
Anna Everett, a faculty member in UCSB’s department of Film and Media Studies.
Anna Everett and Lisa Parks, who teach in UC Santa Barbara’s Film and Media Studies department, said in a recent webinar that they received few responses to their appeal for more Black employees in media and better coverage of racial issues.
But they said that Cesar Conde, chairman of the NBCUniversal News Group, informed them he is making plans to increase the number of employees of color in his division from 27% to 50% by the end of 2020.
The letter from the two UCSB film faculty members was sent out June 19, prompted by what they viewed as poor media coverage in the aftermath of the George Floyd and Breonna Taylor killings. Additionally, this letter was sent out to CEOs at NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, PBS, with a copy to Geoffrey Starks, commissioner of the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in Washington D.C.
Lisa Parks, a faculty member in UCSB’s department of Film and Media Studies.
“We wanted network CEOs to know that media scholars exist and that we are watching them with a critical eye,” Parks told participants in the webinar, which was part of the Carsey-Wolf Center’s Colloquium series.
“Given the limited responses to our letter and emails, it’s clear that we media scholars are not on the radar of most CEOs or FCC commissioners,” Parks added. “While this might not be surprising to some of us it is disappointing, and we want to ask what more can we do to publicly communicate about our field and its insights and facilitate broader influence and consequences.”
Images of from television news of the Breonna Taylor and George Floyd killings earlier this year, as presented by panelists at a recent UCSB Film and Media Studies webinar on Black representation in news coverage.
The letter called for an increase in hiring people of color at media outlets and for more sensitivity in covering racism in the community. The UCSB scholars also said news outlets should not wait until there is a crisis or public outcry before interviewing members of the Black community as part of their regular diet of news coverage.
“We call upon you to expand consultation and outreach efforts with members of African American communities, and ensure that the diversity of perspectives within Black communities is rigorously conveyed throughout your influential news reporting,” the two UCSB professors wrote in the letter last summer.
Everett and Parks discussed the letter with their UCSB audience and urged the film and media academic and research community to play a greater role in communicating with industry leaders. The professors were accompanied on the virtual panel by Brandy Monk-Payton, who teaches at Fordham University, and Jade Petermon of Georgia State University.
Media scholars and frustrated American citizens need to interrogate the decisions of network producers of who should and should not be given a platform to on the news, said Monk-Payton of Fordham University during the webinar.
“It would be useful to talk about the internet and social media flows information and the creation of spaces for legacy media to collaborate amongst different grasp roots multiplatform news outlets,” suggested Monk-Payton.
Both Everett and Parks said they believe that in order for this campaign to further gain coverage and recognition, the next step would be reaching out to younger audiences to aide in the fight to put an end to systemic racism in TV news and media.
Ayesha Munawar is a fourth year UCSB student majoring in Communication. She is a web and social media intern for the Division of Humanities and Fine Arts.