Quotas get results

[redqueen]

...

But earlier this month, after MSNBC announced it was giving Chris Hayes his own daily primetime news show, Media Matters published a chart that showed how his weekend show, Up with Chris Hayes, differed from its cable-news competitors: It wasn’t all white dudes. Specifically, 57 percent of the show’s guests were not white men. (Full disclosure: I have, in the past, been one of the non-dudes featured on said program.) To hear lots of journalists tell it, this is an impossible feat. So I called up Hayes to ask how he and his team created a shining oasis of diversity in a cable-news desert of sameness.

“We just would look at the board and say, ‘We already have too many white men. We can’t have more.’ Really, that was it,” Hayes says. “Always, constantly just counting. Monitoring the diversity of the guests along gender lines, and along race and ethnicity lines.” Out of four panelists on every show, he and his booking producers ensured that at least two were women. “A general rule is if there are four people sitting at table, only two of them can be white men,” he says. “Often it would be less than that.”

...

But sometimes national politics is the hottest topic, and some argue that media can’t be held to a diversity standard when women and people of color are so drastically underrepresented in relevant spokesperson and leadership positions. Hayes acknowledges that, for shows like Meet the Press, there’s probably something to that excuse. But most news outlets aren’t only talking to senators and CEOs. There’s a wide range of perspectives that can be brought to bear on any number of political issues. And, without a quota, it’s easy to default to the same handful of big names.

“You have to say, ‘We give ourselves this rule,’ and that’s going to force us to just be more resourceful,” Hayes says. “Because I genuinely don’t think there’s another way to do it. If you don’t do that then the inertia and the tide are so strong, unless you are committed as a priority to actively fight against it, you’re going to end up reproducing what everyone else does.”

...

http://www.cjr.org/realtalk/chris_hayes.php

[el_bryanto]

1. But think about all those poor white men who had to stand on the sidelines.

If only there were another news show where they could go and express their view points.

Or five other shows. Or ten other shows. Or all the other shows.

Bryant

[The Straight Story]

2. I think they did the right thing -

"But sometimes national politics is the hottest topic, and some argue that media can’t be held to a diversity standard when women and people of color are so drastically underrepresented in relevant spokesperson and leadership positions. Hayes acknowledges that, for shows like Meet the Press, there’s probably something to that excuse. But most news outlets aren’t only talking to senators and CEOs. There’s a wide range of perspectives that can be brought to bear on any number of political issues. And, without a quota, it’s easy to default to the same handful of big names. "

I don't think avg Americans get their voices heard in the media enough. It all reminds me of the bubble the rw'ers lived in last election.

They have ceo's on - but the people most affected by them are not given any time.

From the poor, to the disabled, to pretty much everyone outside a small bubble. We keep telling them when they are about to do something totally stupid how dumb it is, but get ignored and no media --- from Iraq to financial reform, etc, it seemed like many saw the idiocy and called it out but no one wanted to talk to such people because - as they try to note above us folks aren't in congress/leadership positions and therefore thing we don't know jack.

[The Straight Story]

3. kick (nt)