Sitting in a hotel lobby in Washington, D.C., in October 2010, Dori Maynard patiently waited for her friend to join her for breakfast. There, Maynard noticed a passerby’s shirt that said “eracism” on it. As she went to compliment the person, a hotel security guard stopped her and told her to leave the hotel. She refused, saying she was a registered guest with the hotel. He again told her to leave, and she did.
Maynard described that experience as humiliating and felt the man made false assumptions about her because she is a middle-aged black woman.
“He either thought I was a prostitute, homeless or potentially a homeless prostitute,” Maynard said. “What he didn’t see was a writer or a journalist.”
Maynard, president of the Oakland-based Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, spoke about the limitations of media stereotypes inside the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Nebraska Union Auditorium Friday. There were 20 students and community members in attendance for the event hosted by Multicultural Students in Media, a UNL student organization. Maynard said good journalism means challenging these stereotypes and getting uncomfortable.
Journalism today, she said, falls victim to the principle that reporters write what they see. Without the exposure to different perspectives as well as multi-cultural newsroom, diversity in the media suffers, Maynard said.
The way diversity is sometimes covered, Maynard said, people of color are over-reported in crime, sports and entertainment stories while underreported in political stories. That, she said, can have drastic impacts on readers.
“If you only give people one image, they don’t know there is another image to live up to,” Maynard said.
Challenging stereotypes in reporting is one way of changing how people see themselves in the news, she said. That means including sources of different genders, ages, races, religions and sexual orientations in a story and avoiding journalism that confirms stereotypes.
Another way to break media stereotypes is through discomfort, she said. Journalists need to break their habits and surround themselves with people who are different from them.
To do that, Maynard suggested taking a different route home, going to a different grocery store or joining a group with a shared purpose.
Likewise, she said there needs to be a fearless mentality when reporting. Journalists need to set aside the fear of offending or being offended and recognize that they may do both, she said.
Maynard said the best solution is not to make an excuse but apologize. Everyone needs to give each other a pass because at some point each will offend the other.
Readers are dually responsible for helping improve the diversity of the media, she said. They should notify their local media when they do a poor job and when they get it right.
Communication, she said, can also help reporters find sources and story ideas.
TeyAnjulee Leon, a freshman mathematics education major, said reader responsibility struck a note with her.
“We’re as responsible as consumers as those who put the news out there,” Leon said, adding that diversity is an ongoing issue for papers because of its broad reach.
Andrea Vasquez, a co-founder of Multicultural Students in Media and a senior news-editorial, broadcast and Spanish major, said diversity in the media is an issue for everyone.
She said she hoped Maynard’s speech helped journalists see the importance of changing the media’s diversity status quo.
Vasquez said the media needs to toe the line on issues of diversity and not be color-blind. To her, that means not casting stereotypes while recognizing everyone’s uniqueness.
“We still want to be able to appreciate the differences we each bring to the table,” Vasquez said.