The Washington Post called out The New York Times and other outlets for a lack of racial diversity in their White House reporting teams, in an article Sunday.
WaPo media reporter Paul Farhi touts his outlet’s racially diverse White House correspondents compared to reporters for The NYT, Politico and others in a story titled “The White House press room is overwhelmingly white. Does that matter?”
WaPo has six White House reporters, two of whom are “nonwhite,” Farhi wrote.
Meanwhile, The NYT hired a seventh white person to its all-white White House team in August, according to WaPo.
“As the Times’s hiring showed, the White House beat — arguably the beat with the highest profile — may be among the most resistant to change,” Farhi wrote.
The NYT spokeswoman Eileen Murphy told WaPo that 60 percent of the outlet’s “new newsroom hires” were women or minorities in 2017.
“At the White House currently, our lineup includes gender but not racial diversity, and that is something we’re aware of and focused on getting right,” Murphy told WaPo.
The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, USA Today and Politico “also have no minority reporters on their teams” in the White House, pointed out WaPo. (RELATED: Trump Moves On From CNN Reporter Who Refused To Ask Question On Trade)
Minority journalists increased from 11.3 percent of journalists in 1997 to 16.6 percent in 2017. However, the percentage of minority White House correspondents is unknown because the White House Correspondents’ Association “doesn’t take a census of its 600 regular and associate members,” according to WaPo.
“By contrast, the U.S. population as a whole is 39 percent minority, including white Hispanics and Latinos, according to the Census Bureau,” Farhi wrote.
WaPo’s staff is 14 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic, 12 percent Asian and 50 percent female, according to a 2017 survey by the American Society of News Editors.
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