Diversity in Commentators

For this year’s Presidential Election, diversity has been an upfront importance to the race like never before in election history. With Obama and Clinton, both challenging either the race or gender cards, this country is changing to a new era of diversity. According to an article in the NY Times, MSNBC and CNN have diversified their commentators for the big election season.

With the majority of commentators being white and male, this new era of various background and cultural commentators has set a new progress to American journalism. “ ‘We’re tying to attract a new audience drawn to the broad interest in this campaign,’ said Phil Griffin, senior vice resident of NBC News and the executive in charge of MSNBC.” And the new audience? “ It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand that a large number of the audience is black, Hispanic and women. It you’re a Hispanic- American or an African-American, you don’t want to get a sense that they don’t understand your perspective,” remarked Al Primo, founder of “Eyewitness News”. With the big news stations competing for ratings during this highly publicized election, they are relating to the minority audiences.

During the week of February 5th, CNN’s ratings of the 18-34 group went up 232 percent from the same week during the 2004 elections, and CNN officials declared that their audience was 36 percent Hispanic and Black. This election is highly publicized and watched, and the news media is changing its look to fit the audience. Diversity is business, and good business. Stations like CNN will turn a focus to incorporating more of the population, which will incorporate into more viewers. And with new diverse commentators, they will be able to voice new interpretations of the news. The television news media is now competing with the Internet. “With the advent of the Internet, consumers realized that there are a lot of other voices,” said Joe Klein, president of CNN’s domestic networks. It’s a raging competition to integrate more diversity. Through these new visible changes in commentators, the news media will now give new perspectives to their audience, but most importantly, they will gain more viewers.