Within the Veil: Black Journalists, White Media

During her days as a newspaper journalist, New York University journalism professor Newkirk recalls, her editors ""resisted perspectives that were foreign to the white cultural mainstream."" This episodic book ventilates such concerns. Newkirk has some strong evidence: a Time correspondent couldn't convince his editors that Louis Farrakhan had a complex appeal in 1994, and Bryant Gumbel's attempt to cover Africa in 1992 had to include enough wildlife to satisfy white viewers. She steps back to trace ""the uphill battle to diversify the mainstream media"" following the 1968 Kerner report, which revealed damningly biased coverage of blacks. One chapter concerns a landmark lawsuit in which the New York Daily News was found in 1987 to have discriminated against four black journalists. She acknowledges the dilemmas black journalists face in reporting on problems in their communities, while noting that ""reporting that too often freeze-frames pathology"" gets praise (such as Janet Cooke's story of an eight-year-old heroin addict, which won a Pulitzer and was later proved to be fabricated). In a chapter on double standards, she suggests that Boston Globe columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith, both of whom invented characters, were treated differently because of race. Her book could go deeper, though; she cites a 1997 survey on the difficulty minorities encountered in finding newspaper jobs, but doesn't delve into the effectiveness (and vigor) of prominent minority recruiting programs. She cites coverage of the Reginald Denny beating as an example of the media ""harp[ing] on black crime""; but what does she make of the Rodney King footage? Still, Newkirk's general perspective on race is worth heeding: that while blacks shouldn't view themselves as victims, whites shouldn't deny that racial barriers remain. Photos. (Aug.)