Political Correctness In The Newsroom p. 9

By: Mark Fitzgerald

Louisville editor acknowledges its presence but disagrees with
people who say it has a negative effect on the work place
U.S. NEWSROOMS operate under the sway of a politically correct orthodoxy, said David Hawpe, editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal.
But legitimate attempts to correct that bias should not be used as excuses to dismantle diversity and multiculturalism efforts at newspapers, Hawpe added.
In a debate about political correctness at the recent Associated Press Managing Editors convention in Minneapolis, Hawpe strongly disagreed with the notion that affirmative action at newspapers reduces the quality of their journalism.
"We must recognize that the diversity people bring to their jobs is another qualification," he said.
Bringing minorities into the newsroom gives the newspaper greater credibility with readers, a wider range of news sources and types of stories, and a "different perspective on the institutions of our society," he added.
Opposing Hawpe at the APME forum was Leslie Spencer, an associate editor of Forbes magazine and co-writer of a recent article that argued that mandated federal quotas, or affirmative-action goals, were hurting business productivity.
Referring to voluntary newspaper industry diversity programs, Spencer said, "There's a kind of slavish idea that if you get the numbers up, you've somehow done a good thing."
As a newspaper reader, Spencer added, she has not noticed any remarkable benefits from a more diverse newsroom.
"I think you could argue that diversity doesn't bring diversity [in news coverage], it's just a kind of sex and race coding."
While the two journalists argued about Spencer's Forbes article ? showing the contrasting styles of her education at Princeton University and the London School of Economics and Hawpe's Kentucky roots ? they agreed on much.
"I think there has been a tendency in daily news coverage . . . to meld opinion and values [into] news stories," Spencer said.
"PC does influence our newsrooms," Hawpe said flatly.
"There is an orthodoxy for a whole range of issues," he continued. "There is an orthodoxy about gender, sexual orientation, abortion, religious fundamentalism" and other issues.
This mindset affects not only how these issues are covered but even how words are used in the most innocuous of contexts, Hawpe said.
"I have every reason to believe that copy editors ? especially women copy editors who have had their consciousness raised ? are editing out physical descriptions of women," he said.
Hawpe's solution: "It seems to me the best thing you can do is engage your readers ? and then make a pest of yourself as a leader."
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