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Episode #2324
Behind Talking Heads
Lewis: More and more African Americans and other minorities are being seen now delivering the news. But how many are making decisions on what is news and how it’s portrayed? That discussion is next on Black Issues Forum.
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Lewis: Welcome to Black Issues Forum, I am Mitchell Lewis. African Americans and other minorities have gained visibility in the media over the years. But are we in the positions that impact how the black experience is portrayed? Our guests today will address that issue in the second part of our discussion Behind Talking Heads. I would like to welcome to the program Katina Rankin, an award winning journalist with more than 16 years of broadcast and print experience. She is currently the CEO of Katina Rankin Enterprises, a public relations and consulting firm. Brett Chambers is also an award winning television producer, also in charge of the Chambers Group and he is also an executive producer. He is presently an instructor in the mass communications department at North Carolina Central University. And to the both of you, welcome to Black Issues Forum.
Both: Thank you.
Lewis: I have a question for both of you but I guess ladies first. Katina, I will start off with you. With all of the various mediums out there, you got satellite, you got cable, you even have news available on the internet. Do you really feel that there is a need to make sure that “black issues” are covered? Or that we should have black news?
Rankin: That is a no-brainer. Absolutely. As long as African Americans are in your community, then you need to cover black issues. And that goes for any minority group. So absolutely. And now more than ever that you have the first Democratic national nominee, Barack Obama, running for the white house. I think it is very important to cover African American issues and the black issue.
Lewis: Brett, as someone in the managerial position, how do you feel about the issue?
Chambers: Well, I think there are a number of different issues bundled up in that. But, yes, I think that not just black issues but any issue. And all the different delivery mechanisms that you talked about, allows it so that whatever your interests, you can deliver it now. So you don’t have to go through the same gatekeepers that have always been there to get your message out, whatever it is. Because not all black people think alike. Not all Eskimos think alike. Not all, you know, women or, you know, transgender people think alike. It’s a matter of, do you have the access to the distribution points and with all the new technologies now in any affinity group can put out whatever message they want and the way that they want. They don’t have to come to the big four anymore to depend on them to give out their message.
Lewis: Katina, of course, we are talking about if there are enough African American and minority faces in management. Now as a reporter you have worked at several news shops. What was the managerial makeup, say, at the majority of the news shops that you worked?
Rankin: Um, at the majority of newsrooms that I was in, there would be one black manager in the newsroom. Uh, that manager normally was on the assignment desk.
Lewis: How do you go about with the decision process. How were the decisions made at that time?
Rankin: Well, up until two years ago, because I actually left the business two years ago, what would happen is that you would have these editorial meetings where we would gather at 9:00 in the morning or either at 2:00 in the afternoon. And we would all sit around a round table. It would be your news director, your assistant news director, your assignment editor, as well as your executive producers and producers and all of your reporters. And we would all have to come to the table with two or three lead stories, what we were going to lead the newscast with on that day. And so we would sort of have a newsroom discussion about what should be covered and why it should be the lead story.
Lewis: And, Brett, as someone in management, was there a situation that perhaps there was a discussion about a story and you felt that there should be more emphasis on that, that because it may have had some impact on the African American community, was there any type of story that you really had to, say, push for or convince someone to do?
Chambers: You know, I think you have to convince people to do any story. [LAUGHS] I mean, in the newsroom people are fighting for whatever story, whether it is the assignment manager saying we should have this in the block or whether it is the news director or whether it is a producer. So you have a lot of different interests being served in the newsroom. With that said, yeah, there were times when I thought there was a certain story that needed to be covered, it could have something to do with housing, it could have something to do with certain aspect of education. Uh, when we did, back when Hillside was a brand new model school, just the whole coverage of the development of the school and the opening of the school, that was an issue. And we covered it at—when I was at, at that time I worked for WTVD, and we covered that. But we had to have a certain level of commitment. Somebody has to bring it to the table. You know, somebody has to be responsible for bringing it to the table. So that was one of the roles I did. Miriam Thomas was there at that time. She did it. Jon Miller was a great advocate for the African American issues and he was our program director at the time. And I had a chance to work with an, I call him an icon of the business, Ervin Hester, because Ervin Hester was a very big advocate of being rep—the African American community being represented on television. He was the first African American anchor in the southeast. So he took it upon himself to have this responsibility and he passed it on to the, you know, younger guys. And now, you know, I still, you know, if I think of an idea or a subject matter I’ll call somebody at any of the stations, WRAL, WTVD, even 17. And 17 actually has a black female news director. And, you know, she’s a dynamic individual who is over there doing a great job.
Rankin: So I do have a question and I am going to cut in here just for a moment.
Lewis: There’s the reporter in her.
Rankin: It’s just in me. But you say even now you will pick up the telephone and you will call someone at the different stations. How likely is your story affecting the African American community likely to end up on their 5:00, 6:00 or 11:00 newscast?
Chambers: It depends on the story. I mean, it really depends on the story. It depends on how important they deem the story. If I call Steve Varga over at TVD or if I call one of the producers because they have—and it doesn’t have to be always a black person talking to a black person. Because sometimes the gatekeeper is not a black person. You talked about the managerial side. Upper management is responsible for setting policy. The line [ph] producers have more responsibility for what goes into a show than, you know, it also depends on the station and how their structure is. But most of the line producers have more say-so in what goes into a show than, say, you know, the general manager. You know, so the producers put the stories together. So it is understanding the process and understanding the process of that specific shop. Because WRAL functions differently than WTVD which functions differently than NCN or any other, you know, you go to different stations—and in different markets.
Rankin: You know what, but I really do think that, you know, it is very different in every newsroom. The one thing that comes to my mind, and this has nothing to do with issues, uh, with race as an issue. But I remember one time pitching a story about the homeless shelter across from a television station where I worked. And they were charging them $5 to sleep there, a homeless shelter. And so we were bombarded. The reporters or their anchors, by people across the street needing $5 so they could spend the night. And I pitched that story because as a homeless shelter I thought, well, they shouldn’t be charging. You know, they are getting state funds for that. But it came from the top, from a general manager who says, “Well, homeless people don’t watch television so there is no need to do that story.” So sometimes upper management does have the say on what goes into a newscast.
Chambers: But everybody has to—they have a say. But they don’t govern. I mean, like when I was there, Tim [ph] Bennett and Emily Barr [ph], they were the general managers back then. And they didn’t dictate the news to the news directors.
Rankin: Yeah, I heard they were wonderful management team, too.
Chambers: Well, I mean, and that—
Rankin: That makes a difference.
Chambers: Yeah, it’s a management team that does it and each shop is different. So a lot of times it just depends on who is in charge and how open are they to it? Now the best management teams are the ones who look at the market. Because sometimes, like this market is an incredible market, incredible market. You have not just an African American presence, you have a Hispanic presence. You have Asian, you have Southeast Asian, you have Indian. You have the Native American population. So you have all these different ethnic groups and affinity groups. And this market is represented. You have, you know, Hispanic and Latina reporters in this market. You have Asian reporters in this market, black, you have female, you have a good, you have an interesting balance and mix. And when people come to this market, this market is represented well.
Rankin: You know, I just have to interrupt and I am sorry. We do have a great mixture of different ethnic groups in this market. But when I’m watching local news I don’t see a lot of Asian American stories on the air. I don’t see a lot of, you know, Native American stories on the air. And so even though you may have these faces representing the station, where are the stories in these communities? That’s the question that I have.
Chambers: That goes out to management, producers and the behind the scenes and people fighting for stories.
Rankin: Well, if we have to go to a break, we are going to have to discuss that further because—
Lewis: Oh, no. No, no breaks here. Not on Black Issues Forum.
Rankin: Well, we’re going to have to discuss that further because, uh, you know, I think that the makeup finally boils down to I don’t care how many of us are sitting around that table. The final say-so and, again, this is just up to two years ago because that’s how long it’s been since I been in a newsroom actually on the other side covering these stories and anchoring the news, the final decision came down to the news director and the assistant news director accepting which stories were going to be on the air.
Lewis: Katina, let me ask you. Now, what challenges perhaps you faced as someone trying to present a story and it seemed like you had obstacles in your way. Give me an example.
Rankin: Well, you know, as you can tell, I am very vocal. [LAUGHS] And so I didn’t mind, you know, putting it out there exactly what I want covered and why I thought it should be covered. Uh, one story that does come to my mind, though, was when I was in Mississippi and covering the murder trial of Medgar Evers and Byron de la Beckwith, uh, being on trial. Um, I remember that in the courthouse when I got ready to go to the restroom and when other journalists outside of, uh, the state went to the restroom, you could still see the words colored on the door. And I went back and I pitched that story because, you know, why in the 1990s in your main courthouse in Mississippi can you still see the words colored on a bathroom door? That story was actually shot down by the management team until John Grisham had a movie, A Time to Kill, to be shot in Mississippi and he refused to shoot in that courthouse until they came and sanded those words off, or either the producer or the director of the show, refused to film anything until they got rid of that, then it became a story. And, to add to that, back in 1996 I was the first African American female to ever anchor a main newscast on that show. And so until then African American issues or stories in the community were not being told because they didn’t have anyone in the newsroom to pitch those stories.
Lewis: Brett, I will ask you this, as someone in the managerial position, has there been any preconceived notions that say that perhaps the reason why there is a shortage of minorities in management is because perhaps they can’t handle the stress?
Chambers: No, I never had anybody ask me about stress in handling anything. I mean, I earn my stripes the same way other people did. I worked hard. And I had—but let me tell the reason why I got to become management and it is very simple. I had mentors. I had people who looked out for me and said, “No, you are not going to do that.” People who had expectations and said, “Oh, no, you will not settle for that. And you have to be prepared. And, no, you cannot come in here and do this this way.” So I had mentors. I had __ Miller who was a program director. I had Paul Pope who was at WRAL who was a mentor, a senior manager who said, “No, this is the way that you have to approach this. This is the mindset you have to have.” Clarence Williams who, when I was on the production staff at WRAL, he rode me like so hard, but he wanted me to understand in order to be in this thing we call media and to be in the game and in order to rise up you have to be prepared. You have to work hard, you have to work smart. And those are the lessons that got me to management. And other people just recognized the work. And I had advocates that said, “Hey, this guy is not only working hard, he is working smart.”
Rankin: Define work smart for me.
Chambers: Work smart is understanding the rules of the game first and foremost. And using those rules to work for you as opposed to being played by those rules.
Rankin: And then what is the rules of the game then?
Chambers: Well, the rules of the game, there is a lot of different rules. You have to understand the economics of the game. You have to understand the business side. Because you have to understand that you are not operating in a vacuum, that you have an audience out there. That you have, you have to have, understand the makeup of that audience. I will never forget, and I hope I am not speaking out of turn, Jon, Jon Miller wanted to put on a Hispanic awards program that, he wanted to buy one as a program director. He wanted to put one on the air. And people were like there are no Hispanics. And at that time there was maybe 1-2%. But they were growing. And he wanted to get it early so that we would have it. And some people were kind of, “Well, not feeling it.” Well, he got it and now that is a huge awards program. But it takes some vision and back then I worked with some people that had incredible vision. I went through two different big mergers with Cap Cities buying ABC, ABC getting bought by Disney. Those were major watersheds because the merger between Cap Cities and ABC, that created two black owned television stations or one black and one minority owned. Buffalo was bought by J. Bruce Llewellyn and the Queen City Broadcasting. And then Cook Inlet Communications was an Alaskan Native American group of, I think Aleut Indians or something. And they bought a station in Connecticut. Now when the, when the Eskimos bought the station they didn’t switch it all over to Eskimo programming. They looked at the business model. What did that market mean? You know, when J Bruce Llewellyn bought the station in Buffalo, he didn’t say, “Uh, let me just see what the black people in Buffalo need.” They bought it as a—
Lewis: Let me ask you this, do you think that—I know you were saying that it wasn’t specifically for African Americans but do you think that in some cases that African Americans may be part of the problem? We just did a show about ownership, black ownership.
Rankin: [LAUGHS]
Chambers: Yes.
Lewis: And it is dwindling. Three percent in television, television ownership, 8% in radio. Where does the, I would say, the federal accountability fall with this?
Chambers: Federal account—you know, the white guys are losing their stations, okay? Because running a station is an expensive proposition. Television stations are in an increasingly hostile market because they are competing with internet and media itself is changing. The business model for that has not been established. So the feds don’t even have, they don’t have a clue which way to go with this. From a business model, forget about how do we hold onto the minority ownership. Because the whole industry has become so concentrated. And just a side note, because when we talk about influence and having influence over this, that and the other, do you know the most powerful man in media was a black man for the last few years? It’s Dick Parsons. He was a brother that was in charge of Time-Warner. Not Time-Warner Cable. Time-Warner. The big media behemoth that is a global empire called Time-Warner was run by a black lawyer. Dick Parson, Richard D Parsons. Okay? So he did not see his responsibility necessarily, his first and foremost responsibility to make it a black channel or a black company. He saw it to make money for his stockholders. But in the meantime there are some black managers in that company that probably would not have become managers and gatekeepers along the way who were mentored by other black managers had it not been for a Dick Parsons. So it goes beyond just what we see. It goes to the process of getting what we see.
Lewis: And speaking of seeing, Katina, it is sort of a two-fold question here. Because especially being a woman, now 40% of the broadcasting industry is made up of women. But it seems like women also have to deal with more so than the men, especially when it comes to, say, appearances. What types of situations have you encountered in dealing with having a certain look or a style on the air?
Rankin: Mitch, let me say very clearly that if you do not have a healthy self-esteem that being a woman in television may not be the place for you. Okay? Let’s just be real and let’s just be honest. When I began it was let me decide what colors look best on you on television. You can’t wear the blacks, the browns and the blues. You need color. They brought in a consultant one time from Texas, at one particular station. She gave me 12 different suit colors that I needed to go buy that I could not find in the particular market that I was in. So I would spend my weekends in New York and L.A. and Atlanta trying to find these 12 different colors for me to look right on the air. Then it went to hair. And my hair was supposed to look the same every day. Now, for me, as an African American woman it is very hard for me to have my hair to look the same every day. So that meant I was going to the beauty shop, the beauty salon five days a week. In addition, I was told what type of earrings I could wear. I couldn’t wear the long earrings or dangling. They had to be the small ones and the studs or perhaps a little bit larger than that. I remember once during a commercial break, we had just started the first block of the newscast, right before we went to the first commercial break, and then there is this intern and she is running out with my makeup bag and she says, “Here, here, the news director told me to bring you this. He doesn’t like your lipstick. You have to change your lipstick color during the commercial break.”
So I mean, you know, there are certain differences, certain challenges and it even goes outside of the newsroom. I remember once that I went to the mall on a weekend, I was off, I was anchoring Monday through Friday. Saturday I decided, you know, I just want to go to the mall. I put on a jogging suit, didn’t put on any makeup, put on my baseball cap, and, you know, some people recognized me, others didn’t, you know? And I was nice and cordial. I was just Katina. I get to the newsroom on Monday and I get called into the news director’s office and the GM is sitting there. And I am told, “Well, you know, we keep this log of what everyone calls in and says about the anchors and the reporters and we got a call from a lady who said that she saw you out in the mall and you didn’t have on any makeup and you were in a baseball cap and a jogging suit. And from now on, you know, we need you to represent the station and so every time that you go out, we need you to put your makeup on and we need you to have your appearance together because you represent the station.” So, I mean, you know, there are those challenges that come along with being a woman and appearance does matter.
Lewis: We are running very close out of time. I have a question for both of you. What type of advice would you have for people who would aspire to get into broadcasting, especially minorities? Brett?
Chambers: The first thing I would tell them, I teach now, and I tell my students all the time, take a class in business or economics. This is about a marketplace and you have to understand the business environment in order for you to really understand the product that you are putting out there. And learn how to write. Don’t be afraid to read and write. Not just the stuff on the internet but get a real newspaper, read and then go write something. Because it is all about content. Content is still king. That mantra that Jon told me hasn’t changed since he told me.
Rankin: I have a couple of journalist clients and the first thing I tell them is, is that it has to be your passion. And if journalism is your passion then, A, you will excel. To break it down and be true to my core, I once heard a sermon that Jesus’ passion drove him to the cross and we know what happened when he got there. So you have to have the passion for television to do it.
Chambers: That’s true.
Rankin: And you have to have that passion. Other than that you have to be true to yourself and you have to not only give that 110%, you have to give 150% and then you will truly excel.
Lewis: Now you were talking about the idea of journalism. Now we have people coming in these days who are concerned more or less about looks and it is not about content, it is more or less some type of movie star status. What are your thought on that?
Rankin: Well, I think that most women who are on television, and this is not to slight them in any way, is that, you know, and it happened to me even before I left. I became this glammed up Barbie doll. And that is one of the reasons why I was a bit turned off. Because when I first started in the business it was all about the content. It was about how I delivered the news. It was how I connected with my viewer. And with a target audience. The last five years of my career in television it became about my appearance first. And I get that from a business sense and from a managerial position that time you turn on the newscast that the average person at home is going to give you the one-two look over because it is natural and it is human. And then they are going to tune into what we are saying. But when you spend 90% of your time concentrating on how your anchors and reporters should look instead of the content of what they are putting out there then I have a problem with that.
Lewis: I have about 30 seconds left. Brett, you had talked about mentors. With minority broadcasters dwindling at this point, where do we find the mentors these days?
Chambers: Well, we find them where we—you find them where you can. Because not all my mentors were black either. Because Paul Burris [ph] and Tim Bennett were great mentors even, uh, she’s in Chicago now, uh—
Rankin: Emily Barr?
Chambers: Emily Barr. Emily Barr, thank you. Emily Barr, she just celebrated her 10th year at WLS, congratulations. Uh, she was a mentor. You have to find people who are good at what it is you want to do. And ask them, “How do you do it?” And that, usually that’s how they become your mentor.
Lewis: I am sorry. I am out of time. I have to stop it here. I thank you all for being here.
Chambers: Where’s part two.
Lewis: But we will continue this after we close this out. But thank you for being here. If you would like to get in touch with our guests or obtain a copy or transcript of this show, visit us online at unctv.org/bif. When you visit be sure to give us your comments and program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIFline at 919-549-7167. For Black Issues Forum, I am Mitchell Lewis. Thanks for watching.
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