Essay: Helping To Make Public Radio A More Inclusive Space

Today, November 10, is Public Media For All Day, a national day of media coverage and conversations that acknowledges the contributions of people of color working in public radio, and the historic lack of diversity in the industry. 

Organizers say it’s a response to recent high profile scandals about the treatment of employees of color at different public radio stations around the country, and the lack of diversity in top-level newsroom positions. 

It’s the inaugural run of the public media event. The movement was founded earlier this year by two radio industry professionals; Ernesto Aguilar, program director of the National Federation of Community Broadcasters and Sachi Kobayashi, director of member acquisition with Oregon Public Broadcasting.

“Racial equity has become a mainstream conversation that I don’t think public media was ready to contend with this year,” Aguilar said on CapRadio’s Insight, pointing out recent difficult conversations around race at WAMU, WBEZ, WNYC.

“Public media has been slow to respond to the issues that many workers at these organizations have raised,” he said.  

The organizers hope the day compels public radio stations to become more inclusive in a number of ways, such as measuring diversity over time, and fostering an industry that “equitably hires, compensates, promotes, mentors and sponsors people of color at all levels of the organization.” 

This movement resonates with me as an Asian-American journalist. I’ve always been a die-hard public radio fan. I grew up listening to it on long car rides with my parents as a kid, but I always sensed that it was a predominantly white space where few people looked like me. 

Today, I can say first-hand that the industry remains fairly white and still has work to do on the diversity front. Recent statistics released by NPR show about 71% of the network’s employees identify as white. Nationwide, 60% of Americans are white, according to the census. The 2019 NPR numbers show diversity is improving amidst its ranks - about 8% of employees identified as Hispanic or Latino, 9% as Asian and 10% as African American. But this still doesn’t reflect the overall diversity of the United States.

CapRadio’s demographics are even more out of sync with the communities it serves. As of August, only 19% of CapRadio’s employees were people of color, out of 72 full time employees, according to a survey released by CapRadio’s human resources department. By contrast, Sacramento County is an incredibly diverse county, where over half of the population identifies as Hispanic, Latino, Asian or African American. It makes me wonder: Can a station adequately cover its community if it doesn’t reflect its ethnic makeup?

I got my first job in public radio at an NPR station on the east coast, and I felt that lack of diversity personally. I worked at a small bureau station where I was the only person of color, and it felt very isolating. But what helped was when the parent station created an Affinity Group for its non-white employees. I’d make a point to attend this newly formed group, even though it was over an hour-long drive away from where I lived. It gave me a sense of community. 

Now at CapRadio, I once again felt this sense of isolation when many employees went remote due to COVID-19. When I covered the city’s George Floyd demonstrations I realized our station had to work on diversity on two fronts: It needed to hire more people of color, and it also needed to put more effort into keeping the employees of color it already had. That’s why I started CapRadio’s Affinity Group. 

Our group has talked about how we feel the station could be more welcoming to employees of color. It also seeks to offer CapRadio’s employees of color a space to feel supported. CapRadio’s employees of color are diverse in their backgrounds and lived experiences, but I wanted the Affinity Group to bring us together because I think we can all relate to the particular hurdles those of us who are non-white face in entering the public radio sphere. 

I hope CapRadio can fix the demographic mismatch between it’s employee makeup, and the community it serves. I also hope the Affinity Group can help to make people of color at the station feel less isolated in a predominantly white space.