NBC and the cautionary tales of Megyn Kelly
In the weeks following two black people being shot in a supermarket and a synagogue being attacked in a mass shooting (never mind the pipe bombs sent to senior political leaders), the accountability of our institutions matters. Whether it be the Congress, SCOTUS or in this case NBC, they should be quizzed on a hiring policy that replaced a successful morning TV program including multiple black presenters and a shining example for diversity with a program that ended with an all-white panel discussing blackface with holiday costumes at Halloween! The two issues of violent political extremism and diversity in the media seem detached from one another on the face of it but there is a trail of links some of which we shall explore momentarily.
The all white panel that Megyn Kelly had for her fateful segment on blackface not being racist, actually speaks to the people who we do not see on television. These are the editors, producers, directors, writers, show runners and so on. The figures back this up with a reported 4.8% of black writers working in television and 80% of show runners being white males. The question to the institution of NBC would be perhaps that a black co-host or panelist might just have spoken up in a production meeting giving voice to concerns they might have. This leads us to what might be appropriate content on a network morning show which has a vastly different audience to that for an evening political slot on Fox News.
Will NBC (and all other networks) be influenced and work towards an improvement in representation and equity in the post Megyn Kelly era? One would hope that the hiring committee and the strategists at all major networks would pause and take a look at what is happening at Netflix and the recent hiring of Verna Myers as a head of diversity and inclusion. This was after the Netflix communications spokesperson Jonathan Friedland was fired for using the N-word with staff in that office. One can ponder whether Verna Myers is paid the same salary as a Jonathan Friedland was, or in the manner given to Megyn Kelly a much larger financial package. Too often in media organizations the focus can be purely on the individual concerned (in this case Megyn Kelly) and not about the environment, culture and policy practices that are developed by the leadership.
A discourse that is long overdue i.e. one that is truthful and honest about the real world pay gap (witness Megyn Kelly’s rumored $60+ million-dollar settlement figure against the much smaller combined salary given to the first black female anchor on Today Tamron Hall and others) struggles to develop in the media and across civil society. Just in case you didn’t know the real world pay gap from white men to white women is 73 cents on the dollar to a dreadful 55 cents on the dollar for Native American women with a Doctorate in comparison to similarly educated white men.
A good question for everyone to be asking in the aftermath of this debacle is who will hold these huge conglomerates accountable? Moreover, who will step up and seek to moderate the tone of the debate and the lack of interaction between different points of view? The FCC? Really? Whether they be social media, online streaming companies or regular broadcast television new ways of engagement on oversight are long overdue. There is a feeling amongst some people of color that the issues raised in the tale of Megyn Kelly will only be addressed consistently with a radically transformed oversight regime and enthusiastic leadership. It is without doubt now that social media networks are having an effect on the bellicosity of debate and what is without question is that checks and balances for the kinds of racist, misogynistic and anti-Semitic speech that is being posted, is going to come under serious question. In the days following Charlottesville, it emerged that social media sites response had been patchy at best with Facebook taking down the event page for Unite the Right and Twitter did not do so. Similarly this week it has emerged that the Florida pipe bomber could have had law enforcement informed beforehand if Twitter had taken action on messages from Rochelle Ritchie. There has never been a more important time for media and new media to up their games and provide transparency, clarity and balance in debate.
Cultural competency due to tick box hiring practices remains a huge challenge for the media and industry across the board. The fact that a forty something well educated white female lawyer knows more about who Diana Ross is than the history of blackface and its genesis in Jim Crow segregation is truly terrible and a failure of education at all levels from Kindergarten thru Postgraduate studies. It does not serve students of any background in the USA to become experts in whiteness where understanding a different language, working with people of different cultures and having a broader view is critical for success in the 21st century. Too little of education curricula addresses the realities of American history where the story of the confederacy and statues of General Lee have to be understood as well as the civil rights movement and the little-known leadership of Diane Nash and the freedom riders. Education remains crucial to the process of continuous improvement within organizations (e.g. hiring committees and holistic corporate review processes) and also throughout the lives of children’s and adults too.
These tales will remain cautionary as long as senior staff in media companies do not acknowledge the importance of diversity in the organization. It is not as if help is not available to media organizations that wish to change and address diversity issues. The advice and input of the likes of Black Public Media, Center for Asian American Media and Latino Public Broadcasting would address many of the issues of representation, paths to leadership and support for maintaining employee diversity. Integrating diversity into the strategy and tying it to the outcomes for a company such as NBC are crucial. This can’t simply be about a band aid when things go wrong or a line in a corporate social responsibility report. It must be written throughout the entity so that if a visitor should come across a member of the organization in passing there would be no doubt in anyone’s mind what the values of the organization are. It is possible to make this work in 2018 as corporations like State Farm have shown drawing praise for their leadership development and value of diversity in their teams. The question is do large media organizations want this legacy or more of the same so next year we write a new chapter to add to the tale of Megyn Kelly?
