The Unity 2004 Journalists of Color organizers screwed up big time last week: They managed to invite President George W. Bush, Democratic Presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. John Kerry, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons.
But they forgot black conservative pundit Armstrong Williams.
Compared to those other lightweights, how could the organizers overlook Williams?
“I was never invited to be a member or be part of the program,” Williams told me during a telephone chat Thursday. He said he did not know about the four-day summit of 8,000 black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists until a black reporter from The Washington Post called him a few days before the event and encouraged him to come.
Is Williams suggesting that we tried to lock him out because most members probably don’t agree with his Republican and right-wing views?
Williams said money was not an issue; he would have gladly paid the registration.
Well money is an issue for me. I paid my registration last spring so I could get a good seat. I’m a former board member, chapter founder and author of two books about NABJ, but none of that entitles me to any special treatment. It is curious that a well-informed pundit like Williams did not know about a major journalism convention in Washington that was in the making for years.
Williams, however, does have the connections to appear on pundit shows like “Reliable Sources” on CNN, and it was there on the last day on the convention that he rattled many of my colleagues. Williams told me that in response to the question why are few journalists of color on Sunday news shows like he was, the protege of Sen. Strom Thurmond said in jest, “they don’t work as hard.
“I was not serious,” Williams assured me.
Lordy, the National Association of Black Journalists listserv, the e-mail bulletin board, lit up with lengthy posts challenging Armstrong Williams’ dig. “Armstrong Williams’ strong comments” was the subject line of about two dozen postings.
The chatter made me recall the now classic Tavis Smiley line about “Weapons of mass distraction.” My colleagues wasted energy challenging a perceived insult from someone who was speaking from ignorance.
Let me explain: Williams did get to hang out with some Unity conventioneers at a reception at the National Geographic Society. He had this revelation: “What I found encouraging,” he told me, “was the great thing about this convention was that without prompting, many people said ‘we want to get out of this box people want to keep us in.’”
Williams’ assumption, which he uttered on the Sunday broadcast, was that so-called minority journalists are only interested in writing about black, Latino, or gay issues and that alleged narrow casting put these groups in boxes.
Actually, Williams took an oafish swing at us and missed.
Hundreds of colleagues I know personally consistently demonstrate that they are highly skilled in writing or broadcasting news about mainstream interests, but they make no apologies for being black or brown and are unflinching in their desire to tell these stories with rich perspective.
This ties in to what Jesse Jackson told 20 of us black columnists at an unscheduled Friday news briefing: There is no talent gap of journalists of color in 2004, said Jackson, there is an opportunity gap. Why is it, he asked, that fewer journalists of color are covering the political campaign this season compared to his historic presidential runs 20 and 16 years ago? And why on the pundit shows on CNN, FOX, MSNBC and the networks do the experts seem to be exclusively white and male?
Granted, Jackson, like Williams, is a pundit. Jesse works the left, Armstrong works the right.
Yet the answer is even with progress in 2004 that produced thousands of experienced journalists of color from what was only a few hundred a quarter century ago, many of us still have to agitate and speak up in order to get noticed for the top assignments and speaking roles. That’s why we strategize and show our numbers at a Unity convention.
If the well-read and well-connected Armstrong Williams was miffed not to be invited to our big show – because incredibly he did not know we were coming to town despite months of publicity – imagine how dense some of these news executives might be about the notion of diversifying their lineups with new talent?
