Newswatch Journal Summer 2000

Campaign

by Richard Prince

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The Boys On The Bus

Who is covering the national election? Who's Not?

When Edwin Chen of the Los Angeles Times was told that this was to be an article about diversity among the presidential campaign press corps, he joked, "it's going to be a short article."

Terry M. Neal of the Washington Post says he is the only African American regularly covering Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the Republican, and knows of none following the Democrat, Vice President Al Gore. Chen and Ellen Uchimiya, a Washington-based Fox television producer, are Asian Americans who regularly cover Gore.

From time to time other people of color will join the press corps, such as The Washington Post's Kevin Merida, an African American Style section writer; James Dao, an Asian American with the New York Times; or Ann Scales, an African American based in Washington for the Boston Globe. Chris Bull, Washington correspondent for The Advocate gay and lesbian newsmagazine, might be there, too. And during the primary season, Tamela Edwards of Time, an African American, followed former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley of New Jersey, while Miguel Bustillo of the L.A.Times filed from the Iowa caucus campaign. But by and large, the core of each candidate's press contingent -- about 10 people from the national media -- is white, though increasingly female.

"Clearly, there are lots more women in the pool than in 1992 and 1996," says Chen. "Ethnic minority representation is better but not great."

Some consolation can be found in the fact that the editors back home include some people of color: At the Los Angeles Times, the national political editor is Millie Quan, an Asian American, and Steve Padilla, a Latino, is one of her two assistants.

During the primaries, two debates were designed to address the issues of people of color. In January, Gore and Bradley spoke to Iowa's Brown-Black Presidential Forum, organized by leaders of the state's Black and Latino communities. Questioners included Tavis Smiley of Black Entertainment Television and Soledad O'Brien, a Latina anchor at NBC and MSNBC. In February, the two Democrats took the stage at New York's Apollo Theater for a debate moderated by CNN's Bernard Shaw, an African American.

Vieques ... the U.S. border with Mexico, the economic embargo against Cuba, the alliance between the drug lords and leftist guerrillas in Colombia."

Ben Winton, a board member of the Native American Journalists Association, says he expects that the native press, which includes such publications as the Rapid City, S.D.-based weekly Indian Country Today, will discuss the candidates' positions on the sovereignty of Indian lands, displacement of Native people, gaming, broken treaties and reparations, which together could involve "billions and billions" in taxpayer dollars.

Bull, of the Advocate, said gay publications such as his own, the Washington Blade and the online Gay.com and PlanetOut.com have reported on such potential campaign issues as same-sex marriages, hate-crime legislation and the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would forbid employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

"There's a sea of change" in the Republicans' attitude toward gays this year, Bull said. "You can't win California without some semblance of the gay vote. It's at least 5 percent. If 90 percent of that 5 percent votes for the other side, you're in trouble," he said.

Asian Americans might be watching to see how much their numbers participate in the campaign, said Chen. Many felt their entire community smeared after the 1996 Democratic fund-raising scandals, in which some Asian Americans figured prominently.

Still, Chen says it's still early in the campaign to draw conclusions about coverage.

"Race just hasn't been very much of an issue. The gender issues are more interesting, given that the gender gap that the Democrats had has pretty much disappeared. will surface again before this is all over. There's lots of time for these issues to be explored."

Yet the evidence is that journalists of color already have shaped how the candidates have handled racial issues. In July 1999, Sam Fulwood III of the Los Angeles Times, an African American, wrote a front-page story pointing out that Bush had declined an invitation to address Unity '99, the largest meeting of journalists in history. The next day, Bush and then-rival Sen. John McCain of Arizona altered their schedules to appear before the 6,000 journalists of color.

And the Washington Post's Neal says that during the campaign for the Feb. 19 South Carolina Republican primary, he continued to raise the issue of the Confederate battle flag flying over the state Capitol.

"I was the one pushing the whole flag issue with Bush and McCain," he said. "Eventually people came around in making it an issue." Same with Bush's visit to Bob Jones University, which did not allow interracial dating, "I kept raising it. Putting it in stories, and asking a lot of questions about it."

Yet Neal gives a troubling answer when asked why there aren't more people of color on the press bus.

"I don't think the industry is totally to blame," he said. "I almost never meet a Black person who says they have an interest in doing this." At the Post, he said, "I don't know of a person who has applied to cover national politics."

Richard Prince, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist, is editor of The Public i, an online news report of the Center for Public Integrity.