Diversity: Policy

Evolving Definition

Diversity in the news media is usually presented as a value based on principles of ethics and social responsibility. It has been a long-standing value in American journalism, but it has developed a broader interpretation since it was articulated in the first professional codes of journalism ethics created in the early 1900s. The earliest written ethics codes recognized and heralded diversity as a fundamental component of good journalism to encourage and assure the presentation of a variety of viewpoints on important public issues.

Nelson Antrim Crawford and Leon Nelson Flint, two major American scholars of journalism ethics in the early decades of the twentieth century, for example, advocated a diversity that was defined in terms of economic, political, moral, class, and social perspective. This was distinct from the meaning the term acquired during the latter half of the century when it was rooted primarily in race, ethnicity, and gender. The only references to race, ethnicity, and gender in Crawford's 1924 book The Ethics of Journalism, and Flint's 1925 book, The Conscience of the Newspaper, indicated journalists should eschew the use of offensive racist terms that might offend nonwhites, such as the Chinese. Some of the newspaper codes cited in the books addressed gender issues only to direct reporters and editors to avoid using terms or invoking images a gentleman would know are not appropriate in the presence of a girl or lady. When the Hutchins Commission, a private group of scholars led by educator Robert M. Hutchins, issued its landmark report on the shortcomings of American journalism in 1947, it cited a dearth of diversity in ideas and opinions expressed in the mass media. Among the commission's major recommendations was that journalists and other media professionals provide their publics with “a representative picture of the constituent groups in the society.”

In each manifestation of the evolving meaning of diversity, it was seen as essential to providing a fuller, less biased, more accurate depiction of important truths. This basic orientation remains intact in the twenty-first century and is common among the professional associations of American journalists and the major news media companies. The Society of Professional Journalists, for example, has a policy that declares diversity is “essential to excellence and high standards in reporting. We incorporate diversity in our code of ethics because we believe journalists must make every effort to describe all aspects of the human experience, that we must avoid the stereotyping and limited vision that corrupt accuracy.”

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