African American Women in the Newsroom: Encoding Resistance

Abstract

Previous studies have examined the experiences of either women or minority journalists to determine whether newsroom diversity makes a difference in news content, concluding that the gender and race of newsworkers does not substantially alter the news. However, they have not looked at the work practices and experiences of African American women journalists to determine whether their newswork challenges or reinforces dominant journalistic constructions concerning race and gender. Drawing on the cultural studies model of encoding/decoding, as well as the concept of intersectionality and standpoint theory, this study asks whether the social location of journalists as African Americans and women affects their work practices in ways that increase racial and gender diversity in the news, challenge stereotypes, and otherwise resist normative news constructions of race and gender. Interviews were conducted with 10 African American female TV and newspaper journalists in a major metropolitan area with a majority Black population. This study found that these journalists employed a variety of strategies to resist normative constructions of race to provide positive Black images and voices in the news, but did not similarly feel the need to intervene in news constructions involving gender.

KEYTERMS:

• gender
• interviews
• media
• race

Notes

¹Research into the representation of nonminority women in the news primarily has focused on individual women (see, e.g., Carlin and Winfrey's 2009 study of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin), although Rakow and Kranich (1991), in their study of women as semiotic signs in TV news, found that “only white women are allowed to signify as women” (p. 19) because the meaning of “woman” is bound to an assumption of whiteness.

²This demographic was derived from the 2010 U.S. Census.

³The dominant ideology actually consists of multiple ideologies, such as capitalism, sexism and racism, which mutually support each other in their work to maintain the status quo.

⁴In addition to the “preferred” reading and “oppositional” reading of texts, Hall (1980) theorized a third decoding stance of a “negotiated” reading that, although not challenging “the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions” of the text, “is shot through with contradictions” that are generally not made visible (p. 137).

⁵According to Ellis and Bochner (2000), Clough (1994), Harding (1991), Hartsock (1983), and Smith (1990, 1992) developed standpoint theory and the notion of women as cultural “others.” Other theorists also have used standpoint theory to explore the complexities of race, class, sexuality, disability and ethnicity (see, e.g., Anzaldua, 1987; Behar, 1993; Collins, 1986, 2000; and Trinh, 1989).