In his column today, Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz devotes his column today to the question of: “Does Race Play a Role in Coverage?” He readily admits that “no one raises questions when an Irish American male reporter covers a pol named Murphy,” but that doesn’t stop him from writing a 1,600-word article raising questions about black women:
Rachel Swarns of the New York Times and The Washington Post’s Robin Givhan were among those herded behind the rope Monday. They and the other main beat reporters — Newsweek’s Allison Samuels, Darlene Superville of the Associated Press and Politico’s Nia-Malika Henderson — have something in common: They are all African American women. [...]
Whether racial and gender identification produces a gauzier, more favorable portrayal of Obama is perhaps too early to judge.
As Adam Serwer observed, “You would never ever see a media critic like Kurtz questioning the ability of white men to cover other white men objectively, or for that matter the ability of white men to cover women or people of color, despite the fact that if newsroom coverage were to be affected, it would be by the prevailing cultural biases of the better represented population in the newsroom.”
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