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Times-News
Courtesy of Elon University, Times-News
News is often called the window to the world. News sets the agenda for what we think about or ponder as important. News provides information and perspective that frames our world. News helps explain to us complex events or ideas. News helps readers, viewers and listeners make informed decisions.
But what would happen if journalists who produce news only show one perspective? What if they only saw the world through their lived experiences and those in newsrooms had similar experiences? What would audiences miss? What if journalists were from the same social-economic level, race, ethnicity, gender or religion, would the stories they tell or interpret be limited in scope?
Unfortunately, those what ifs are happening too often in newsrooms around the country and right here in North Carolina. Print, radio, television, cable and online newsrooms are shrinking, employing fewer journalists, editors, producers, visual storytellers. Complicating matters, the diversity within those newsrooms suffers and the variety of stories, perspectives, information and insights are limited. Leaving audiences less informed, more isolated and communities more divided.
Diverse perspectives derived from different lived experiences adds color to our world. It expands our horizons and forces us to wrestle with ideas different than our own. Diversity helps us to understand people better in order to create societies that can support each other and can solve problems using greater creativity because we are not alike.
Rochelle Ford is dean of the School of Communications at Elon University.
