By James Earl Owens, with research assistance from members of Truth + Justice 4 Palestine

Presenting new data covering the second year of the Gaza war (10/9/24-10/3/25), this post documents The Roundtable’s near total dependence on Middle East experts affiliated with US and Israeli military agencies and defense corporations. The data further shows The Roundtable also overwhelmingly turned to Democratic party insiders over panelists from humanitarian aid or human rights groups. I will show that this pattern of source selection constitutes media bias towards institutions that organize political support, revenue, and weapons flows for Israel’s genocide. These sourcing practices by Roundtable producers clearly violate WAMC’s own stated ‘Code of Ethics,’ as I explain. The post ends with action steps we can take today and during WAMC’s fund drive starting next week!

Roundtable’s preference for sources from pro-Israel institutions part 1: military affiliated experts

The data shows that Roundtable producers included military affiliated Middle East experts 13 times as often as independent experts (Table 1, Figure 1). One panelist, UAlbany Dean of Homeland Security Robert Griffin, builds working partnerships between students and a branch of the IDF. In contrast, Roundtable producers almost entirely excluded experts from Palestine or the Middle East/North African region despite that these are the very people most affected by US policy of unconditional support for Israel’s illegal and genocidal war.

Table 1. Middle East experts appearing on WAMC’s The Roundtable 10/09/24 - 10/3/25

Figure 1. Ratio of military affiliated Middle East experts to independent Middle East experts on WAMC’s The Roundtable 10/09/24 - 10/3/25

Reliance on military affiliated experts increased on The Roundtable during the second year of the Gaza genocide. During the first year of the genocide Roundtable producers turned to military affiliated experts over independents at a ratio of 3.4 to 1. In other words, data on the second year of the war shows an over 375% increase in reliance on Middle East experts from US and Israeli military institutions over independents. Shockingly, this increasingly extreme pattern of preference for sources from US and Israeli institutions actively conducting the war worsened despite an ongoing public campaign demanding more balance among Roundtable experts.

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Roundtable’s preference for sources from pro-Israel institutions part 2: Democratic party insiders

Another way that Roundtable producers privileged pro-Israel viewpoints last year was by overwhelmingly including panelists from the Democratic party at the expense of those from international humanitarian aid and human rights organizations (Figure 2). Democrats constituted the most common of sources appearing on Roundtable last year, making nearly 300 appearances. GOP panelists appeared 34 times, just under 10% the rate of Democrats. Leadership at both parties unites in a policy of unconditional support for Israel — even as popular and younger constituencies push back (Times of Israel, 8/431/25). Beyond the Middle East experts discussed above, Roundtable producers included panelist (and WAMC trustee) Dr. Jim Hendler of RPI 24 times last year. According to Hendler’s resume,1 he worked extensively with the Pentagon and received “Industrial Gifts” from weapons manufacturers valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (p. 29).

The data shows that host Joe Donahue and producer Sarah LaDuke prominently included guests currently or formerly working for key US institutions providing political and material support for Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. Yet Donahue and LaDuke rarely included panelists with backgrounds in humanitarian aid or human rights work whose perspectives could have balanced those of guests from pro-Israel institutions. Humanitarian aid and human rights professionals appeared only 9 times last year, in contrast to the hundreds of appearances by panelists from the Dems and GOP, and military industrial complex.

Figure 2.

Conclusion: data shows evidence of violation of WAMC’s own stated ethics

This dramatic imbalance documented by the data violates the station’s publicly posted Code of Ethics: “Coverage of news events should be complete and accurate. If the subject involves controversy, the views of all responsible sides should be fairly presented.” Yet during the 219 episodes aired during the second year of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, Palestinian American experts on the conflict appeared only twice. Both appearances were by Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hekmah, who was also the only Middle East guests included last year. This means Middle East inclusion in 2024-25 declined 50% from the meagre 4 such appearances during the prior year. In no way do these two episodes fulfill the station’s ethical pledge that “all responsible sides should be fairly presented.”

So what can we do to change this?

Take action!

Now is the perfect time to demand accountability from the producers of The Roundtable. WAMC is deep in its fund-drive and is more dependent than usual on listener donations. Here are ways you can demand WAMC management include more Palestinian and Middle East/North Africans panelists as well as experts from humanitarian aid and human rights organizations.

1. Call into WAMC’s fund-drive: 800-323-9262.

2. Post your concerns on WAMC’s Instagram and Facebook threads. Your posts can start conversations and spread awareness among other listeners and others already sick of Roundtable’s catalogue of problems.

3. Truth and Justice for Palestine offers multiple social media graphics on WAMC’s anti-Palestine bias to share across your favorite social media!!

4. Join the letter writing campaign!

   

(As always, the data referenced in this post is available on GitHub.)

By James Earl Owens, PhD — Research assistance from members of Truth + Justice 4 Palestine, a grassroots coalition seeking broader racial and ideological diversity in WAMC content and staffing.

WAMC, the seven-state New England NPR affiliate, makes big promises about their dedication to inclusion and to listening to the needs of audiences. WAMC management reported to the federal government (Guidestar, 2025), that listening to audiences helps “To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups.” I offer this post as an example of listener feedback that explicitly identifies The Roundtable as one place where WAMC is “less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups.” The data presented below covers two full years of Roundtable episodes and documents a clear pattern of white dominance that worsened to extreme levels over the last 12 months. The growing racial imbalance I document spans nearly the entire period of Israel’s war on Gaza and the first year of the Trump regime’s implementation of police power to racially profile and terrorize millions. As such, the data evidences a failure to present the precise kind of “inclusive” and “equitable” news coverage as claimed in WAMC’s branding efforts.

Will station managers fulfill their promises to listen and redress the growing problem of racism on The Roundtable? Without significant listener pressure that seems unlikely. After all, WAMC managers and producers knew about this problem for a long time. Recent campaigns generated almost 1,000 emails to station managers demanding increased Palestinian representation on the show. Audience members called for increased racial diversity at two live Roundtable events (9/19/24,1 7/8/252). Listeners also posted complaints on the station’s social media accounts — only to find that discussion erased. I contacted WAMC multiple times about findings about my prior data on racial exclusions on the program. I also presented my findings to WAMC’s Board of Trustees in June 2025. Despite the fact that station managers and program producers knew there was a racial inclusion problem on The Roundtable, the problem grew more extreme over the past year, as the data released in this post shows.

The choices Roundtable producers make about who to include on the show affects the organization of power. WAMC is an infrastructure of mass communication. Station managers and producers organize power as they racially regulate access to that means of regional communication. As shown by the data, BIPOC panelists receive far less access. That means less power to communicate their rights to existence and autonomy, to point out the political conditions that oppress those rights, and to advance agendas that protect those rights. Finally, the marginalization of BIPOC people on The Roundtable reinforces the racist expectation that news and political discussion should largely be domains for white people.

New Englanders need a radio station to help us defeat the racist authoritarianism emerging around us, and that means addressing racism at WAMC.

(As always, the data referenced in this post is available on GitHub.)

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Whites occupy increasingly extreme proportion of Roundtable appearances during second year of Gaza war

White panelists increased their dominance on RT panels to extreme levels during the second year of the Gaza war and did so at the expense of other groups already marginalized. This is according to data spanning 10/9/23 to 10/3/25, a two-year period covering virtually the entire period of Israel’s genocidal3 and ongoing4 war on Gaza. During those two years, The Roundtable aired 451 episodes hosting 1,547 panelist appearances. White panelists increased their proportional presence from 88% of appearances during the first year to 92% during the second year (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Other racial groups declined in number and proportion of appearances across the two-year period. African Americans made 49 appearances from 2023 to 2024 but only 18 appearances from 2024 to 2025, slipping from 6% to 2% of all appearances. Latino/a/x appearances declined from 34 (4%) to 23 (3%). Asian Americans were the only exception to this pattern, rising from only 3 (.6%) appearances in 2023-24 to 12 (1.6% of all appearances) in 2024-25.

Episodes during the second year of the war did feature Roundtable’s long overdue inclusion of a Palestinian American panelist (Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh) — after a 19-month campaign overcoming RT producers’ initial refusal to communicate with members of the local Middle East community and pro-Palestine organizations. Unfortunately, Dr. Abu-Hakmeh’s two appearances constituted the only inclusion of Middle East/North African (MENA) people in Roundtable’s coverage of the second year of the Gaza war. This means representation of MENA people actually declined from 4 appearances (.5%) during the first year of the war to only 2 (.3%) in the second year.

Across the two years of episodes, no Native Americans, no Pacific Islanders appeared, and only 4 persons of color from outside the US appeared. Regular inclusion of people from these communities, alongside MENA and Palestinians, could have enabled them to share knowledge and experience of the real-world oppressions of colonization and imperialism — such as longstanding US support for Israeli colonization of Palestine (New York Times, 6/20/1899;5 Khalidy, 2020;6 Al-khersan & Shahshahani, 20257) and US military domination of Latin America (Grandin, 20258) and Africa (US Africa Command, 2008; Gwatiwa & van der Merwe, 20209). Instead of enabling people from these directly affected communities to share their agendas addressing existential problems of war and colonization, Roundtable producers conferred vastly more communicative power to the racial group most over-represented in mainstream media: whites (Scharrar, Ramasubramanian, & Banjo, 202210).

Analysis so far compares patterns of exclusion by looking at the total set of panelist appearances for each year. Yet we actually experience news on a day-to-day basis. Daily repeated patterns model dominant practices as ‘natural’ or ‘to be expected’ (Len-Ríos, 202311). To explore how source selection practices by WAMC producers shape day-to-day discussions of news, policies, and rights, the next section analyzes racial diversity on daily Roundtable panels.

White domination of daily Roundtable panels increased to new extreme levels during 2024-25

Daily racial diversity on daily Roundtable panels declined over the past year. Whites averaged between 85% and 94% of panelists on daily episodes between 10/9/23 and 10/8/24, as I previously documented. The new data shows White proportions of daily panels grew to a steady 92-93% from 10/9/24 to 10/3/25, marking losses in racial diversity in 3 quarters. This 7-8% representation of BIPOC people on Roundtable panels is one-third the 25% proportion People of Color occupy in WAMC’s broadcast region.

Figure 2.

While white dominance over Roundtable panels was the normal pattern last year, this year that pattern grew more extreme. Last year (10/9/23-10/9/24), over 95% of panels were either all-white (68%) or majority white (28%) and only 1.3% were majority People of Color (Figure 3). This year (10/9/24-10/3/25) over 98% of all panels were all-white (76%) or majority white (22%). In other words, during the time span encompassing Trump’s first nine months in office and the entire second year of the Gaza war, less than 2% of Roundtable panels featured racial balance or majority BIPOC guests. Across the 451 Roundtable episodes over the past two years — covering the entirety of the Gaza war, the racially charged 2024 US presidential election, and nine months of racialized arrests and illegal deportations by militarized federal police — the number of Roundtable panels featuring all People of Color was zero (0). In stark contrast, all-white panels numbered 323.

Figure 3.

The number of all-white panels on The Roundtable is NOT a reflection of WAMC’s broadcast region

It might be tempting to explain the ‘racial imbalance’ on The Roundtable as a natural result of WAMC’s overly white broadcast area. Resist the temptation! For the 232 episodes during 2023-24, with average panel size of 3.5 drawn from the station’s 75% white, 7-million-person broadcast region, there is a 99.7% probability that the number of all-white panels would range from 63 to 107.12 The probability of reaching Roundtable’s 157 all-white panels that year in is roughly 0.00000000000000000006737%.13 For the 219 episodes during 2024-25, it is 99.7% likely that the total number of all-white panels would range from just under 60 to just over 100 (Figure 4). The probability of reaching the 166 all-white panels Roundtable produced in 2024-25 is thus worse: 0.000000000000000000000000000018%.14 Both figures are what statisticians call astronomical improbabilities (Siegenfeld & Bar-Yam, 202015). You have a higher chance of winning Powerball (1 in 292 million) than drawing The Roundtable’s racial balance from WAMC’s broadcast area. In other words, the racial imbalance is definitely and unarguably NOT a chance reflection of the region’s racial demographics.

Figure 4.

The Roundtable’s astronomically improbable exultation of whiteness is instead the result of Roundtable producer practices. Those practices violate WAMC management’s own diversification policies, which specify proportionality with the broadcast area as a standard for diversity in programming: “The overall goal of WAMC is to provide programming as varied as the human experience” and to do so by creating “programs that celebrate the diversity of our broadcast and live audience.” WAMC is clearly not enforcing this policy when it comes to The Roundtable.

Conclusion: Will WAMC fulfill its own promises to listen to audiences and address racial exclusions? Only if we compel them to do so.

This post fulfills WAMC management’s own criteria (Guidestar, 2025) for audience feedback worthy of listening to and addressing: The post presents complete data on two-years of Roundtable episodes and identifies extreme racial inequities. I am a donating member of the station and my concerns are echoed in petitions, community outreach, a presentation to the station Trustees, and hundreds of letters to the station over the past 2 years. Listeners have made the problem of racial bias on the show known to management and producers.

Will station managers and producers allow racial diversity on The Roundtable to continue to decline, as they did for the past year? The data I present above would make an excellent complaint and demand for inquiry to the Ombuds office at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the federal funding source that provided WAMC over $400,000 in 2024 (WAMC IRS 990, p. 9). However, with the Trump administration executive order eliminating the CPB and its grants for public media (Current, 5/2/25), federal means of accountability for racial discrimination has disappeared. With the station ever more dependent upon the donations of listeners, I hope listeners will be ever more vigilant about the racial politics they empower.

It almost seems as if Roundtable producers and WAMC management think that if they just ignore the situation long enough people will stop complaining about racist and colonialist bias on the program. Emergence of the new activist organization Truth + Justice 4 Palestine suggests that WAMC will be hearing more, not less, from communities who care about these issues. T+J4P is campaigning for recognition of Palestinian humanity on The Roundtable, at WAMC, and on mainstream media across New England. Full disclosure, members of that organization provided some research labor for my latest data and I am participating with that organization. If more people join our struggle, WAMC decision makers may find themselves compelled treat People of Color, Palestinians and Middle Easterners, and pro-Palestine advocates as human beings whose knowledge and experiences of oppression rightfully belong in discussions about what is to be done about those oppressions. Join us.

Data referenced in this post is available on GitHub. Check the ReadMe file for field descriptions.

Concerned people acting together can make change!

Producers of The Roundtable — Sarah LaDuke, Madeleine Reynolds, and host Joe Donahue — shifted from their policy of total exclusion of Palestinians by including Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh on last Monday’s panel (7/28/25). The inclusion of Abu-Hakmeh, a Biomedical Engineer and Principal Scientist at Regeneron, follows 19 months of efforts by activists and community members of the station’s broadcast region. Abu-Hakmeh’s presence helpfully prompted discussions of Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and ongoing propaganda efforts to dehumanize Palestinian people — topics rarely addressed on The Roundtable.

Dr. Abu-Hakmeh’s inclusion is clear evidence of the power that can be organized by a loose alliance of activists and listeners. Hopefully this victory energizes listeners to also demand change to the program’s extreme pattern of White preference and over-representation of Democrats and military-affiliated sources. (The station’s largely White board, newsroom, and all-White senior staff remain issues needing community redress.)

Questions remain whether Roundtable producers will regularly include Abu-Hakmeh and others like him to balance out the prominent presence of guests from the Democratic party and US military institutions.

How the campaign pushed for change

Activists from Jewish Voice for Peace Hudson Valley provided his name among 3 others to Roundtable producers in October of 2024 and February of 2025 but received no response. As early as February of 2024 members of the Palestinian-American community and pro-Palestine leaders contacted the station seeking to balance the prominent presence of guests from pro-Israel institutions without success.

A year later, WAMC CEO Sarah Gilbert also refused to reply to emails regarding the situation despite its clear violation of the station’s own federally mandated Community Representation policy: “In our journalism, diversity means the inclusion in our reporting of the vastly different voices and opinions of mis or under-represented people and those often ignored. WAMC strives to include differing opinions in our content”.

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By the end of February 2025, Berkshire Democratic Socialists of America took up the cause with a campaign generating hundreds of 300 signatures and over 130 emails. Activists also raised their concerns directly to WAMC’s volunteers answering phones during the station’s spring fund drive. During the live Roundtable episode in Pittsfield, MA, one audience member asked host Joe Donahue to address the exclusion of Palestinians and over-representation of Whites. Donahue then dodged the question. (The exchange starts around 1:05:00 in the audio file.) This blog began posting research on the topic in May 2024. I addressed the station’s Board of Trustees and Community Advisory Board in June 2025.

A view into station’s internal decision making behind the choice to include Dr. Abu-Hakmeh is unfortunately unavailable as yet. However, the continued public interjection of community disapproval of Roundtable’s discriminatory policy into WAMC daily work seems likely to have complicated efforts to ignore these demands.

6/4/2024, By James Earl Owens, research assistance by Merriam Lrhazi

The Roundtable, a prominent daytime news discussion program on New England’s NPR affiliate WAMC continues to exclude Palestinians from its panels while prominently including officials from the Democratic Party, whose leadership — such as by NY Sen. Schumer — remains committed to unconditional support of Israel. In coverage of the Middle East, Roundtable producers additionally privilege sources affiliated with US military institutions over independent experts.

These findings emerge from new data released in this post that also shows zero Palestinian or Palestinian-American sources in any of the 135 episodes of The Roundtable from 10/9/24 to 5/16/25. This data builds on prior findings showing The Roundtable completely excluded Palestinian/Palestinian-American panelists across all coverage of the genocidal1 US backed Israeli war on Gaza. As always, links to data are at the end of the post.

Please take a moment, perhaps after reading this post, to call WAMC’s fund-drive line and raise awareness of these issues with the dedicated volunteers who likely also oppose discrimination against Palestinians and support racial diversity on station programming. 1-800-323-9262.

Total # of White appearances on The Roundtable increased to 93%. That’s 5% more than last year

Earlier this week, I reviewed average White representation on daily panels. This post now looks first for racial balance in the overall number of appearances of panelists across the 135 episodes from 10/9/24 - 5/16/25. Figure 1 shows White panelists appeared 441 times across the 135 episodes starting 10/9/24, comprising 93% of all appearances. This is a higher White appearance rate than last year, when Whites made 88% of all appearances on The Roundtable. The ratio of Whites to People of Color panelists so far this year stands at 13 to 1 (441 Whites / 35 People of Color).

Figure 1.

It was not just Palestinians excluded from Roundtable coverage but also Middle East North African (MENA) sources and American-Indians. These particular exclusions sadly extend patterns I documented across the prior year of Roundtable episodes, with the exception of 4 MENA sources across 3 episodes in September 2024.2 The complete absence of Palestinian/Palestinian-American sources on The Roundtable since 10/9/23 endures despite at least 4 such sources having repeatedly emailed the station, as I reported last September and this February. (Since those reports, I am aware that other Palestinian-American sources contacted Roundtable producers (as well as producers of other WAMC programs) and I will continue to report on the station’s response.)

The exclusion of Palestinian and American-Indian sources alongside the near total exclusion of MENA and non-US People of Color (0.8%) creates significant limits to potential expressions critical of colonization and imperialism on The Roundtable. Constraints on criticism of colonization and imperialism benefits institutions organizing support for polices of US militarism generally and unconditional support for Israel specifically. It is from these institutions that The Roundtable overwhelmingly draws its experts on the Middle East.

The Roundtable continues to overwhelmingly rely on sources from pro-war, pro-Israel institutions

Figure 2 provides a high-level overview of the institutional affiliations of Roundtable panelists, as relevant to Israel-Palestine issues. A wide range of affiliations would encourage a wide range of interpretations of Israel’s war on Gaza and US policies that enable it. The chart shows affiliations narrowly grounded in the Democratic party and the military industrial complex.

Figure 2.

Roundtable producers did not make up for the lack of Palestinian and Middle East sources by including panelists affiliated with international human rights or aid organizations. The 3 appearances by Prof. Karin Riedl mark the only inclusion of sources with experience in international aid, that I could identify, since 10/9/24. I found no sources with backgrounds in international human rights in the most recent period. Instead, Democrats took center stage, making nearly 200 appearances. Sources from the Department of Defense, National Security Council, or Department of Homeland Security also made scores of appearances over the past seven months of episodes — as they also did over the prior year, as I previously documented. Military and security connected sources continue to make up the bulk (93%) of The Roundtable’s experts on Israel-Palestine issues, outnumbering appearances by independent experts by a rate of 12 : 1 (62 / 5) (Figure 3).

Figure 3.

The network of institutional influence organized through The Roundtable

Admittedly, simple comparison of experts by military v. independent affiliation obscures more complex ways sources may bridge multiple sectors. The central question is how Roundtable producers’ source selection choices may reinforce or challenge particular institutional narratives about Israel-Palestine issues. Exploring that question demands a two-fold view showing 1) the institutional relations of Roundtable sources and 2) how patterns of inclusion cumulatively privilege certain institutional sectors over others.

Figure 4 informs that two-fold inquiry with a social network perspective on the institutional relations and relative influence organized through The Roundtable since the start of the war on Gaza in October 2023. The map includes all Middle East experts appearing on The Roundtable over the past 20 months along with their self-reported institutional affiliations. The nodes (circles) represent each panelist and institution. For panelists, the size of the node represents the number of times they appeared on The Roundtable since the start of the war. For institutions, the size of the node represents the total number of appearances for all their affiliated panelists. The larger the node, the more total appearances and the greater power to influence audiences.

Figure 4.

The most recurring Middle East experts over the past 20 months are Jim Ketterer, who appeared 54 times, Robert Griffin (51), Frederic Hof (41), Malia Du Mont (40), Vera Eccarius-Kelly (37). Another 5 experts — Ali Vaez, Fariba Pajooh, Nathan Brown, Shai Lavi, and Juris Pupcenoks — each appeared once.

One can certainly recognize the expert knowledge every one of these sources bring to discussions. It is also true that higher education institutions are clearly a basis of experience for many sources. Yet the network map clearly shows that experts who hone their expertise pursuing the aims of defense and security institutions outsize those working with human rights and humanitarian aid. On The Roundtable, patterns of repeated inclusion of military experts and marginal inclusion of aid, rights, and social movement experts selectively reinforces the authority of military interpretations of Israel-Palestine issues.

In fact, some of The Roundtable’s most recurrent experts (with the exception of Eccarius-Kelly) continue to exercise roles in US military institutions. Hof facilitates Bard College’s relations with West Point and ROTC. Ketterer serves as a fellow Bard’s Center for Civic Engagement, which facilitates events, curriculum and exchanges of faculty and students with the US military academy West Point.3 Robert Griffin especially stands out for his entwined interests with the Israeli Defense Forces and as a target of campus activists.

As UAlbany Dean of the College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity (CEHC), Griffin organized a “partnership”4 between UAlbany and Israel’s Ben Gurion University of the Negev. Ben Gurion University “is at the center of [Israel’s] cybersecurity research and development” including as a “partner[] with The Israeli Computer Services Directorate” a branch of the IDF5 “which leads Israel’s cyber defense efforts,” according to a UAlbany press release.6 The CEHC webpage currently promotes a future dual degree program with Ben Gurion University. As recently as last spring, UAlbany students organized a walkout demanding an end to CEHC relations with Israel.

Griffin seems thus not only actively facilitating relations with Israeli military organizations but also personally benefits from the suppression of college activism critical of Israel. It is unacceptable that Roundtable producers continue to host Griffin without any counter-balancing expert. I could not find any instance when The Roundtable informed listeners of the undeniable personal and political interests that shape Griffin’s analysis of Palestine-Israel issues.

Conclusion

The racial/ethnic discrimination documented above is the result of the choices of Roundtable producers. So too is producers’ choice the main cause for the program’s privileging of Democrats and Middle East experts with backgrounds and ongoing commitments to US and Israeli military institutions. I below offer some simple things we can do today to affect future choices by Roundtable producers.

1. Call into WAMC’s fund-drive and let them know you care about these issues: 800-323-9262.

2. Post your concerns on WAMC’s Instagram and Facebook threads. Your posts can start conversations and spread awareness among other listeners and others already sick of Roundtable’s catalogue of problems.

Now is the perfect time to demand accountability from the producers of The Roundtable. WAMC is deep in its fund-drive and is more dependent than usual on listener donations. Trump’s plan to end funding for PBS and NPR would strip 5-10% of WAMC’s budget. The compassionate volunteers who answer WAMC’s fund-drive phone lines would benefit from learning about the racial discrimination problems on The Roundtable. I invite you to join me and a growing group of others who care about racial justice and genocide.

Data is available, with explanation of data fields in the ReadMe file, on GitHub.

6/2/2025, by James Earl Owens, research assistance by Merriam Lrhazi

Racial balance on The Roundtable, the prominent daytime news panel program on WAMC, was bad last year — but this year is even worse, as this post explains. These findings may surprise some WAMC listeners, especially as I present this data at the same time the station starts its Spring fund-drive. Like last year, fundraising strategies by the station and The Roundtable program use ideals of ‘diversity’ and ‘connection with community.’ Yet new comprehensive data published in this post shows, average diversity of Roundtable panels declined as the number and proportion of all-White panels increased, compared to the same time last year. I invite Joe or WAMC CEO Sarah Gilbert, or anyone else to review my data, which is linked at the end of the post.

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Before reviewing the data, here’s an idea about something we can do to help WAMC address racism on The Roundtable. Today.

If you care about racial justice, and live in WAMC’s listening area, I invite you to join a growing group of concerned people calling in to the station’s fund-drive phone lines. The dedicated WAMC volunteers answering your call likely care a lot about racial justice and don’t know about the racial discrimination problems described in this post. WAMC volunteers can be new allies in the effort to help the station become what it needs to be in the era of Trump-authoritarianism: a place for inter-racial community engagement to challenge the stale narratives and failed policies of Democratic and Republican leaders that brought us to this moment in history.

WAMC’s fund-drive number: 800-323-9262. Call today!

Increased White dominance on daily Roundtable panels

For the two recent quarters since 10/9/24, Roundtable panels averaged 92% and 93% White (Figure 1). During the same period of the prior year, Roundtable panels averaged 85% and 87% White, as this blog reported. This amounts to a more than 7% increase in White over-representation compared to the same period last year.

Figure 1. Comparison of daily rates of White inclusion first 2 quarters of this year and last year

All-White panels increased in number and proportion

For episodes airing 10/8/24 - 5/16/25, the number of all-White panels increased by 13% compared to the same period last year (Figures 2, 3). In the most recent period, the proportion of Whites-only panels (77%) and White-majority panels (21%), encompassed 98% of episodes. Less than 1% of panels featured equal racial representation. Less than 1% of panels featured a majority of People of Color. This pattern of overwhelming White majorities constitutes a strong measure of White control over news discourse and a strong suggestion from Roundtable producers that daily news and social life is normally interpreted through White perspectives.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Racial imbalance on ‘The Roundtable’ does not reflect New England’s demographics

The imbalance of White over People of Color panelists is not an effect of the largely White population of the broadcast region. A normal distribution shows probable outcomes from drawing 135 panels with average 3.5 guests from WAMC’s 75% White broadcast area (Figure 4). The chart shows a 99.7% probability of drawing about 30 - 70 all-White panels across 135 episodes. The probability1 of drawing The Roundtable’s result of 105 or more all-White panels from the 75% White listening area is 0.000000000000000000000162,2 an astronomical improbability.3

Figure 4.

Put simply, the data shows that White domination of Roundtable panels is not an effect of the heavily White broadcast geography. The racist marginalization of Black, Latino/a, Asian, and other groups is likely the result of program host Joe Donahue’s longstanding choice to prioritize White voices. After all, this is not the first exposure of Joe’s preference for White panelists. In 2017, Joe Donahue admitted to the Times-Union that he repeatedly chose White panelists over Black, Latino/a, Muslim, and trans sources recommended by noted civil rights leader Barbara Smith, then a Roundtable panelist herself. Smith resigned from the show in protest. Let’s take Smith’s warning seriously — by finally taking action.

What can we do about it . . . today?

Systems of racism encourage us to think we are powerless. We are not. We can exercise our agency, our freedom to take political action. For example, people who care about diversity and racial justice can call into the WAMC fund-drive and help spread the word to the kind volunteers answering the phones. Those volunteers likely care about diversity and racial justice. They likely tune in to WAMC hoping to hear the perspectives of the full range of their community. WAMC’s phone line volunteers would benefit from you helping them understand that there are real problems with diversity and inclusion on The Roundtable.

1-800-323-9262. The fund-drive is going on until June 9. Call today!!

Data is available, with explanation of data fields in the ReadMe file, on GitHub.

By James Earl Owens, February 21, 2025

I am happy to report that Berkshires Democratic Socialists of America launched a petition and email campaign demanding an end to discriminatory exclusion of Palestinian sources by producers of The Roundtable, a publicly funded program on NPR affiliate WAMC, serving upstate New York and six other states. The actions by the Berkshire DSA provide new means for listeners, community members, and organizations to address a 15-month pattern of discrimination by Roundtable producers. That pattern of discrimination was publicly documented by recent posts on JamesEarlOwensPhD.com. Full disclosure, I am a member of DSA and helped draft of the petition.

The petition demands, “WAMC and the producers of The Roundtable [must] diversify their coverage of Israel’s war on Gaza. Fairness requires balancing institutional sources with regular inclusion of those affected by their policies, namely Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans. In line with WAMC’s own fairness policies, WAMC must include Palestinian perspectives.”

The petition further states, “during the 15 months following the start of Israel’s War on Gaza, producers of WMAC’s The Roundtable have failed to include a single Palestinian or Palestinian-American panelist. Producers Sarah LaDuke and Joe Donahue have rejected and ignored numerous requests from Palestinian-American sources ready to appear on the show.”

The petition and email campaign is a rare opportunity to act in defense of diversity and fairness in the era of Trump’s aspiration to a monarchic, fascist, authoritarianism. Palestinian-American perspectives are needed more than ever to counter the sadly bipartisan notion of Palestinians as un-American, antisemitic, and unworthy of inclusion in political discussions. Biden characterized pro-Palestine protests as “un-American” and “antisemitism” involving “threats of violence against Jewish students”. Trump’s 1/30 executive order goes further, using the term “pro-jihadist protests” and extending the smear to “anti-American colleges and universities”.

Exclusion of Palestinians on The Roundtable exemplifies how liberal media defense of Democrat’s pro-Israel US policies actually enables Trump’s political aims not just to ethnically cleanse Gaza but to destroy the US academic system.1 As Palestinian-American journalist Arwa Mahdawi wrote (The Guardian, 2/6/2025), one “reason Trump can spew this ‘fanatical bullshit’ is because much of the western media have been complicit in dehumanizing Palestinians and normalizing what many experts have termed a genocide.”

Help transform The Roundtable into a forum for ethnic, racial, and gender diversity but also ideological diversity. We need such a place to hear each other and work together on the difficult task of saving our democracy. Please sign the petition. Join the email campaign here or send WAMC an email here or using the addresses below.

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

February 18, 2025, by James Earl Owens, PhD

Referenced data is available at the end of this post.1

New evidence, made public here and a prior post, shows WAMC’s signature daytime program The Roundtable likely enforces a discriminatory policy against Palestinian and Middle East/North African (MENA) people. The first post shows Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke and host Joe Donahue completely excluded Palestinian panelists across all episodes since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza (10/9/23 - 1/24/25), refused to dialogue with Palestinians seeking to appear, and apparently removed social media criticism of those problems. While the last post shows whom LaDuke and Donahue chose to exclude, this post shows whom they chose to include.

During the same period LaDuke and Donahue excluded Palestinian guests, LaDuke and Donahue prominently including guests currently or formerly working for key US institutions providing political and material support for Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza. Those institutions include the Democratic and Republican parties as well as the Pentagon, National Security Council, Department of Homeland Security, defense funded think-tanks and PR firms. One guest, Robert Griffin, even currently partners with a branch of the Israeli Defense Forces.

Leah Penniman, along with 3 Palestinian-Americans, requested in October 2024 that LaDuke and Donahue include them on the show. Penniman is the author of Farming While Black and co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of Soul Fire Farm, a 501c3 New York nonprofit agricultural education organization. Recognizable mainstream news outlets find her credible. She’s been a guest on other NPR-affiliates — check out her interviews on KCRW and KUAF. She also authored an op-ed for The LA Times. Local news outlets, like Central New York’s Spectrum News, find her work on climate change newsworthy — as do other local and national media.

Yet, as my previous post documents, LaDuke and Donahue refused to respond to her request for inclusion on The Roundtable. Twice.

Penniman explained that participation on The Roundtable was, for her, a way to build discussions that recognize common belonging in humanity. “There is a way forward where all of our safety and dignity is intertwined, but we won't get there if we are not able to start with open discussion.” Unfortunately, the data I present strongly suggests that LaDuke and Donahue may view “open discussion” as a threat to the institutional interests heavily represented on the show.

15-months of Roundtable data: Zero Palestinian appearances, hundreds of appearances by Dems and sources with military/intelligence backgrounds

Data published in my prior post shows The Roundtable included zero (0) Palestinians among the 1011 appearances panelists made across 293 episodes spanning the entire war on Gaza, which the ICJ ruled a probable genocide and for which the ICC seeks arrest of Israeli and Hamas leaders for war crimes. While Roundtable producers did include Middle East/North African panelists in September, 2024, their 4 total appearances starkly contrast with the hundreds of appearances by panelists from the Democratic and Republican parties and US military and intelligence institutions.

Data findings I: Democrats, who spent last year attacking pro-Palestine critics of Biden’s unconditional support for Israel, made 40% of Roundtable appearances

Democratic officials and employees made up a very large share of all appearances on The Roundtable during the first year of the Gaza war — and an even larger share since. As Diagram 1 shows, elected and employed officials from the NY Democratic Party made 40% (n=314) of appearances on Roundtable last year and 45% (n=98) so far this year. GOP panelists made about 5% of appearances in both periods. This includes panelist Libby Post, a Jewish long time New York State Democratic party consultant2 and LGBTQ activist, and GOP former Congressman John Faso, who received a $500,000 PAC donation from pro-Israel businessman Paul Singer.3 Both are outspoken advocates for Israel’s war policy. Post appeared 64 times since the start of the Israel-Gaza war and Faso 17 times. This spans a period when NY Democratic Party leaders united to maintain political and material support for Israel and to quell pro-Palestine organizing. The Roundtable provided a forum for these political party insiders to promote their narratives without pushback or correction from the very groups they targeted with damaging mischaracterizations.

Diagram 1

For example, Faso and Post participated in the 4/22/24 panel which unanimously agreed — without offering any evidence — that pro-Palestine student protests were antisemitic in character. The only seeming disagreement concerned which policy college administrators should implement to repress or control the speech of pro-Palestine students. Libby Post stated, again without evidence, that “students are writing swastikas on whiteboards all over the country.” The following day (4/23/24), panelist JP Miller, former finance director for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, stated “I think sometimes protesters like to be arrested.”

Contradicting these narratives of irresponsible antisemitic students seeking their own repression, on-the-ground reporting from experienced journalists4 as well as many student journalists5 documented the intense violence police and Zionist mobs unleashed on students. On neither panel did Roundtable producers a single Palestinian, MENA, or pro-Palestine student representative to correct these false characterizations.

Data findings II: Roundtable producers overwhelmingly rely on Middle East experts from the very institutions that implement US military support for Isreal’s war on Gaza

LaDuke and Donahue also most often rely on 4 Middle East experts whose knowledge and experience largely comes from work in the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, the Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, or even the Israeli Defense Forces, as Table 1 shows. These defense-connected panelists are Malia Du Mont, Frederic Hof, Jim Ketterer, and Robert Griffin.

Table 1: Occupational relations of recurring Roundtable panelists with Middle East subject matter expertise

A closer look at The Roundtable’s regular Middle East experts

Panelist Malia Du Mont, according to her bio at the Stimson Center, “spent the majority of her career in the Pentagon, where she held multiple civilian and military positions, including Director of Strategy in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). In that role, she managed implementation of the National Defense Strategy.” Du Mont and Frederic Hof were both fellows at the Atlantic Council, a non-profit think tank funded by weapons makers and providing private consultancy with US security policymakers.6 Hof also facilitates Bard College’s relations with West Point and ROTC and was president and CEO of Armitage Associates LC, a consultancy with oil and defense clients.7

Roundtable regular Jim Ketterer worked for the National Security Council as well as non-profit AMIDEAST. According to its former president, AMIDEAST stands among the “soft power products” of the US “official public diplomacy programme” (Rughe, 2017, p. 2). The organization contracts with the US State Department and USAID and is funded by weapons maker Boeing, among others.8

Perhaps most troubling, The Roundtable regularly features former Homeland Security official Robert Griffin, who currently partners with an Israeli Defense Forces agency as part of his job as a UAlbany Dean. Griffin organized multiple trips to Israel to build partnerships between SUNY Albany students and the Computer Service Directorate of the Israeli Defense Forces,9 including working with drones – a weapon Israel used against Gazans in the current war.10 Perhaps there is an episode of The Roundtable that informs listeners of Griffin’s obvious conflict of interest, but I am yet to find it.

The only recurring Roundtable panelist with expertise on the Middle East who did not work for US or Israeli military/intel organizations, or defense funded think tanks or consulting firms, was Professor Vera Eccarius-Kelly who teaches Middle East Studies at Siena College and worked with Albany’s non-profit Refugee Welcome Center.11

Independent Middle East experts outnumbered by defense connected sources

In September 2024, The Roundtable did include 4 additional Middle East experts independent of the US/Israel military industrial complex. However, independent Middle East experts appeared far less often than those with past or current work in military or intelligence organizations, as Tables 2 and 3 indicate. In the 15-months since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, these experts from the military industrial complex appeared 154 times while independent experts appeared 41 times — a ratio of 3.8 : 1. Comparing the number of expert appearances from the first-year of Roundtable’s Gaza war coverage to the first weeks of the second-year reveals an increase in the presence of defense connected experts over independent experts

Table 2: Appearances by Middle East experts by affiliation with military, intelligence organizations, 10/9/23-10/8/24

Table 3: Appearances by Middle East experts by affiliation with military, intelligence organizations, 10/9/24-01/24/25

Looking at the first-year of coverage (10/9/23-10/8/24) the ratio of military/intel/security (n = 124) to independent (n = 37) Middle East expert appearances was 3.4 : 1. For the 15 weeks since the anniversary of the war’s start (10/9/24 - 1/24/25), The Roundtable included 30 appearances by US military/intel and 4 independent Middle East experts, a ratio of 7.5 : 1. This means that Roundtable year 2 coverage, so far, more than doubled the relative presence of military connected Middle East experts over independents.

These numbers do not include recurring Roundtable guest Dr. Jim Hendler of RPI, who is not a Middle East expert but also brings an extensive background with the Pentagon. According to his resume,12 Hendler fulfilled dozens of Department of Defense roles (pp. 2-3), oversaw millions of dollars in research grants from US military entities (pp. 29-34), and received “Industrial Gifts” from weapons manufacturers valued in the hundreds of thousands of dollars (p. 29). Hendler appeared 27 times between 10/9/23-10/8/24 and 9 more times between 10/9/24 - 1/24/25.

Conclusion

The evidence above, and my prior post, strongly suggests a discriminatory policy against Palestinian and pro-Palestine sources enforced by Roundtable producer LaDuke and host Donahue and perhaps by WAMC management, given the two-weeks that WAMC CEO Sarah Gilbert has refused to respond to my inquiries. At the same time as LaDuke and Donahue excluded Palestinians from the show, LaDuke and Donahue heavily included Democrats and sources from the US-Israel military industrial complex. Democrats played a lead role in 2024, pushing Biden’s policy of unconditional material support for Israel’s genocidal war and attacking pro-Palestine critics of that policy. Democratic party sources and those with backgrounds in the DoD, DHS, NSC, and the IDF come from institutions tasked with designing, defending, and implementing US policy of unconditional support for Israel’s war. These are not neutral sources and so need to be balanced with representatives from the precise people and movements targeted by those institutions.

LaDuke and Donahue’s practices of source selection also provided a small number of Republicans means to showcase their anti-Palestine policies and stay relevant for future electoral campaigns (as in the case of Faso and Molinaro).

From a cynical point of view, such a discriminatory policy of exclusion against Palestinian and pro-Palestine voices makes strategic sense. By excluding Palestinian, MENA, and solidarity movement sources, LaDuke and Donahue increase the value of the program to institutional sources who seek to avoid embarrassing debates that substantively undermine their policy narratives. Party officials then stand in a position to reward that service by providing quotes and stories to WAMC reporters and to appear on ‘Congressional Corner,’ a sister segment to Roundtable’s panel show.

If you agree that WAMC needs to make The Roundtable more fair and inclusive, then you can take a simple action right now. Please join other concerned listeners and WAMC members in a letter writing campaign to station management. Increased pressure from concerned ethical people — like you — can truly be the force to expand fairness on the airwaves owned by We The People. In the face of ongoing attacks by the Trump administration on the legal and political institutions protecting equal rights, it is crucial to expand our local bases of knowledge and communication.

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

12

Dr. Jim Hendler’s CV:

Hendler Normalvita Hendler

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Links to the data for this post (GitHub) are at the end of this piece.1

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February 12, 2025

New evidence, made public here and the next post, shows WAMC’s signature daytime program The Roundtable likely enforces a discriminatory policy against Palestinian and Middle East/North African (MENA) people. Email and data discussed in this post show Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke and Joe Donahue completely excluded Palestinian panelists since the start of the Gaza war, refused to dialogue with Palestinian-Americans seeking to appear, and likely removed social media criticism of those problems. The next post shows LaDuke and Donahue did so while prominently including guests from the Democratic and Republican parties and the US military-industrial-intelligence complex — key institutions designing and implementing US policy of unconditional support for Israel’s occupation and war on Palestine.

The data and emails support two undeniable conclusions. First, the data proves The Roundtable never included any Palestinian guests since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza. Second, the emails show that the absence of Palestinian guests is a choice by Roundtable producers.

The pattern of discrimination I document fits poorly with WAMC’s popular image as a progressive source of inclusion and open-debate; an image promoted, for example, by special Roundtable episodes on DEI that also raised funds for the station (9/19/24, 1/10/25).

Donations from listeners empowered a quick close to WAMC’s latest fund-drive just last week. Thanking listeners for the rapid flow of donations, Roundtable host Joe Donahue said (2/7/25), “We know the reason and the concern and the fear, it was wanting to preserve this radio station”.2 Donahue was referring to the well-grounded fears surrounding President Trump’s threats to eliminate federal funding for public media as part of the administration’s larger ideological effort to kill DEI programs and ideologies. While there’s every reason to think Trump will follow through on that threat, Donahue’s expressed fear of elimination seems overstated: federal money constitutes less than 10% of WAMC’s $4.5M 2024 revenue, according to their most recent federal filings (Form 990, 2024, p. 9, line e).

In contrast, Palestinians face erasure. Trump not only cut off aid to Palestinian refugees but advocates ethnic cleansing of Gaza (NY Magazine, 2/4/2025). “They are trying to erase us, to pretend that Gaza can exist without Palestinians,” Ahmed Awaad told Israel’s +972 Magazine (2/5/2025). Awaad is a 23-year-old medical student in Khan Younis. Israel destroyed his university. He now works in make-shift hospitals amid conditions the International Court of Justice ruled a probable genocide. Awaad remains steadfast: “But we are still here, and we are not leaving.”

The exclusion of Palestinians on The Roundtable is a part of that erasure, Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh told me. He is a Palestinian-American area scientist working in the Capital region. He requested, along with 3 other sources (2 Palestinian, 1 Black and Jewish), to appear on The Roundtable. He told me he wanted to “give Americans a fair chance to learn about Palestine.” Neither LaDuke nor Donahue responded to those email requests (10/4/24, 2/1/25) to appear on the program.

WAMC’s refusal to even dialogue with Palestinians seeking to appear on the program, Abu-Hakmeh said, is “a microcosm of US media outlets’ concerted efforts to obfuscate the Palestinian genocide and by extension, their entire struggle for the past 100+ years.” The argument that Roundtable producers exclude Palestinian voices is supported by my comprehensive data on all Roundtable episodes since the 10/7/23 start of Israel’s war on Gaza.

Data: Panelists made 1011 appearances on The Roundtable since 10/7/2023 — none of them were Palestinians

My prior research on a full-year of The Roundtable (10/9/23 - 10/8/24) found 71 panelists made 792 appearances across 232 episodes. Those hundreds of appearances across hundreds of programs included zero (0) Palestinians. MENA guests made 4 appearances across 3 episodes, accounting for 0.5% of all appearances and 1% of episodes. My new data covers the period from 10/9/24 - 1/24/2025 and finds 63 panelists made 219 appearances across 61 episodes, with zero (0) Palestinians included. Please check my data if you doubt my findings.

In short, The Roundtable completely failed to include even a single Palestinian guest across nearly 300 episodes in which other panelists appeared 1011 times. Emails published here for the first time show this exclusion was a choice exercised by Roundtable producers.

Emails: Palestinian exclusion on ‘The Roundtable’ is not an accident but a choice — a choice that WAMC likely sought to hide from the public

As WAMC increasingly depends on their area community for support, it makes poor fiscal and ethical sense that The Roundtable continues to stonewall the Middle East and Palestinian community. “Being an NPR station and on Central Ave. right next to a mosque and multiple Middle Eastern businesses, we thought just maybe [WAMC] would welcome us,” Layla Aburas-Khafaga told me. She is the founder and owner of Meezan Kitchen, local Middle Eastern Bakery servicing the greater capital region. Meezan refers to the Islamic concept of balance, fairness, and justice, her website explains.

Aburas-Khafaga is also among four local Muslim, Palestinian-American, and Jewish-American sources who first contacted Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke, in October, 2024, asking to appear on the program. (The full email thread appears following this article). The other aspiring panelists included Dr. Sohaib Chekima (Executive Director of United Muslim Alliance of Albany), Dr. Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh (Palestinian-American Scientist), Faris Amer (Palestinian-American Engineer), and Leah Penniman (Black, Jewish Food Sovereignty Educator and Co-Founder of Soul Fire Farm). After no response from LaDuke to their 10/4/24 email, they reached out to LaDuke again on 2/1/25. LaDuke again failed to reply.

The evidence I present here supports Aburas-Khafaga’s conclusion that Palestinian exclusion is “business as usual,” in this case an undisclosed policy enforced by LaDuke and Donahue and possibly by WAMC management.

This wasn’t the first time Roundtable producers turned away Palestinian, MENA, and Palestine solidarity sources. Emails I made public in September show that LaDuke and Donahue acknowledged the lack of Palestinian and pro-Palestine perspectives (email of 2/28/24, 10:44am) in conversations with organizers from the Hudson Valley chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestinian Rights Committee Albany. LaDuke stopped responding to their messages by 3/18/24. The aspiring panelists reported to me that no one from WAMC reached out to them. In the end, The Roundtable never hosted the panelists proposed by the organizers — nor any other Palestinian guests.

New emails show Roundtable producers had a second chance to correct that exclusion in October, 2024 — but again LaDuke and Donahue chose not to do so. Further suggesting that their discriminatory choice is a policy, when criticism of the exclusions appeared on WAMC’s Instagram thread, station personnel redirected discussions out of public view and apparently deleted the online exchange, as I explain next.

Two weeks after I published the first set of emails, The Roundtable used Instagram to promote a 9/19/24 fundraising episode on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. The JVP and PRC organizers responded on that thread with criticism of the lack of inclusion of Palestinian and MENA guests. WAMC replied to that criticism by requesting the conversation change to email — and thus outside of public view. The organizers complied and emailed the official Roundtable address on 10/4/2024 with the above discussed list of 4 sources (including Abu-Hakmeh and Aburas-Khafaga) willing and able to appear on The Roundtable. LaDuke did not respond to the 10/4/24 email, nor to a follow up on 2/1/2025. WAMC personnel then apparently deleted the Instagram thread containing PRC’s critique and the station’s request for email discussion.

Fortunately, I made a screencap of the Instagram thread prior to its removal (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Instagram thread apparently deleted by WAMC. Screencap from 10/16/24.

WAMC management refuses to publicly address these issues

I contacted WAMC CEO Sarah Gilbert by email on 2/4/25. I sent her the email threads, the deleted Instagram exchange, and the data appearing in this post. I asked her to intervene in the situation at The Roundtable and promised I would publish any statement from her office. She did not reply by the time of publication, 2/11/25, eight days after my email to her.

Refusal to respond by WAMC’s most senior official could indicate a lack of interest in enforcing the station’s public policy on inclusion in news:

“In our journalism, diversity means the inclusion in our reporting of the vastly different voices and opinions of mis or under-represented people and those often ignored. WAMC strives to include differing opinions in our content,” WAMC’s Community Representation Statement.

Worse, Gilbert’s refusal to comment could also be a strategy to avoid public awareness of and accountability for this pattern of discrimination against Palestinians. Such a strategy would of course help to maintain a policy of Palestinian exclusion on The Roundtable. The refusal to address issues of public concern, to provide public transparency, or explain documented violations of stated policy are precisely the kinds of practices that make discrimination into “business as usual,” precisely as warned by rejected Palestinian-American panelist Layla Aburas-Khafaga.

Conclusion

This post presents a pattern of evidence showing that exclusion of Palestinians on WAMC’s The Roundtable is likely a discriminatory policy enforced by Joe Donahue, Sarah LaDuke, and perhaps WAMC management. First, exclusion of Palestinians is total: not a single Palestinian appears on any of the nearly 300 episodes of The Roundtable since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza, even as the ICJ ruled that war a probable genocide. One might object that sources from the Middle East/North African region, likely to sympathize with Palestinians, did appear on the program. However, MENA guests accounted for only 4 appearances out of a total of 1,011.

Second, Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke and host Joe Donahue were aware of this problem of a lack of Palestinian guests on the program, emails show. Yet when Palestinian sources requested to appear, LaDuke and Donahue refused to put them on the show and ultimately refused to respond to their requests. Third, when faced with social media criticism of these facts, WAMC personnel acted to direct critical communications out of public view — where Roundtable producers again refused to reply — and even deleted evidence of the confrontation from the station’s social media thread.

While this evidence is damning enough, new data I share in the next post shows that while choosing to exclude Palestinians from The Roundtable, LaDuke and Donahue provided regular prominent inclusion of powerful institutional opponents of Palestinian narratives and self-determination, namely the New York Democratic Party and sources from the US-Israel military industrial complex.

Email station management and let them know you are a concerned listener who seeks fairness and inclusion on The Roundtable:

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

Full email thread:

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Date:Sat, Feb 1, 11:32 AM
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Hello Sarah on Feb 1, 2025.

I realize I did not request a reply in my email of October 4, 2024. I have received confirmation of the following: (a) that none of the four potential guest panelists whose names and contact information I shared with you have been contacted by you or anyone at the station; (b) that no Palestinians or Middle East / North African guest panelists have appeared on the show since October 9th 2024 [sic, Palestinian absence extends to 10/9/23]. Given US involvement in the ever devolving conditioins in that region, this shows the kind of outright bias that I and countless others in the WAMC listening audience had hoped WAMC would prove itself immune. I fail to understand the station's position. Perhaps you could at least explain why, after you asked for potential guest participants, the station failed to contact them or to invite others who would be willing to participate.

Thank you,

Carol S (Strauss Sotiropoulos)

[address redacted]

Landline [phone redacted]

Mobile [phone redacted]

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Date: Fri, Oct 4, 2024 at 3:42 PM
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Hi Sarah,

Well, it's been many months since we corresponded about the need for voices of Palestinians and allies on The Roundtable. I understand that others have reached out with names, positions, and contact information of potential participants. Here is a list that's been shared with me. Many in the WAMC listening audience ought not have cause to continue being disappointed and hope you can be counted on to rectify this.

Sincerely,

Carol S (Strauss Sotiropoulos)

Dr. Sohaib Chekima- Executive Director of United Muslim Alliance of Albany- [email, phone redacted]

Ahmad Abu-Hakmeh- Palestinian-American Scientist in the Capital Region- [email, phone redacted]

Layla Aburas- First Generation Palestinian-American Entrepreneur, Owner of Meezan Kitchen- [email, phone redacted]

Faris Amer- Palestinian-American Engineer at Regeneron- [email redacted]

Leah Penniman- Black, Jewish Food Sovereignty Educator and Co-Founder of Soul Fire Farm- [email redacted]

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 4:29 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Seriously! John Fasso AGAIN, today, with his abhorrent apologia for Israel?! Really??

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 11:16 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

I understand, thank you, I'm rolling this squeaky wheel as weeks/months pass and the issue grows ever more timely.

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

Hi Carol,

The people you’ve suggested aren’t the only people we’re pursuing. Joe is out this week and I’m dancing as fast as I can.

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2024 10:52 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

I suggest moving in to the others:

Dara Silverman

[email redacted]

[Phone redacted]

Keren Carmeli

[email redacted]

[Phone redacted]

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 7:59 AM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

I’m waiting on a reply from Abdallah.

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2024 7:58 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Good Thursday morning, Sarah. Has a date been arranged with Abdallah, and/or have either of the suggested Jewish Voice for Peace members been contacted?

Carol S.

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2024 12:28 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Very good. I think it would be even more effective to have a member of Hudson Valley Jewish Voice for Peace on with him.

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 12:08 PM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

Carol,

I’m emailing with Abdallah Qotate [Palestinian source] to find a date that works.

Best,

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2024 12:03 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Fwd: Will you please play fair?

Good Monday morning, Sarah,

Please let me know if you have been able to contact the recommended individuals representing Jewish Voice for Peace and the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community. Or, let me know if the station does not wish to hear other voices at this critical juncture.

Thank you,

Carol S.

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Date: Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Hello Sarah on Friday afternoon,

Just left a voicemail --- wondering if you've contacted any of the individuals I was able to recommend. As of Tuesday evening, none had heard from you. Please let me know what I can do to help make this happen as soon as possible, given current events in the Middle East

Carol S.

Landline [phone redacted]

Mobile. [phone redacted]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2024, 3:47 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Thank you, Sarah, and foremost I hope you're feeling much better!

On Mon, Mar 4, 2024 at 3:12 PM Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org> wrote:

Hi Carol,

I was out sick last week and am doing the inevitable race to catch up today. I need to talk to Joe about your suggested guests. We are working on it.

Best,

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 3:08 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Greetings Sarah on Monday March 4th,

I just now left a message on your voicemail, to inquire as to whether you've been able to reach out to any of the recommended individuals who can speak to the issues at hand from the perspective of Palestinian justice. The matter is beyond timely, it is urgent, and I hope it is at or near the top of your priorities to provide listeners a countering voice to that of John Fasso last week.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos

mobile [phone redacted]

landline [phone redacted]

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 3:53 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Hello again Sarah,

I've received confirmation on the third person prepared to present the contrasting narrative to the one voiced by John Faso and other Israeli apologists for whom WAMC has given air time. Below are all three:

1) Abdallah Qotate of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

2) Dara Silverman of Jewish Voice for Peace-Hudson Valley email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

3) Keren Carmeli, Israeli-American and prominent in Jewish Voice for Peace email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 1:49 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Hello Sarah,

Two people I highly recommend and who have agreed to be contacted. I am waiting to hear back from a third. It would be terrific. i.e., most impactful, if Abdallah Qotate and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.could both be invited. Thank you and I'll be in touch with the name & contact info of the third individual, who has spoken widely and is, I believe, Israeli-American. I promised to get back within a day, so I'm sending the two below forthwith, with the hope that you can move forward on this important issue.

Thank you, Carol S.

1) Abdallah Qotate of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

2) Dara Silverman of Jewish Voice for Peace-Hudson Valley email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 11:32 AM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Thank you, Sarah, I will definitely get back to you within a day!

Carol

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 10:44 AM Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org> wrote:

Hello Carol,

Do you know anyone? We have been looking.

Best,

Sarah

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 10:42 AM
To: Panel <Panel@wamc.org>
Subject: Will you please play fair?

You had an apologist for Israeli on today (John). You then did not respond to listeners' dismay at the lack of pushback.

Why not invite a guest panelist who can speak to the Palestinian narrative?? This is sorely needed!

Carol Sotiropoulos

The first post evaluates diversity in WAMC content by measuring the average daily racial balance on Roundtable panels and tracking shifts in daily racially balance over time. I found 68% of episodes features all-White panels and 28% featured majority White panels. As the post explains, “equal racial parity on Roundtable panels (let alone non-White majority) constitutes a marginal (<5%) deviation from the dominant pattern of all-White panels and the secondary pattern of White majority panels.” Looking at shifts in inclusion over the past year, the post finds 3-5% declines in diversity with White inclusion varying between 88-94%. The findings also contradict claims by regular panelist Nic Rangel1 on The Roundtable’s 9/19 Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion episode: “The Roundtable has gotten much more diverse in the last year, year and a half,” she stated.2 Rangel presented no evidence to back her claim.

Cartoon by the amazing Davian Chester, known for his awesome series @Real_Toons.

The second post examines how well The Roundtable celebrates the diversity of WAMC’s broadcast audience by comparing daily racial inclusion patterns with the racial demographics of WAMC’s broadcast area and home community, the City of Albany, New York. I found that average daily White inclusion on Roundtable amounted to a 14-25% inflation of their 75% proportion of the broadcast area. Average inclusion of all other racial/ethnic groups on daily Roundtable panels dramatically shrank in comparison with their proportions in the broadcast area: Black panelists -25%, Asians -85%, Latino/a -70%, Arab/MENA -28%, and American Indians received no inclusion. The measure of average daily racial inclusion obscures a deeper imbalance: All Arab/MENA panelists appeared in the final weeks of the study, marking their absence across 11 straight months following the start of the Israel/Gaza war.

In sum, both posts raise serious questions about Roundtable producers commitment to WAMC’s diversification policies. Findings of baseline White dominance across more than 95% of episodes, stagnant or declining diversity over time, and White inclusion disproportionately above broadcast area demographics show that Roundtable production practices fail to fulfill fundamental policy criteria specified by WAMC management and board. The data, alongside management and producers’ refusal to publicly address these issues, raises the troubling possibility that the diversity policies are empty statements required for federal funding and to market the station to audiences who may actually care about racial justice and yearn for news grounded in the lived experience of racially diverse working-class people — the very groups that the Democrats largely failed to attract this election.

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

This post presents data on a full year of Roundtable episodes to explore the third research question of this series. That question asks, How do daily patterns of racial representation on The Roundtable compare with the racial demographics of WAMC’s broadcast area and home community, the City of Albany, New York?

The demographics of WAMC’s listening area constitute an excellent context to assess the proportionality of daily racial inclusion on The Roundtable. Comparison with broadcast area demographics also provides means to evaluate how well the program implements the station’s own diversification policies.1 After all, those policies specify proportionality with the broadcast area as a standard for diversity in programming. “The overall goal of WAMC is to provide programming as varied as the human experience” and to do so by creating “programs that celebrate the diversity of our broadcast and live audience.” The policy names categories of diversity for program inclusion, including “race and ethnicity” and “geographic location.” Successful implementation of that policy should reflect the basic proportions of the communities in the broadcast area. Let’s see how closely daily racial demographics on The Roundtable match the diversity of the station’s broadcast demographics.

Demographics of WAMC’s broadcast area

WAMC’s broadcast area encompasses approximately 37 counties across several states constituting a total population of nearly 7 million. I drew race and ethnicity data for those 37 counties from the US Census tool, Social Explorer (Figure 1), excluding counties for which WAMC’s map indicates < 50% of geographic coverage. The resulting data provides racial and ethnic population counts which I use to compare with my counts of racial ethnic inclusion on The Roundtable’s guest list and panels. The ACS data shows total population for the 37 counties is 6.9 million, 74.9% of whom reported as “White alone.”2

Figure 1. WAMC’s Coverage Map with corresponding counties (n=37) in US ACS 5-year data as accessed through Social Explorer, a US Census research tool.

Despite some variation, daily racial inclusion on The Roundtable consistently featured Whites disproportionately more than their share of the broadcast population. Figure 2 illustrates this disproportionate relationship using previously discussed [CITE] daily racial inclusion divided evenly by number of episodes. The 10-19% White advantage shown in the chart translates to a 14-25% inflation of broadcast community proportions.3 Figure 3 represents comparison with the broadcast community through the change-over-time data as divided by racially significant news events and shows almost the same disparity, with Whites over-represented by 10-18%, a 14-24% expansion from community proportions.

Figure 2.

Figure 3.

Over-representation of Whites came at the expense of Blacks, Latino/as, Asians, American Indians, and persons of Arab ancestry as compared to the racial demography of WAMC’s broadcast area (Figure 4). The overall 88% average daily White inclusion rate on The Roundtable constitutes an 18% increase over White proportions in the 37-county broadcast community. The 6.2% daily inclusion rate for Black panelists on The Roundtable translates to a 25% decline from broadcast community demographics of 8.2%. Asians appeared at 85% below community proportions, Latino/a 70% below, Arab/MENA 28% below, with American Indians receiving no inclusion. Despite their total absence on The Roundtable, the WAMC broadcast area includes over 18,000 Native American people and over 40,000 people of Arab/Middle East ancestry, ACS data shows.4

Figure 4.

The Roundtable and the City of Albany

Finally, the highly limited racial diversity on The Roundtable must also be placed in context with the high racial diversity of the show’s base of production in Albany, New York. Viewed from the demographics of Albany, daily Roundtable panels inflated White presence by 65% and decreased presence of Blacks by 78%, Asians by 91%, Latino/a by 57%, Arab/MENA by 66%, and erased the city’s small American Indian presence. Some may argue that it is inappropriate to compare diversity on The Roundtable with the City of Albany (I bet I will hear this response on social media). Yet in doing so, I am in the good company of recent Roundtable panelists who also recognize that Albany’s diversity should be considered as part of ethical representation on the program and station.

Figure 5.

Dan Irizarry, activist and founder of Capital District Latinos, speaking at The Roundtable’s previously mentioned DEI event, noted that WAMC’s facilities “sit in a city where there are 10,000 Latinos or more, the signal reaches . . . probably a couple of hundred thousand Latinos, and yet WAMC does not really have programming that reaches out to that community . . . What is the responsibility of a station like WAMC, a public radio station, to provide representation in its programming, but also to be a significant corporate citizen?”5 Dr. Alfredo Medina, Jr., DEI panelist and Diversity Officer at Bennington College, responded affirmatively. “[A]s a public radio [station] I do believe WAMC has a responsibility to try to target and represent all of its listeners.”6 The data I share above is strong evidence that WAMC and The Roundtable are not fulfilling that responsibility to Albany or the larger broadcast community.

Conclusion: daily racial inclusion on The Roundtable is not proportionate to WAMC’s broadcast area demographics

This post showed that the daily presence of White panelists on The Roundtable is not proportional to the racial demographics of WAMC’s broadcast area. Average daily White inclusion on Roundtable panels ranged 85-94%, amounting to a 14-25% inflation of their 75% proportion of the broadcast area. Average inclusion of all other racial/ethnic groups on daily Roundtable panels dramatically shrank in comparison with their proportions in the broadcast area: Black panelists -25%, Asians -85%, Latino/a -70%, Arab/MENA -28%, and American Indians received no inclusion.

The measure of average daily racial inclusion obscures a deeper imbalance: All Arab/MENA panelists appeared in the final weeks of the study, marking their absence across 11 straight months following the start of the Israel/Gaza war. The newsworthiness of Arab/MENA, Palestinian, and Israeli perspectives is emphasized by the fact that Roundtable panels regularly, at times daily, discussed that war during those 11-months. The extended duration of those exclusions and discussions suggests an editorial practice that treats Arab/MENA people as legitimate subjects of discussion but not legitimate participants in discussions. That Palestinians were completely absent from the year of Roundtable episodes — and remain absent to this day — creates a powerful suggestion to audiences that Palestinians do not legitimately belong as participants in news discussions.

The data I so far present simply does not evidence The Roundtable’s dedicated implementation of WAMC’s diversification policies. Did program producers simply fail in their attempt to increase the diversity of their guest list and daily panels? If so, what were the challenges that hindered their strategic practices of diversification? For that matter, what practices are they using to pursue diversity? It is also possible Roundtable producers gave little or no priority to diversifying the guest list and daily panels. They might have added panelists-of-color in Sept/Oct of 2024 in response to growing public awareness of diversity problems. In any case, the data does support the conclusion that Roundtable editorial practices likely reinforce White perspective as a more legitimate news perspective than others.

I see anecdotal evidence of this in social media discussions about this series, in which people expressed expectations about which groups should appear in news discussions. For example, on a Facebook thread discussing my finding that Whites accumulated 7 times more appearances last year on The Roundtable than all non-White groups combined, user “Steve Manning” wrote, “Maybe that is because white people are more common than non-white people. Duh.” Reddit user “selsewon,” writing on the /Albany thread, rationalized Arab/MENA exclusion by stating, “hardly anyone is going to bat and [sic] eye at 0.7% of any population being overlooked”. These sorts of social media users (often angrily) implied that inclusion in news discussions should be proportional to the racial demographics of the larger community. Rationally informed by my above findings, I expect these same social media accounts will now angrily follow through on their commitments to proportionality and begin demanding greater inclusion of panelists-of-color on The Roundtable. LOL.

Other social media accounts offered openly racist statements endorsing exclusion of Palestinians from news discussions. Facebook account “Terry Gage,” for example, wrote “lol…’reasoned thoughts of Palestinians’…that’s hilarious.” The account Laurie Breyer Hobby wrote, “No one cares what terrorists and their enablers think.” These openly racist thinkers came to the defense of WAMC’s The Roundtable. I don’t think alliance with this deeply despairing and morally lost group is what WAMC desires or will benefit from, but it is the logical result of policies prioritizing White perspectives over all others. Active listeners working together to pressure station management can change that.

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

GitHub data includes CSV files for all Roundtable data analyzed in this series as well as American Community Survey tables (from US Census Dept. Social Explorer) on area racial/ethnic demographics and population counts.

2

Racial reporting for 37 Counties of WAMC’s broadcast area, included Native American/American Indian, American Community Survey 2022. Accessed through Social Explorer.

4

Arab ancestry reporting for 37 Counties of WAMC’s broadcast area, American Community Survey 2019. Accessed through Social Explorer. For American Indian data see footnote 2.

Cartoon by the amazing Davian Chester, known for his awesome series @Real_Toons.

Some Roundtable listeners may think the above cartoon is a gross overstatement and thus mean-spirited. But, as the data I release in this post shows, during the last year of episodes, all-White panels are the overwhelming norm on The Roundtable. This post will also show that daily racial diversity on the program declined over the year.1 (If you doubt my findings, please check out my data, which I link to at the end of this post.)

How well is The Roundtable implementing WAMC’s diversification policy?

Assessing the rate of daily racial inclusion on The Roundtable is important to inform how well program producers implement WAMC’s (federally mandated) policies on diversity, which call for “[d]iversifying our workplace, content, and audiences” and to “practices that are designed to fulfill the station’s commitment to diversity”. Casual observations might perceive The Roundtable as clearly dedicated to those policies. After all, the program recently hosted at least 4 special episodes prominently featuring non-White panelists (9/18, 9/19, 9/26, 10/8). On one such episode (the 9/19/24 panel on DEI, no less), regular Roundtable panelist Nic Rangel2 affirmed progress in racial inclusion on the show. “The Roundtable has gotten much more diverse in the last year, year and a half,” she stated.3 I wish I knew what informed her hopeful conclusion.

Obviously, it is important to try to clarify what is going on. The measures I provide help inform not only Rangel’s conclusion but also the extent to which Roundtable production practices tend to fulfill WAMC’s diversification policies — or tend to reinforce Whiteness as a more objective news perspective than the many other racial/ethnic perspectives of the broadcast area.

This is the second post in a series presenting findings from my data-driven study of a full-year (10/9/23 - 10/8/2024) of episodes on The Roundtable. The Roundtable is produced by the publicly funded NPR-affiliated radio station, WAMC, and reaches some 30,000 daily listeners in 7 US Northeast states, according to Nielsen data. Today’s post uncovers patterns in daily racial inclusion on Roundtable panels. Rates of daily inclusion are first important because they indicate which racial groups most consistently spoke on daily issues and thereby acquired greater power to address unfolding issues. Second, patterns of inclusion help shape ideological expectations about which groups legitimately belong in political discussions — and which groups do not.4

My data covers the 232 consecutive episodes spanning 10/9/23 – 10/8/24 and codes for these variables: the names of all 71 panelists who appeared on the show during the time range, their racial and ethnic identities, the specific episodes on which they appeared, and the per-episode racial proportion among panelists. This data enables me to provide counts of the total number of episodes featuring all-White panels, all-non-White panels, and all varieties of mixed-race panels in between. I then use this data for two additional purposes. First, I track changes in average inclusion on daily panels over time and, second, I compare rates of daily inclusion with the racial demographics of WAMC’s 37-some county broadcast area and its hometown of Albany, New York.

All-White panels are the norm on The Roundtable

The data shows that all-White panels are the overwhelming norm for The Roundtable. As Figure 1 shows, all-white panels made up 68% (157/232) of Roundtable panels that aired over the past year (10/9/23 - 10/08/24). The remaining 32% of panels including non-White perspectives almost invariably involved White dominated panels: The 65 White majority panels made up 28% of episodes, compared with the 3 non-White majority panels that made up less than 2% of episodes. Only 7 panels featured equal White/non-White inclusion. The number of all-non-White panels over the past year is zero (0). This means 222 episodes featured majority or all-White panels while only 10 featured equal or majority non-White panels.

Figure 1.

Measures of average (mean=88% White, median=100% White, mode=100% White) also emphasize the overriding pattern of 100% White panels on The Roundtable. However, the best way to determine if a value is outside the norm is to calculate standard deviations from the mean, or z-score. Average z-scores5 for the 50% White panels and majority non-White panels (33% White, 20% White) are 1.8, 2.3, and 2.9 respectively which (for this data) means they lie outside of 96% of the data.6 This means equal racial parity on Roundtable panels (let alone non-White majority) constitutes a marginal (<5%) deviation from the dominant pattern of all-White panels and the secondary pattern of White majority panels. So, average daily diversity on The Roundtable is skewed pretty badly towards Whites. But, as Nic Rangel suggested, perhaps racial diversity is getting better on The Roundtable? The data does not support her hypothesis.

Data shows varying levels of average White dominance, with diversity slightly declining overall

Diversity on The Roundtable varied over the past year but declined overall. Dividing the data on daily diversity into segments of time enables observation of shifts in racial inclusion patterns. I below offer two ways of dividing the data to fairly search for efforts at racial inclusion over time.

First, I simply divide the data by even numbers of episodes. The total set of episodes numbers 232, so even-division into seasonal segments results in 4 sets of 58 episodes (Figure 2). This division of data shows average White proportions on daily panels rising from just over 85% in fall 2023, to 87% in the spring, to a high of 94% in the summer, and then declining to 90% at the end of the annual cycle. This data perspective finds a 5% increase in White inclusion over the year.

Figure 2.

Second, I divide the data by obviously significant news-events that heightened the newsworthy importance of perspectives of panelists of color (Figure 3). The first time-segment begins on 10/9/23 (the first Roundtable episode after the 10/7 attacks by Hamas and Islamic Jihad) and ends on 1/25/24 with the ruling by the International Court of Justice that Israel was plausibly committing genocide (and needed to implement specific protocols in order to prevent genocide). The second segment runs from the following day, 1/26/24, to 5/2/24 and the violent repression of US student protests against the Gaza war and related US policy of support for that war. The third time segment runs from 5/3/24 to 8/30/24, that is, from new polling indications of historic opposition to US-Israel policy and Israel’s massive war, through the rise of ‘uncommitted’ voting blocs and delegates, to the highly contested Democratic National Convention which excluded elected Palestinian-American members of the Democratic party from speaking on the main stage but included Israeli-Americans not elected to office. The fourth segment runs to the anniversary of the 10/7 attacks.

Figure 3.

This division of data shows less of a decrease in diversity by year’s end because the final time-segment coincides with a shift in Roundtable practices. I documented that shift in my previous findings that found Roundtable producers added 8 new panelists of color in the five weeks starting September 2024 — an 80% increase in diversity over the 10 such panelists appearing over prior 11-months! Nonetheless, September’s increase in panelists only slightly improves the pattern of racial inclusion over time. Even from this more favorable view, White dominance on daily panels rose from 85% to 93% then fell to 88%, marking a 3% decline in racial diversity over the year. (Remember there is no margin of error for these numbers as they are not based on sample data but from the full-year population of Roundtable episodes.)

Put in context, as the death toll of Palestinians in Gaza and West Bank climbed to over 41,000, as late April polls showed an astounding 95% of Blacks opposed unquestioned US support for Israel’s war policy, and as Donald Trump and the GOP made opposition to immigrants their perhaps central campaign issue, The Roundtable decreased inclusion of Blacks and Latino/a sources and maintained exclusions of Palestinians and American Indians. This imbalance resulted in a total lack of perspective from American Indians, who may provide the determining votes in swing states (ABC/AP News, 10/26/2024). These practices also resulted in skewed Roundtable coverage of the Republican National Convention where overwhelmingly White crowds waved “Mass deportation now” signs and chanting “send them back”. Episodes covering the convention consisted of 19 White panelists and 1 non-White panelist, Dr. Jennifer Burns of UAlbany’s Department of Africana, Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies.7

These findings on shifting rates of daily racial inclusion also provide a basis of comparison with the racial demography of WAMC’s listening area and its home base community of Albany, NY. My next post will present that comparison and show White representation on The Roundtable disproportionately exceeded White presence in both those geographic zones.

Conclusion: normal pattern of all-White panels, and declining presence of non-Whites, belies WAMC’s claimed diversification policies

Prior findings in this series focused on the accumulation of appearances of racial groups on The Roundtable over the past year and found Whites appeared 7 times more often than all other racial/ethnic groups combined. Today’s post instead looked at daily racial inclusion and found all-White panels to be the overwhelming normal pattern on The Roundtable. Non-White inclusion, I showed, normally occurred as part of majority White panels, with racially balanced and non-White majority panels combined taking up less than 5% of episodes. I then presented two methods to search for changes in daily racial inclusion on panels over time, one of which was highly favorable to recent shifts in Roundtable sourcing practices. Both methods showed declines in diversity over the course of the year (5% and 3% respectively).

These findings indicate Roundtable producers provided White panelists with a dominant role in determining the kind of ‘objective political reality’ affirmed through the program. This notion of reality and objectivity constitute a basis The Roundtable uses to bond with White affluent listeners, upon whom the station economically depends. Yet the program and station also have responsibilities to other racial/ethnic groups, as committed to in the station’s own diversity policies.

One way Roundtable defenders could respond to these findings would be to argue that this high rate of White inclusion is acceptable as it likely hews close to the racial demography of WAMC’s broadcast area. While I reject the political logic that racial minority status delegitimizes political belonging, I will provide data to quantitively evaluate the proportionality of Roundtable daily racial inclusion.

My next post compares the daily shifting racial demographics of Roundtable panels with Census data on the 37 some counties that make up WAMC’s broadcast area. I will also compare the program’s daily racial inclusion with racial proportions of the City of Albany, NY, the hometown of The Roundtable. See you there!

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

Please feel free to review and criticize my data (GitHub) and my analysis of it. Post your comments below!

This post begins a series presenting research findings from my study of a full year of episodes of WAMC’s The Roundtable.1 Whites, I will first show, made 88% of all appearances on Roundtable panels over the past year. Second, I show that Roundtable producers shifted their sourcing practices starting in September 2024, the last month of the study. That shift, I also show, added new panelists of color and likely helped to convey an image of diversity on Roundtable panels useful for branding. but did not alter the cumulative pattern set across the prior 11-months.

Today’s post explores the first research question of the study: Which racial groups appeared most over the past year of Roundtable episodes? This question informs larger questions about the extent to which The Roundtable advances WAMC’s diversification policies or reinforces Whiteness as the ‘objective’ news perspective. (Link to GitHub data at the end of this post.) Today’s findings are based on data covering all 232 consecutive episodes spanning 10/9/23 – 10/8/24. The data enables analysis of the racial politics organized by Roundtable producers’ journalistic sourcing practices, as I explain in detail in my post on the context, theory, and methods I use to guide the study. The data I present today consists of the names of all 71 panelists who appeared on the show during the time range, their racial and ethnic identities, and the specific episodes on which they appeared. I use this data, first, to examine all 792 appearances by panelists across the year. Today’s analysis sheds light on which racial groups cumulatively participated most often across all Roundtable panels.

Access to participate in Roundtable discussions is not trivial. Nielsen data (2019) ranks WAMC at 95%+ in national importance and finds the program’s morning timeslot draws some 30,000 daily listeners in 7 Northeast US states (pp. 2, 3). Given the regular appearances of political party insiders on The Roundtable and of local, state, and federal lawmakers and officials on other WAMC programs, inclusion on The Roundtable confers ability not only to reach a diverse geography of some 7 million2 but also to reach governmental policy makers. These capacities to appear in political discussions and publicly address leaders of the state enable groups to contest false representations and affect policy making and are therefore fundamental to political life.

Participation in public political dialogue also shapes dominant ideological representations of which groups should be seen as ‘community members’ and should be seen as ‘others.’ As Prof. Barbara Savage, in her book Broadcasting Freedom, describes, access to radio during WWII “allowed a new black voice to be heard on the radio, a voice that challenged accepted portrayals of black abilities and placed African American contributions and culture at the heart of American history” (p. 271). Rates of racial inclusion in news media also affect popular ideas about who is authorized to participate in news discussions (Arguedas, Mukherjee, Nielsen, 20243). The struggle to contest and reject racial boundaries to political participation, and the stereotypes those boundaries sustain, should be an urgent goal for compassionate anti-racists of today.4

Findings on data for all appearances on Roundtable panels, 10/9/23 – 10/8/24

Whites dominated overall appearances on The Roundtable for the past year, the data shows. During that time, Roundtable producers chose Whites for 700 of 792 panelist seats (Figure 1). In other words, Whites occupied 88% of all panelist seats, leaving 12% for all other groups combined. African-Americans and Latino/a constituted the next largest groups of panelists with 49 appearances (6%) and 34 appearances (4%) respectively. Asians appeared 5 times and Arab/MENA guests 4 times, each constituting about .5% of all Roundtable panelist slots for the year. None of the 4 Arab/MENA guests were Palestinian. No American-Indian sources appeared on any panels during the study time range. The cumulative ratio of White to non-White appearances for the past year of Roundtable episodes stands at 7:1.  

Figure 1.

Roundtable producers shifted sourcing practices in September 2024

Though the data shows Whites captured 88% of seats on panels over the year, diversity was actually slightly worse for most of the study period. This is because Roundtable producers added 21 new panelists in the final month of the study (9/3/24 – 10/08/24). While that month included only 11% of all episodes for the year, those episodes marked a 42% increase to the guest list established over the prior 11-months.5 In fact, the 21 new guests who joined the show in the final month of the study outnumbered the 17 new guests who appeared across all prior 11-months combined (Table 1). The addition of 8 non-White panelists between 9/3 - 10/8/24 amounts to an 80% increase in the number of non-Whites (from 10 to 18) on Roundtable’s guestlist from the prior 11-months.

Table 1.

Now, it could be that adding a large number of new panelists is part of regular seasonal shifts in sourcing practices. However, my review of a similar period for the prior year (10/9/23-11/8/23) shows the addition of only 1 new panelist.6 Given the differences from the racial inclusion pattern of the prior 11-months of episodes and from a comparable prior-year period, it seems fair to conclude that the sudden addition of almost two-dozen panelists, many from marginalized groups, marks a change in Roundtable sourcing practices. Perhaps that change even reflects an intentional strategy of diversification, which would be welcome and sorely needed, as I explain next.

September’s addition of panelists-of-color follow 11-months of Arab/MENA exclusion — Palestinian exclusion continues

The prior 11-months (10/9/23 – 8/30/24) show complete exclusion of Arab/MENA people despite the growing worldwide importance of Israel’s war on Gaza, West Bank, and now Lebanon. While the September data show the new and welcome inclusion of 4 Arab/MENA panelists, producers did not include any Palestinians among the new guests.7 This means that for more than a year, during which Israel killed over 42,000 Palestinians and US policies supporting that violence came into historic popular criticism,8 The Roundtable kept Palestinian and other Middle East voices out of discussions. Roundtable producers did so despite the fact that Palestinian and Israeli-American sources made repeated requests to appear on the show, as I previously reported. As I will document in an upcoming post, Roundtable producers continue to ignore requests to appear on the program from local Palestinian and Middle East sources as well as from leaders of Palestine solidarity organizations. Given Roundtable producers’ more than a year-long practice of Palestinian exclusion as well as inconsistent and seemingly bad-faith dialogue with community leaders seeking to end that exclusion, one is left to infer such practices enforce an intentional, and thus discriminatory, editorial policy.

Image generated by DALL-E. I would love to work human political cartoonists. If you are one, please contact me!

Roundtable’s new sourcing practices did not shift the overall pattern

While the addition of 8 panelists from marginalized groups marks potential implementation of a conscious practice of greater racial inclusion by Roundtable producers, more is needed. Looking again at the increased inclusion starting September 2024, Whites still accumulated 85% (82 of 96) of appearances. This marks a 4% improvement over the 89% (618 of 696) of appearances acquired by Whites over the prior 11-months of the study but also matches the 85% (55 of 65) of appearances taken by Whites in the first month of the study. The final month of the study, despite seeming intentional efforts to diversify sourcing, yet falls within the range of the prior 11-months and thus continues the pattern of providing Whites greater access to participate on The Roundtable. I want to emphasize that the potential of this shift in Roundtable practices will ultimately be determined by whether or not producers sustain and deepen this possible new dedication to inclusion.

Conclusion: Overwhelming preference for White sources organizes White authority, not diversification

This post explored the research question, which racial groups appear most over the past year of Roundtable episodes? The data provides a clear answer: Whites appeared most often the past year (10/9/23 - 10/8/24) and did so at a rate of 7 times more than all other racial/ethnic groups combined. As I explained previously, appearing on The Roundtable gives panelists a kind of power: an increased capacity to reach elite audiences and policymakers with narratives and ideas about policies and social issues. In this light, the above finding that Whites accumulated far more appearances on The Roundtable also reveals that program producers directed vastly more communicative power to Whites, who are already economically advantaged and over-served in mainstream news (Forbes, 4/23/23), than all other racial/ethnic groups.

The above analysis also helps respond to the original questions of this research series: To what extent do Roundtable producers tend to fulfill WAMC’s own diversification policy or reinforce White authority over news discussions? My finding that panelists-of-color accumulated 12% of appearances shows a highly limited role for non-Whites in Roundtable discussions. The data pattern indicates a journalistic practice that largely (but not completely) reinforces Whiteness as the assumed standpoint for objective news and thus the basis of authority over news discussions.

But wait a gosh darn minute! Doesn’t the method I use (measuring the total number of appearances by racial/ethnic groups over the year) overlook how Roundtable sourcing practices may instead aim to consistently include diversity on each daily panel? In other words, Whites might appear more overall but daily panels might consistently include small numbers of panelists-of-color. Hmmm, could be . . . I better check that out.

I investigate that possibility in the next post by analyzing the average daily racial balance on each of the 232 panels that aired during the year of the study time range. By doing so, I will be able to count the frequency of racially diverse panels as well as racially homogenous panels. Those measures define normal daily patterns of racial inclusion but also provide a basis to identify changes in daily patterns over time — and that enables me to quantitatively assess whether daily racial diversity improved or declined on The Roundtable over the past year.

This is an important question, especially given the recent on-air claim (9/19/24) by regular Roundtable panelist Nic Rangel (Executive Director of the Legal Aid Society of Northeastern New York) that, “The Roundtable has gotten much more diverse in the last year, year and a half”.9 I would very much like for her hopeful conclusion to prove true. Please remember, I’m just the messenger.

Data analyzed in this post (GitHub).

This post announces my launch of a new research series exploring the racial politics of WAMC’s The Roundtable using an original year-long data set (10/9/23 - 10/8/24). The series explores patterns of racial inclusion in the data to shed light on the role of Roundtable in potentially diversifying racial perspectives in news — or reinforcing Whiteness as the legitimate news perspective. The question is important as it informs the extent to which Roundtable producers tend to fulfill WAMC’s own diversification policy or reinforce White authority over news discussions.

In the post you are reading now, I explain the concepts guiding the upcoming series of research posts. I draw on scholarship to explain the ways I make sense of The Roundtable as a news-product resulting from processes of production carried out under particular economic and racial-political conditions. I explain how I make sense of the professional journalistic practices that produce The Roundtable and how those practices are additionally affected by WAMC’s diversity policy and economic model. I argue that quantitative analysis of racial inclusion on Roundtable episodes is a means to assess how well Roundtable sourcing practices tend to fulfill the station’s (federally mandated) diversity policies or instead tend to reinforce White cultural and political authority. Finally, I describe the suitability of my data for that analysis.

How the study uncovers racial politics on The Roundtable

The study reveals political work on The Roundtable by uncovering patterns in the racial choices program producers make in their daily practices of source selection. Source selection is a journalistic practice of deciding which persons should speak in news. The seemingly simple practice of selecting news sources determine access to participate in public political discourse and so is also a basis to protect dominant policies and narratives from substantive challenge. In short, through source selection practices, journalists regulate the boundaries to participate in political communication.

While conducting source-selection practices, Roundtable producers are doubly obligated to fulfill professional journalistic standards as well as WAMC’s Community Representation Policy Statement. WAMC’s policy statement commits to “[d]iversifying our workplace, content, and audiences” and to “practices that are designed to fulfill the station’s commitment to diversity”.1 That statement names “race and ethnicity . . . political affiliation and geographic location” as marks of diversity for inclusion. Roundtable producers would thus be expected to mesh these institutional goals of racial/ethnic and ideological (and other) diversity, and their practices of fulfillment, with practices aimed at professional journalistic objectivity. Objectivity practices seek to “establish[] a shared sense of reality, making sure that depictions are supported by evidence and checked against challenges of their validity” (Schmidt, 2024, p. 5582). Media historian Michael Schudson’s (20013) account finds objective reporting practices developed as a way to affirm versions of political reality that met audience expectations while also cultivating a bond with audiences that imbued journalism with social authority.

Journalism Professor María E. Len-Ríos (20234) argues that US journalism too-often continues to ground that “shared sense of reality” in the White perspective: the “current system of reporting centers White experience as the basis for building credibility and trust with news audiences” (p. 115). Studying WAMC’s federal partner and model, NPR, public media scholar Professor Laura Garbes (Current, 11/ 13/2017) documents processes that entrenched “whiteness” into hiring and production practices, despite the network’s founding mission5 of serving underserved communities. “Whiteness used here refers to how NPR’s rules, practices and norms were decided upon by a majority-white group of individuals, hailing from majority-white cultural spaces”. While WAMC arguably prioritizes majority-white culture, it is unarguable that a majority-white group decides station policies, as shown by my recent post on WAMC’s own data documenting years-long White dominance on the station’s governing board (85% White), staff (92% White), and all-White senior staff.

The station’s economic situation also creates pressures on news producers to cater to a White perspective on reality. Never sufficiently funded by the federal government, NPR and its many affiliates relied on listeners but also corporate donors and the network came to further rely on a target demographic desired by those corporations: affluent Whites (Chavez, 20216). WAMC too strategically outreaches to that affluent demographic, according to its own website for underwriters7 and Nielsen data for 2018-19. Though I could not find discussion of the race of listeners and donors in WAMC documents, a 2022 study by the New York City Comptroller’s office finds median household net worth of White New York State residents was $277k, compared to Black New Yorkers, $19k, and Latinoa $12k. The NYCC report offers strong evidence to suggest that WAMC depends on an affluent listener and donor base that is disproportionately White.

Journalistic production at WAMC is thus conditioned by economic dependence on affluent White listeners and businesses and by White dominance of production and management at the station. These conditions work against the claimed intent of the station’s diversity policies, even as the station uses diversity to appeal to listener donors – such as at the 9/19 DEI panel on The Roundtable. Questions fairly arise to the faithful implementation of those diversity policies, especially in light of WAMC’s unmet promises to report its diversification strategy and practices.

For these reasons it makes sense to evaluate how well those claimed commitments to racial inclusion take form in practices of daily production. Diversification practices would be enacted in Roundtable source selection practices and would produce episodes fulfilling WAMC’s publicly stated commitment to content that “celebrate[s] the diversity of our broadcast and live audience”. Special Roundtable episodes, like that on DEI and others inclusive of Middle East other marginalized groups, constitute anecdotal evidence of implementation of that public commitment to racial diversity. So, then, why am I bothering to do all this research?

Because only a systematic and evidenced examination of The Roundtable can substantively distinguish patterns of racial inclusion that reflect the diversity of the station’s larger community from those producing an image of diversity that disguises White cultural and political authority. A dangerous racial politics of tokenism emerges where a cultivated image of diversity, useful for institutional branding, fails to accompany daily strategic practices not only to eliminate racial boundaries to participation but also allow speakers to challenge ideological boundaries of host institutions (Childress, et al., 20248). Such systematic investigation requires measurement of the patterns of racial inclusion resulting from Roundtable practices and the extent to which those patterns are likely to sustain multiple racial perspectives on reality or characterize tokenist inclusion that reaffirms White cultural authority.

Method and data

I operationalize inquiry into patterns of racial inclusion on The Roundtable by compiling an appropriately comprehensive data set (described below) to answer the following research questions:

1. Which racial groups appear most over the past year of Roundtable episodes?

2. 1. What is the average daily racial balance on Roundtable panels?

   2. Have patterns in daily racially balance shifted over time?

3. How do the above patterns of racial representation compare with the racial demographics of WAMC’s broadcast area and home community, the City of Albany, New York?

4. To what extent do these patterns fulfill characteristics of tokenism?

To explore the research questions, I code all 71 panelists for their racial/ethnic identity and count their appearances across all 232 episodes. For question 1, I count how often members of different racial groups appeared over the course of the year-long dataset. For questions 2a and 2b, I measure the average proportions of racial inclusion in daily Roundtable panels and then compare averages across segments of data divided by newsworthy events and again by even divisions of consecutive episodes. Research question 1 provides a view on race as a factor determining overall access to participate in public political discourse The Roundtable, while research question 2 and 2a observes race as basis of belonging in news discussions. Research question 3 deepens our view on how inclusion on The Roundtable may inform listeners’ expectations about who has a right to participate in news discussions regardless of their presence in our community. To inform research question 3, I compare measures of average daily racial inclusion (RQ2) with Census data for WAMC’s broadcast area (derived from the Census tool, Social Explorer).

For research question 4, I offer a criteria to observe tokenism that builds on the work of Childress and of former Roundtable panelist and civil rights leader Barbara Smith (Smith & Smith, 19819). Data patterns consistent with tokenism would show 1) marginal inclusion of non-Whites, as 2) consistent minority presence or 3) segregated into exceptional (‘special’) situations, that in either case would, 4) “obscure underlying inequalities” (Childress, p. 31), 5) provide branding benefits to the host, and/or 6) task sources with “speaking for the race” (Smith & Smith, 1981, p. 12310). While my quantitative analysis of racial inclusion patterns provides a complete basis to assess criteria 1-3, I also offer a limited qualitative analysis of station branding and episode contents to partially assess criteria 4-6.

Data

My data consists of the population of all 232 episodes of The Roundtable between 10/9/23 - 10/8/24 and captures the name of all 71 panelists appearing on those episodes, their racial/ethnic identities, and the dates of their appearances. Why is this data suitable to inform the above research questions? First, because it is population data rather than sample data, it is perfectly representative of the pattern of racial inclusion on The Roundtable over the past year. Second, because race/ethnicity and appearance variables enable measures of both overall patterns in racial inclusion and daily averages of racial inclusion.

Third, because the time-range both includes all seasonal cycles of news-production and because it covers a period of news production profoundly shaped by racial meanings. The hundreds of Roundtable episodes following the 10/7 attacks on southern Israel cover a period of sustained political crisis during which claims of antisemitism and Islamophobia rationalized competing views on US policies either as fighting “hate” and “terror” (CNN, 5/7/2024) or supporting settler colonial genocide (CAIR, 8/28/2024). Oh, and by the way, the time period in-question leads to a US Presidential Election in which candidate Trump invokes racist claims (NBC, 6/28/24) against Spanish speaking immigrants in order to smear his opponent Kamala Harris, the first Black female presidential candidate in US history!

For the above reasons, the data is aptly suited to the research questions. The research questions, in turn, are aptly designed to assess how well sourcing practices by Roundtable producers may tend to organize diversity reflecting that of WAMC’s broadcast area — or to promote White cultural and political authority, either by racial exclusion or by inclusion in ways characteristic of tokenism.

I begin presentation of research findings with this post investigating RQ1 by analyzing patterns of racial inclusion in the set of all panelist appearances on the program from 10/9/23 – 10/9/24.

Those of us in the Northeast who care about public media journalism recognize its unique role in building a larger awareness of our local communities than commercial journalism, with its over-riding profit motive, can afford. Public radio, like WAMC, thus somewhat uniquely holds the potential to reach a cross-racial, geographically associated mass audience to defy the restraints on humanity imposed by what Great Barrington’s own W. E. B. Du Bois called “the color line.”

To defeat today’s dehumanizing campaigns requires renewed investment in common belonging in humanity across color lines wherever they appear. This means not only condemning right-wing racist anti-DEI efforts but helping WAMC become the kind of inclusive and diverse channel for humanitarian democratic communication that station management promised but did not provide.

WAMC’s own Community Representation Policy Statement specifies diversity commitments and goals of

1. “Diversifying our workplace, content, and audiences”,

2. defining “practices that are designed to fulfill the station’s commitment to diversity” and

3. publicly releasing “an annual report describing the station’s diversity efforts.”1

Yet recent evidence raises concerns about WAMC’s commitment to these commitments and goals.

• WAMC has not published that annual report on its efforts to diversity some 10-months after its above pledge to do so.

• WAMC reported, but did not publicize, its 2024 demographics showing Whites made up 85% of its trustees and 92% of staff. In contrast, WAMC’s listening area2 is 74% White, Albany County is 70% White,3 and the City of Albany only 50% White.4

• WAMC’s senior staff is 100% White.

• The above numbers do not show progress: Current WAMC board and staff numbers are actually slightly more White than in 2022. Senior staff was also 100% White in 2022.   

• WAMC’s 2023-24 federal CPB filings on hiring did not show evidence the station specifically sought out candidates of color for its journalism positions, none of which were at the senior staff level, as I reported in June.

• WAMC lacks any news staff or trustees of Middle East identity. Yet these perspectives are especially needed amid historic levels of violence in the Middle East and swelling domestic debates about Islamophobia and antisemitism. 

• The Roundtable failed to include a single panelist of Palestinian, Israeli, or Middle East/North African identity over the first 11-months of the Gaza war.

  • Worse, emails I recently published showed Sarah LaDuke and Joe Donahue rejected sources from these groups who were willing to appear on the show.

• The Roundtable features only marginal inclusion of people of color. My forthcoming review of 205 consecutive episodes starting 10/9/23 shows Whites filled 89% of seats on panels compared to the 74% White presence of WAMC’s listening area.

WAMC, according to 2019 Nielsen reporting, relies on a White affluent over-65 demographic. That audience is not sustainable in the long-term. For ethical and practical reasons, but most of all to give voice to the diverse and inclusive communities that constitutes the basis of political democracy against fascism and authoritarianism, WAMC must diversify.

Producers at the Roundtable show they have the ability to attract more guests of color by that fact the 9/19 DEI event features such 3 panelists who have not appeared on any other episodes since at least 10/7/23.5 What is sorely needed is for listeners to make plain that we recognize the crucial political importance of greater diversity on WAMC and The Roundtable at this watershed historical moment.

What can we, as listeners who care about the future of WAMC, do to empower the station to re-commit to its goals of “Diversifying our workplace, content, and audiences”? 

Those who care about the future of WAMC can call on station managers to

1. Publicly release its diversification strategy and goals, as pledged last November.

2. Publish its annual report on its practices to fulfill its diversification goals, also as pledged last November.

3. Conduct a senior staff/management level job search for a journalist of color and empower them to conduct outreach to communities of color in the listening area, including Palestinian and MENA communities, to learn their interests and needs, create content addressing those needs, and thereby expand the listener base.

4. Recruit leaders from communities of color to serve on WAMC’s board.

5. Recruit Palestinian and pro-Palestinian panelists for The Roundtable.

6. Recruit more people of color panelists for The Roundtable.

Seven years ago esteemed civil rights leader Barbara Smith, then a regular Roundtable panelist, went public to reveal The Roundtable repeatedly passed over her recommended Latino/a, Muslim, Trans, and Black panelists for Whites and did so in the immediate wake of White supremacist violence at Charlottsville. “I have never willingly supported tokenism or racial segregation. As a matter of principle I decided to leave,” she stated at the time. While listeners did not act on her warnings then, we have a historic opportunity to do so at this historic moment today.

WAMC’s new CEO Sarah Gilbert can be reached at sgilbert@wamc.org

The Roundtable’s producer Sarah LaDuke can be reached at sladuke@wamc.org

Roundtable host Joe Donahue can be reached at jdonahue@wamc.org

Image generated by DALL-E (I would love to work with a human political cartoonist. If you are one, please contact me!)

• Corrected, updated version: I obtained one additional email since original publication of this article. I added that email into the thread provided at the end of the post and integrated its content into the discussion below.

There have been 205 episodes of WAMC’s weekday news panel program The Roundtable since the start of the Israel-Gaza war—none of which included a single Palestinian, Israeli, or Middle East/North African (MENA) panelist, new data shows. In the same period, according to emails published below, Roundtable producers themselves acknowledged—but did not act to correct—the program’s failure to include pro-Palestinian voices to balance pro-Israel sentiments expressed regularly on the program.

Ethnic Exclusion of Palestinians, Israelis, and Middle Eastern/North Africans

Fifty individuals appeared on the Roundtable as panelists during the 205 episodes from 10/09/2023 to 8/30/2024 (Table 1, below). Some appeared only once; some appeared on dozens of episodes. With approximately 3-4 panelists per episode, there were a total of 686 “seats” that a Palestinian, Israeli, or other Middle East panelist could have filled. Discussion of the Israel-Palestine crisis occurred almost daily, yet none of the panelists seated at the Roundtable had roots in the region that absorbed so much attention across hundreds of consecutive episodes. Roundtable episodes spanned coverage of Hamas’s 10/7 attack on Israel, Israel’s attacks on Gaza, the International Court of Justice declaring Israel’s attacks to constitute genocide, and massive student protests, and polls showing majority domestic disapproval of Israeli military actions in Gaza. Even as events increased the newsworthiness of Palestinian, Israeli, and MENA perspectives, people from these directly affected groups were denied any representation on the signature WAMC morning news program for almost a year – and counting.

I emailed Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke and host Joe Donahue a week prior to publishing this post to inform them of my findings and inquire about their panelist recruitment efforts and policies. They did not respond. Given the numerous MENA people in the business, civic, religious, and higher education institutions of the WAMC listening area, it strains belief that Roundtable producers could not recruit even one such panelist. Could a policy of discrimination be responsible for The Roundtable’s troubling pattern of ethnic exclusion?

Political Exclusion of Pro-Palestinian Guests

Similar questions about patterns of ethnic and political exclusion are raised by emails (appended below) and statements provided to me by Albany area sources. In those emails Roundtable producers validate concerns about the exclusion of pro-Palestinian voices, only to then perpetuate that exclusion.

In a 2/28/24 email with the subject line “Will you please play fair?,” Dr. Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos, a regular Roundtable listener and participant with the Hudson Valley chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace1 (a US human rights organization known for protests against the Israeli occupation and war on Palestinians) reached out to Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke with the following concern:

“You had an apologist for Israeli on today (John [Faso, former Republican Congressperson from NY-19]). You then did not respond to listeners’ dismay at the lack of pushback. Why not invite a guest panelist who can speak to the Palestinian narrative?? This is sorely needed!”

LaDuke replied, “Do you know anyone? We have been looking.” Sotiropoulos promptly provided contact information for three candidates who were willing to participate on The Roundtable if invited: a Palestinian affiliated with the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community (a coalition of members of three mosques in the Hudson Valley) and two members of Jewish Voice for Peace, one Israeli-American.

LaDuke’s actions thereafter raise doubts about the seriousness of her stated interest in finding a panelist to speak to the Palestinian narrative. Over the next week and a half, LaDuke failed to reach out to any of the contacts Sotiropoulos provided. In response to several prompts from Sotiropoulos emphasizing the urgency of the matter, LaDuke explained the delay, first, as due to illness and, later, as pending a need to consult Joe Donahue, the Roundtable host. On 3/11/24, when LaDuke stated “I’m emailing with” Sotiropoulos’s Palestinian contact “to find a date that works.” After two additional follow-up emails from Sotiropoulos on 3/11 and 3/14, LaDuke stated “I’m waiting on a reply” from the Palestinian source. Sotiropoulos replied within 2 hours urging LaDuke to move on to the Israeli-American and Jewish-American sources from JVP.

LaDuke replied, “The people you’ve suggested aren’t the only people we’re pursuing. Joe is out this week and I’m dancing as fast as I can.” That statement is important, first, as it suggests that Roundtable producers were in an active outreach process to additional sources of Palestinian heritage or from Palestine solidarity organizations. Second, it again represents Joe Donahue as necessary for making sourcing decisions. After that 3/14 exchange, LaDuke stopped responding to Sotiropoulos, who urged LaDuke to contact her sources in two more emails marking the end of the thread.

The Palestinian contact told Sotiropoulous several weeks later that he did not recall ever being contacted by LaDuke or anyone at WAMC. None of Sotiropoulous’s contacts ever appeared on The Roundtable, and both JVP sources confirmed to me as of 9/2 that they never heard from LaDuke. John Faso, on the other hand, appeared another 7 times after Sotiropoulos raised her concerns about unfairness.

LaDuke’s statement that Roundtable producers “have been looking” for pro-Palestine perspectives is a tacit acknowledgement of the absence of that perspective from the show. In this light, her subsequent actions suggest, at best, a lack of concern about that absence or, at worst, an editorial choice to sustain it. If Roundtable producers in truth did pursue other sources beyond those from Sotiropoulos, why did those sources not appear on the show? [My analysis of a year of Roundtable episodes finds zero Palestinian panelists.] Even if LaDuke reached out to the Palestinian source and he did not reply, why did LaDuke and Donahue drop the effort to include the Israeli-American?

This data-documented pattern of ethnic discrimination against people from Palestine and the Middle East/North Africa region could reflect unconscious ethnic bias or an implicit policy. My own recent emails to LaDuke and Donahue gave them an opportunity to clarify these questions and they chose not to respond. 

WAMC should include Middle Eastern/North African panelists and representatives of the Palestinian narrative on The Roundtable not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because it is a step towards fulfilling the station’s own “Community Representation Policy,” as required for federal funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. As WAMC’s policy states,

“The overall goal of WAMC is to provide programming as varied as the human experience. Our mission is to serve the public by preparing and presenting non-profit and non-commercial educational, instructional, and cultural radio and live programs that celebrate the diversity of our broadcast and live audience.”

The data and emails I presented in this post show that The Roundtable is not fulfilling that promise, much as my previous post showed that WAMC’s staff and board similarly fail to reflect the diversity of its listening area. WAMC’s listening area includes states among those with the highest populations of persons identifying as Middle Eastern or North African in the 2020 Census: New York (305K) and Massachusetts (114K).2 Given the state-governmental importance of capital district news, the station bears some duty to that larger New York MENA community. Even just looking at demographics within WAMC’s specific broadcast area, we still find likely tens of thousands of Middle East/North African people spanning from Worcester to Berkshire counties in Massachusetts,3 with hundreds more in the Albany, New York area.4 If WAMC and The Roundtable seek to avoid being seen as enforcing an ethnically and political biased editorial policy, they need to expand The Roundtable guest list to include Palestinian and other MENA people as well as those leading historic and popular movements to change US-Israel policy.

Table 1. All panelist on The Roundtable, 10/9/23-8/30/24, with names and MENA heritage. Total panelists = 50

Email exchange between WAMC’s The Roundtable producer Sarah LaDuke and listeners advocating for balanced political inclusion on the show

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Mon, Mar 18, 2024 at 4:29 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Seriously! John Fasso AGAIN, today, with his abhorrent apologia for Israel?! Really??

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 11:16 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

I understand, thank you, I'm rolling this squeaky wheel as weeks/months pass and the issue grows ever more timely.

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 11:05 AM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

Hi Carol,

The people you’ve suggested aren’t the only people we’re pursuing. Joe is out this week and I’m dancing as fast as I can.

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <csotirop@nmu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2024 10:52 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

I suggest moving in to the others:

Dara Silverman

[email redacted]

[Phone redacted]

Keren Carmeli

[email redacted]

[Phone redacted]

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 7:59 AM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

I’m waiting on a reply from Abdallah.

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2024 7:58 AM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Good Thursday morning, Sarah. Has a date been arranged with Abdallah, and/or have either of the suggested Jewish Voice for Peace members been contacted?

Carol S.

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2024 12:28 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Very good. I think it would be even more effective to have a member of Hudson Valley Jewish Voice for Peace on with him.

From: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Date: Mon, Mar 11, 2024 at 12:08 PM
Subject: RE: Will you please play fair?
To: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>

Carol,

I’m emailing with Abdallah Qotate [Palestinian source] to find a date that works.

Best,

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 11, 2024 12:03 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Fwd: Will you please play fair?

Good Monday morning, Sarah,

Please let me know if you have been able to contact the recommended individuals representing Jewish Voice for Peace and the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community. Or, let me know if the station does not wish to hear other voices at this critical juncture.

Thank you,

Carol S.

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Date: Fri, Mar 8, 2024 at 1:25 PM
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>

Hello Sarah on Friday afternoon,

Just left a voicemail --- wondering if you've contacted any of the individuals I was able to recommend. As of Tuesday evening, none had heard from you. Please let me know what I can do to help make this happen as soon as possible, given current events in the Middle East 

Carol S.

Landline [phone redacted]

Mobile. [phone redacted]

On Mon, Mar 4, 2024, 3:47 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Thank you, Sarah, and foremost I hope you're feeling much better!

On Mon, Mar 4, 2024 at 3:12 PM Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org> wrote:

Hi Carol,

I was out sick last week and am doing the inevitable race to catch up today. I need to talk to Joe about your suggested guests. We are working on it.

Best,

Sarah LaDuke

Producer - The Roundtable and The Book Show

WAMC Northeast Public Radio

318 Central Ave. Albany NY 12206

Twitter: @WAMCRoundtable @The_Book_Show

Instagram: @wamcradio

she/her

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Monday, March 4, 2024 3:08 PM
To: Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org>
Subject: Re: Will you please play fair?

Greetings Sarah on Monday March 4th,

  I just now left a message on your voicemail, to inquire as to whether you've been able to reach out to any of the recommended individuals who can speak to the issues at hand from the perspective of Palestinian justice. The matter is beyond timely, it is urgent, and I hope it is at or near the top of your priorities to provide listeners a countering voice to that of John Fasso last week.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.

Sincerely,

Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos

mobile    [phone redacted]

landline  [phone redacted]

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024, 3:53 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Hello again Sarah,

I've received confirmation on the third person prepared to present the contrasting narrative to the one voiced by John Faso and other Israeli apologists for whom WAMC has given air time. Below are all three:

1) Abdallah Qotate of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community       email [email redacted]             tel [phone redacted]

2) Dara Silverman of Jewish Voice for Peace-Hudson Valley   email [email redacted]  tel [phone redacted]

3) Keren Carmeli, Israeli-American and prominent in Jewish Voice for Peace  email [email redacted] tel [phone redacted]

On Thu, Feb 29, 2024 at 1:49 PM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Hello Sarah,

Two people I highly recommend and who have agreed to be contacted. I am waiting to hear back from a third. It would be terrific. i.e., most impactful, if Abdallah Qotate and a member of Jewish Voice for Peace.could both be invited. Thank you and I'll be in touch with the name & contact info of the third individual, who has spoken widely and is, I believe, Israeli-American. I promised to get back within a day, so I'm sending the two below forthwith, with the hope that you can move forward on this important issue.

Thank you, Carol S.

1) Abdallah Qotate of the Mid-Hudson Islamic Community       email [email redacted]             tel [phone redacted]

2) Dara Silverman of Jewish Voice for Peace-Hudson Valley   email [email redacted]  tel [phone redacted]

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024 at 11:32 AM Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]> wrote:

Thank you, Sarah, I will definitely get back to you within a day!

Carol

On Wed, Feb 28, 2024, 10:44 AM Sarah LaDuke <sladuke@wamc.org> wrote:

Hello Carol,

Do you know anyone? We have been looking. 

Best,

Sarah

From: Carol Strauss Sotiropoulos <[email redacted]>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 10:42 AM
To: Panel <Panel@wamc.org>
Subject: Will you please play fair?

You had an apologist for Israeli on today (John). You then did not respond to listeners' dismay at the lack of pushback. 

Why not invite a guest panelist who can speak to the Palestinian narrative?? This is sorely needed!

Carol Sotiropoulos 

Notes

2

Rachel Marks, Paul Jacobs, and Alli Coritz (2023, September 21). ‘Lebanese, Iranian and Egyptian Populations Represented Nearly Half of the MENA Population in 2020 Census’, Census.gov. https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2023/09/2020-census-dhc-a-mena-population.html

WAMC’s board of trustees, station staff, and senior staff are overwhelming white and lack any representation from Arab, Palestinian, and Middle Eastern/North African people, according to new data released by the station to Guidestar on June 25, 2024 following inquiries to the station by JamesEarlOwensPhD. WAMC is the northeast regional affiliate of National Public Radio. This new data shows WAMC’s trustees are 85% white, senior staff are 100% white, and other staff are 92% white. These revelations reinforce concerns raised by my recent study of The Roundtable, WAMC’s signature daytime news program, which found a 93% white guestlist that completely excluded Arab and Palestinians in recent coverage of campus protests against Israel’s war on Palestine.

Lack of Transparency about Lack of Diversity

The new Guidestar data showing WAMC’s overwhelming whiteness followed public outreach, research, and inquiries to the station by this blog. The data was not previously reported on WAMC’s website, despite promises there stated as part of the station’s Community Representation Policy. That policy, among other commitments, promises to post “an annual report describing the station’s diversity efforts,” including “employment statistics for the station and surrounding area.” As of publication (7/5/2024), WAMC’s website still does not provide that demographic and employment report nor the also promised information on “hiring goals, guidelines . . . and any actions taken to support” the station’s claimed diversity and inclusion goals. The webpage timestamp (“Reviewed & Updated November 2023”) shows over 7-month delay (and counting) for these promised public disclosures. A different WAMC page does provide access to their FY23 Annual Financial Report to CPB and FY23 Local Content and Service Report but those documents do not discuss hiring goals or guidelines, or efforts to support the Community Representation Policy.

In reply to my emails pointing out these omissions and requesting the information promised in their Community Representation Policy, WAMC Interim CEO/COO Stacey Rosenberry on June 25, 2024 provided me limited—but damning—data verifying white dominance among station management and personnel. She also declined to clarify if the board or staff included Arab, Palestinian, or Middle Eastern/North African people. Was it a coincidence that, later that same day, WAMC also posted new demographic data on Guidestar that publicly confirmed the overwhelming whiteness of leadership and staff and that zero staff or trustees identified as Middle Eastern/North African, a category encompassing Palestinians and Arabs?1 This lack of diversity at WAMC, historical data shows, is not new, nor is the station improving racial inclusion on the among trustees, senior staff, or newsroom and other staff.

Lack of Progress on Lack of Diversity

Past Guidestar data shows that WAMC failed to improve diversity among staff and leadership since at least 1/19/22, the earliest data it was possible to recover using the Internet Archive (since WAMC, unlike NPR, does not publicly provide historical data). In January of 2022, nearly 2-years prior to the station’s 11/23 stated commitment to improve diversity, WAMC reported staff to be 90% white (compared with 92% white today). Senior staff were 100% white then, as now. Diversity among WAMC trustees actually declined (in number and proportion) since 2022: trustees were 71% white in early 2022 and are 85% white today. Trustees included 6 people of color in 2022 and only 2 today. In comparison, NPR’s staff was 56% white in 2023, down from 66% white in 2019. As WAMC’s own data shows white dominance among leadership and staff unchanged or worsening, WAMC’s diversity strategy seems either not working or not actually in practice.

Source: WAMC reporting to Guidestar, 1/19/2022, cached 1/22/2022 by Internet Archive; WAMC reporting to Guidestar, 6/25/2024, https://www.guidestar.org/profile/22-2400593

What is WAMC’s strategy to increase diversity? (Does WAMC actually have a diversification strategy?)

What strategy guides WAMC’s diversification efforts? If the station does have a diversification strategy, why didn’t it work? Why does WAMC continue to fall short of its own stated Community Representation Policy of “recruiting for its staff, volunteers and boards highly capable, diverse individuals who can participate in the organization effectively, ethically and creatively and who can serve as successful advocates for public media in the communities we serve”? Why is WAMC so white?

My review of WAMC’s Equal Employment Opportunity filings (2023-24, link below) indicates that, sensibly, the station’s approach to attracting diverse applicants includes advertising jobs in a variety of print and online channels. However, the filings show that the station advertised jobs in a narrow range of channels that were not likely to diversify applicant pools: local newspapers, Indeed.com, and JournalismJobs.com. The station did not report recruiting through the nation’s many minority press associations nor colleges with high minority enrollment, per that filing.  The station’s one reported “long term recruitment initiative,” a mentoring program connecting junior with senior staff, seems to have only served white reporters/producers.2

WAMC EEO Public File 2023-2024

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More transparency from WAMC would be required to more accurately track changes in diversity at the station over time and better understand which strategies have been pursued and why they have failed. In our emails, CEO/COO Rosenberry declined to answer when asked if the station had a strategy “to expand content, staff, and/or audience diversity”. She also declined to answer questions about how diverse local communities could get involved with the station board or community advisory board. This kind of refusal to engage violates the spirit of the “Three D” framework—“Diversity, Digital, and Dialogue”— that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting uses3 for the last decade “to guide its grant-making decisions and help public media remain true to its mission.” Rosenberry’s (non)response arguably adds “Disengagement” to that list.  

Email to Stacey Rosenberry, unanswered as of publication date

Why Diverse Leadership and Staffing Matters

The above discussion highlights the near absence of non-white people at WAMC, the shortcomings of the station’s strategy to address that exclusion, and anecdotal evidence of one senior manager’s reluctance to engage listeners on the topic – more evidence of this reluctance to come in a future post! WAMC's lack of management and newsroom diversity matters. For one, hiring choices shape content and the potential for news to create common understandings (or increase misunderstandings) and to expand (or narrow) awareness of people’s suffering. It is outrageous that as the nation engages in broad public debate over US policies supporting Israel’s massive violence against Palestine, and Israeli threats to expand that war to Lebanon, WAMC management and news staff lack even a single professional with a Middle East/North African perspective.

These problems of exclusion and disconnection are themselves barriers to attracting news and management talent whose life experiences as people of color could enable them to build new connections with similar local communities (a stated reason for NPR’s creation4). But with sincere and strategic efforts, it is possible for NPR affiliates to diversify their personnel without alienating established, predominantly white and affluent audiences. In his recent book, The Sound of Exclusion, Christopher Chávez points to the 2015 success of Los Angeles public radio KPCC as a blueprint for expanding diversity and growing audiences. KPCC grew audiences by 27% and Latino/a audiences by 96% by strategically hiring a Latino senior producer; investing in community engagement with local leaders and organizations; and hosting focus groups “to assess which issues and stories were important to members of the local community and which stories were not being told or were being told incorrectly” (p. 204).

Of course, the Northeast region is not a densely populated metropolis like LA. Yet strategically hiring newsroom and management personnel from non-white communities and empowering them to listen to our diverse local communities are promising strategies for WAMC to strengthen news coverage and diversify and increase audiences. Community members should demand that WAMC implement these and other reforms immediately to diversify the station and publish regular, transparent annual reporting about progress on their website and on Guidestar.

Contact WAMC and let them know your thoughts. Stacey Rosenberry, Interim CEO: srosenberry@wamc.org, WAMC Main Office: (518) 465-5233

If you have experiences about raising diversity concerns to WAMC, please contact me by email. I will keep all communications confidential. Sharing your story can inform future posts on this blog and help other listeners know what’s going on!

This blog offers a new space to discuss The Roundtable, the prominent publicly produced daily morning news panel program on NPR’s northeast regional affiliate, WAMC. I hope to hear comments from people who listen regularly and care about the program as well as from those who wish for changes – such as to expand the racial, ethnic, and political viewpoints included among panelists. I am among those who listen regularly and wish for changes to the program. In this post I explore, and invite comments on, the political importance of the program and the station in local understandings of the Palestine/Israel crisis, voting, and the relations between the Democratic Party, pro-Israel organizations, and the state of Israel.

We crucially need a truly “round” Roundtable at this historic moment, with Gaza’s social and medical infrastructure destroyed, tens of thousands of Palestinians dead, 1.7 million displaced and facing growing famine, as well as 120 Israeli hostages held by Hamas. What I mean is, we need a broadly inclusive, widely heard, publicly produced program to enable diverse voices to discuss these complex and heartrending events in Israel/Palestine and the political turmoil it has fomented in the US. My call for greater diversity on The Roundtable mirrors the station’s own goals, as stated in its CPB mandated “Community Representation Policy Statement”: “In our journalism, diversity means the inclusion in our reporting of the vastly different voices and opinions of mis or under-represented people and those often ignored.”

I previously explored the question of whether The Roundtable provides that kind of diversity and found evidence suggesting it did not. (During the crucial two-week period surrounding the peak of campus protests, The Roundtable included zero Palestinian or Arab panelists. Whites constituted 93% of all panelists and Black, Indigenous, persons of color only 7%. Nearly half of panelists were Democratic party insiders and 80% of subject matter experts on the Middle East were US military insiders. Zero panelists were from international human rights or aid organizations or from student organizations.)

This post explores a different question: why is The Roundtable worth studying and arguing about? As I will show in this post, first, the show reaches a geographic area of voters who are surprisingly important to the US-Israel relationship. Second, unlike commercial stations, WAMC depends financially on the goodwill donations of local listeners and small-business underwriters but also on Corporation for Public Broadcasting funding that requires diversity in program content. My point is thus two-fold: first, The Roundtable contributes to opinion formation and collective action in a region where voters could affect relations between the Democratic Party, Israel, and Israel-lobby1 groups; second, the host station, WAMC, is financially vulnerable to local opinion and financially required to fulfill diversity standards. Collective pressure from local communities concerned over the horrific violence imposed on the Palestinians --  what the International Court of Justice calls a plausible genocide – could successfully invite The Roundtable to include panelists from Palestinian and Arab groups, human rights and aid organizations, and those with international legal expertise to dialogue with the station’s important voting base. This post explains my arguments and starts with the political importance of the station and its audience. Your responses and critiques to these arguments will help create new common understandings that hopefully encourage collective action to improve the station and its prominent daytime panel discussion program, The Roundtable.

Why study The Roundtable?: WAMC’s political importance in local knowledge production

The Roundtable (RT) is worthy of study, first of all, for its audience reach and its coverage across several states. RT is a daily talk program on a station reaching hundreds of thousands of listeners per month. As the station reports, “WAMC's listening area reaches parts of seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; as well as parts of Canada. With over 400,000 monthly listeners, WAMC ranks among the most-listened-to public radio stations in the United States” (WAMC, 10/20/20232). The station also demonstrates powerful fundraising capacities, for example drawing over $1.25M in donations in a recent 4 day period (WAMC, 2/23/2024). The station reported some $7.3M in revenue for 2022 including some $2.6M in underwriting, according to its tax documents (WAMC Form 990, 20223). (Unfortunately, those documents do not itemize donor amounts or state which donors contribute to which programs.) In short, the station reaches hundreds of thousands of listeners across multiple states where hundreds of businesses contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to support programming. Underwriters, in fact, pay extra for spots on RT, according to the latest WAMC rate sheet in which RT spot prices are 60% above the median program rate. WAMC’s geographic reach and base of loyal,4 often financially contributing, individual and business listeners makes the station’s prominent daytime news panel program, RT, an important and seemingly respected source for truth and diverse perspectives on key political topics.

Figure 1. Coverage map of WAMC

Source: Partner with WAMC, underwriter outreach document, retrieved April, 2024. 

WAMC is additionally worth studying as an important local communication force that connects local affluent groups and businesses and shapes their awareness of each other. According to the station’s webpages for underwriters, “Our listeners are affluent, highly educated, leaders in their communities, decision makers in their professions and have a disposable income” (WAMC Underwriting, Home, 2024). The station draws more than 30,000 weekly listeners in and around Albany, New York’s capital, according to Nielsen data for 2018-19. New York politicians also find the station’s audience valuable. Elected officials regularly participate on RT’s other segment, Congressional Corner, which provides a non-combative one-on-one format for elected officials to share their views with this desired audience who is more likely to vote than less affluent, less educated groups (Figure 2). As a 2023 Pew Research study finds, “Adults with a college degree made up 43% of voters in 2022, but only 25% of nonvoters. Those without a college degree made up 56% of voters, but 74% of nonvoters.” As an affluent and influential social group who also likely vote at above-average rates, WAMC listeners occupy a position to potentially influence state level elections and thus also influence the policies of Democratic and Republican candidates. Perhaps less often recognized is that these same New York voters exercise potentially important influence over Democratic policy on Israel and Palestine.

Figure 2. Disparities in voting by age, race and education

Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2023/07/12/voter-turnout-2018-2022/

New York voters’ potentially outsize influence on Democratic Party relations with Israel lobby groups

The New York state Democratic party is an important force in organizing relations between pro-Israel organizations and the Democratic party nationally, as New York Focus reported (10/19/2023). Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo authorized in 2019 a “wide ranging series of economic development partnerships between New York State and Israel in industries including UAV/drones, transportation, energy, cybersecurity, financial technology and health care” (Cuomo Press Release, 7/1/2019). Cuomo’s successor, Gov. Kathy Hochul, continues those commitments but also acted to help build Israel’s military arsenal following the 10/7 attacks, such as publicly urging federal lawmakers to increase military aid (Gov. Hochul, 10/16/2023). She also acted to hinder student opposition to Israeli policy by calling on state college and university presidents to discipline antisemitic but not Islamophobic campus speech (Gov. Hochul, 12/9/2023). New York Senator Chuck Schumer used his position as Majority Leader to help pass some $35B in military aid to Israel (AP, 2/8/2023). State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli ordered purchase of $20M in Israeli bonds by 10/13 of last year. Among other pro-Israel efforts, Democratic organizers joined with Republicans to launch the ‘Solidarity PAC’ as “a state-level analog to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee” (New York Focus, 3/26/2024) that would “target[] far-left Assembly candidates” (Jewish Insider, 4/4/2024). NY State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani went so far as to say, “New York is the center point of the relationship between the United States and Israel” (New York Focus, 10/19/2023).

Yet these politicians are vulnerable to shifts in popular opinion, as demonstrated by Hochul having to stand up to a growing list of Democratic state officials calling for ceasefire (City and State NY, 3/28/24) and Schumer publicly criticizing Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (AP, 3/16/24). Such shifts in party allegiance among New York voters occurred in the 2022 midterm elections in which many districts supported Republican congressional candidates after supporting Biden 2 years earlier. As the map below (Figure 3) shows, some of those districts are in the WAMC listening range. I am not saying that WAMC is responsible for the rightward shift in the 2022 midterms. (LOL.) I am saying that the station’s flow of perspectives and information intervenes in a larger opinion making environment in which voters from the right and left challenge established Democratic candidates and policies. The question is, in what way is WAMC strategically responding to this shifting opinion, action, and voting environment?

Figure 3. Change in New York vote share between presidential election 2020 and midterms 2022

Source: BBC Data Journalism Team, 11/23/2022

My prior investigation of RT’s prominent sourcing of New York state Democratic Party insiders and exclusion of Arab, Palestinian and other likely critics of US-Israel policies provide some evidence that WAMC’s strategy hews close to that of the NY state Democratic leaders. The 2022 New York state Democratic defeats followed the party leadership’s strategy of centrist, anti-progressive, campaigning (TheIntercept, 11/12/2022). That strategy seems a likely reason for the defeats, especially given that the same election saw wins for some New York progressive candidates, such as Democratic Socialist Sarahana Shrestha in New York’s 103^rd district which includes Kingston NY served by WAMC affiliate WAMK. Following the 2022 election, polls show shifts in opinion among Democrats towards greater support for the Palestinians (Gallup, 3/14/2023) and even a growing 25% perception of Israel as an apartheid state among Jewish-American voters (The Forward, 7/15/20215). New York Sen. Chuck Schumer’s own recent critique of Israel’s Netanyahu administration addressed this growing young Jewish voting bloc who reject Israel’s occupation policies. Peter Beinart, editor at large of Jewish Currents, described Schumer’s remarks as “the words of a politician who understands that his party is undergoing profound change” (New York Times, 3/22/2024). Recalling that the constituents who compelled Schumer to address their changing opinions of Israel are New Yorkers, and that many live in WAMC’s coverage area, reminds us that WAMC too faces a choice in how to respond and address this new reality of the growing Democratic power of progressives and young adults who reject the established Israel narrative. Studying RT provides a view on the choices WAMC pursues in relation to these agentive audiences. What is the role that RT performs in response to this ‘profoundly changing’ Democratic party constituency – especially since New York is home to the largest population of Jewish people in the country?

I argue that WAMC sourcing practices intervene in this larger process of political opinion formation and voting by expanding or limiting the range of available narratives and factual analyses that listeners use to construct beliefs and take political actions, like voting, contacting legislators, protesting, etc. More specifically, I argue that WAMC’s sourcing practices demonstrate the agency of program producers, station trustees, and others whose choices about who to include on RT demonstrate strategic choices about how to intervene in this larger political field.

WAMC programs like The Roundtable serve a region with outsize influence over Democratic policies and provides these politically influential local households and businesses with information and viewpoints that can affect popular support for state and national policies regarding Israel and Palestine. The station should provide those voters with a range of experts reflecting the ‘profound change’ among Democrats, younger voters, American Jews, as well as Arab and Muslim voters. Such experts could provide, and debate, factual and historical contexts of the conflict, the aspirations of Palestinian and Israeli people. Again, the approach I call for seems perfectly in keeping with the station’s own diversity and inclusion goals which name “under-represented people” as well as “race and ethnicity . . . faith . . . political affiliation” among the categories of diversity to enable “content [that] will continually evolve and ultimately be unbiased.” Those goals are requirements for funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting – from which WAMC receives some $400k annually – and as such should constitute a standard to evaluate program content, such as on The Roundtable. My limited evaluation of that content shows discriminatory exclusion of Palestinian and Arab people, of students and expert critics of standing US-Israel policy. The former groups clearly fall within WAMC’s stated diversity categories of “race and ethnicity”, “political affiliation”, and “under-represented people”. Actual diversification of RT program panelists is a step toward fulfilling the station’s own stated diversity and inclusion goals but is also a step toward addressing WAMC’s existential need to attract a larger, younger, and more diverse audience to the station.

Yet, as I explore in my next post, if WAMC follows NPR’s racialized economic strategy of designing programming to appeal to affluent white audiences then sourcing practices will likely marginalize non-white voices such as Arabs, Palestinians, Muslims, and progressives who challenge representations of the state of Israel cherished by centrist Democratic Party leaders and older Jewish audiences. My next post will explore the racial political economy conditioning NPR and WAMC.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

New Study on WAMC’s The Roundtable Finds Guest List Excludes Palestinians, Arabs, Students – Privileges Democrats and US Government, Military Sources

Download the study here.

CONTACT: James Owens, PhD, 773-474-3837, jeowens.comm.umass@gmail.com

Albany, New York – (5/9/2024) – A new quantitative study shows that NPR affiliate WAMC’s morning news panel program, The Roundtable, excluded Palestinian, Arab, and student sources in its recent coverage of student protests against Israel’s war on Gaza. The study covers the recent two-week period of student campus protests and shows that The Roundtable did not include any Palestinian, Arab, or student sources. During that same time, 4 of the 5 Middle East experts included on Roundtable episodes had backgrounds in the US Departments of State, Defense, or Homeland Security or the National Security Council, and at least 2 of the 4 worked for defense connected consultancy firms.

The Roundtable’s description of the panelists to audiences did not disclose the breadth of panelists’ connections to government, corporate, and defense interests, the study found. For example, while a 2019 UAlbany press release reported that UAlbany Dean Robert Griffin’s job includes building partnerships with a cyber defense branch of the Israeli Defense Forces – the Computer Service Directorate – The Roundtable program made no mention of that role to listeners.

“While Jewish, Palestinian, and other students faced the violence of police and mobs, The Roundtable excluded their voices in favor of those from powerful US government, military, and political parties already over-represented on mainstream media” said Dr. James Owens, the study author. “The Roundtable needs to change its sourcing practices to end this pattern of bias against Palestinians, Arabs, students and others critical of US support for the unprecedented mass violence and death in Gaza.”

Inclusion on The Roundtable heavily skewed to whites and those connected with the New York state Democratic party, the study found. Whites were 93% of all panelists while Black, Indigenous, or persons of color made up only 7%. Other findings include that 85% of episodes discussing the Palestine/Israel conflict featured all-white panels and that, while panelists and hosts stated the words antisemitism or antisemitic at least 31 times during the study time range, the word Islamophobia was never stated by panelists.

This study of the news sources chosen to speak on The Roundtable is part of a larger research project on the program that I am conducting. I will publish additional reports on that research in the near future. I offer this provisional report due to the urgent need to expose how WAMC’s sourcing practices discriminate against Palestinians, Arabs, and college student protesters and enable harmful mischaracterizations of those persons and movements advocating for an end to the horrific violence perpetrated by the US and Israel against the people of Palestine. As the station reports, “WAMC's listening area reaches parts of seven states, including New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire; as well as parts of Canada. With over 400,000 monthly listeners, WAMC ranks among the most-listened-to public radio stations in the United States” (WAMC, 10/20/2023).

To view the study click below:

Wamc Rt Study May 9 2024 Owens

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