The racial politics of WAMC's 'The Roundtable': A new research series covering the past year of episodes

Context, theory and methods guiding my inquiry into a year-long data set on racial inclusion on 'The Roundtable'

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.

1. WAMC’s Community Representation Policy Statement 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. . . . 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. To do this, we consciously think of and discuss what diversity includes; race and ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, faith, age, sexual orientation, disabilities, political affiliation and geographic location. In this way, our staff and content will continually evolve and ultimately be unbiased.”

2. Schmidt, T. R. (2024). ‘Challenging journalistic objectivity: How journalists of color call for a reckoning.’ Journalism, 25(3), 547-564. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14648849231160997

3. Objectivity historically emerged, as means for practitioners to meet particular ideological and occupational needs: “the self-conscious pursuit of internal group solidarity; and . . . the need to articulate the ideals of social practice in a group in order to exercise control over subordinates and to pass on group culture to the next generation” (Schudson, 2001, p. 149). “What we might call modern analytical and procedural fairness dates to the l920s [when] journalists as an occupational group developed loyalties more to their audiences and to themselves as an occupational community than to their publishers or their publishers’ favored political parties” (p. 161).
Schudson, M. (2001). ‘The objectivity norm in American journalism.’ Journalism, 2(2), 149-170. https://doi.org/10.1177/146488490100200201

4. Len-Ríos, M. E. (2023). ‘Journalistic Norms and Their Role in the Perpetuation of Racial Inequities.’ In Political Communication, Culture, and Society (pp. 115-131). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003391692-6/journalistic-norms-role-perpetuation-racial-inequities-mar%C3%ADa-len-r%C3%ADos

5. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 founded NPR and PBS in part “to encourage the development of programming that involves creative risks and that addresses the needs of unserved and underserved audiences, particularly children and minorities” (para 6).

6. Chávez, C. (2021). The sound of exclusion: NPR and the Latinx public. University of Arizona Press.

7. 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).

8. Studying literary production, Childress, et al., (2024) investigate “tokenism as a structural system in which lower-status nondominant group members are pitted against each other for limited slots, and how in that system the incorporation of a few of those individuals may obscure underlying inequalities” (p. 31).

Childress, C., Nayyar, J., & Gibson, I. (2024). Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field. American Sociological Review, 89(1), 31-59.

9. Barbara Smith & Beverly Smith (1981). ‘Across the kitchen table: A sister-to-sister dialogue.’ In This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color, 2, 113-127.

10. “You can be certain to be the only Black person there. You're going to be put in the position of speaking for the race” (p. 123).