Amazon.com Review
On the surface, the increase of African American reporters in the media may signal that they have made significant gains in that arena. But as Professor Pamela Newkirk of New York University outlines in her valuable book Within the Veil, race is still an issue that blacks have to deal with. Riffing on W.E.B. Du Bois' use of "the veil" in his classic book The Souls of Black Folk, Newkirk writes: "Behind the obvious, albeit small, numerical gains, a wide and deep racial and cultural chasm still divides blacks and whites in the newsroom. Despite their heightened visibility, African-American journalists and their minority counterparts, woefully underrepresented in the industry and in news management, are far from integrated into newsroom culture." Charting the development of the black press with the publication of Freedman's Journal in 1827, Newkirk chronicles the endless struggle of blacks to challenge the racist stereotypes that permeate American thought. She details the ordeals of several blacks in the '60s who desegregated TV networks, the most well known example being the late Max Robinson, brother of civil rights leader Randall Robinson. There's also the case of the disgraced Washington Post reporter Janet Cooke, who had to give back her Pulitzer Prize for writing a false story, while white writers guilty of the same crime are given jobs elsewhere. Newkirk also highlights the pressures black reporters feel from their racial group to tell the truth about Afro-American life, which at times goes against what their white counterparts believe. Newkirk also examines Black Entertainment Television and Net Noir, an Internet company, and writes, "African-Americans must use the power of praise and punishment to call attention to the ways in which they are portrayed." --Eugene Holley Jr.
From Publishers Weekly
During her days as a newspaper journalist, New York University journalism professor Newkirk recalls, her editors "resisted perspectives that were foreign to the white cultural mainstream." This episodic book ventilates such concerns. Newkirk has some strong evidence: a Time correspondent couldn't convince his editors that Louis Farrakhan had a complex appeal in 1994, and Bryant Gumbel's attempt to cover Africa in 1992 had to include enough wildlife to satisfy white viewers. She steps back to trace "the uphill battle to diversify the mainstream media" following the 1968 Kerner report, which revealed damningly biased coverage of blacks. One chapter concerns a landmark lawsuit in which the New York Daily News was found in 1987 to have discriminated against four black journalists. She acknowledges the dilemmas black journalists face in reporting on problems in their communities, while noting that "reporting that too often freeze-frames pathology" gets praise (such as Janet Cooke's story of an eight-year-old heroin addict, which won a Pulitzer and was later proved to be fabricated). In a chapter on double standards, she suggests that Boston Globe columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith, both of whom invented characters, were treated differently because of race. Her book could go deeper, though; she cites a 1997 survey on the difficulty minorities encountered in finding newspaper jobs, but doesn't delve into the effectiveness (and vigor) of prominent minority recruiting programs. She cites coverage of the Reginald Denny beating as an example of the media "harp[ing] on black crime"; but what does she make of the Rodney King footage? Still, Newkirk's general perspective on race is worth heeding: that while blacks shouldn't view themselves as victims, whites shouldn't deny that racial barriers remain. Photos.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Review
"A compelling look at the power of the media from an award-winning journalist who fearlessly and passionately addresses critical issues confronting African-American journalists working for mainstream newspapers and magazines." ― Essence
"In many ways, today's news business suffers from a terrible case of isolationism, not just racial but socioeconomic. If every news editor in America read Within the Veil, it could transform dynamics within the newsroom and what appears on the screen and printed page. And for everyone elsethe informed citizens of America who wonder how the media worksthis book, with its gripping behind-the-scenes newsroom dramas, is a damn good read." -- Farai Chideya,author of The Color of Our Future and Don't Believe the Hype, and editor of PopandPolitics.com
"Pamela Newkirk is uniquely equipped to undertake a searching examination of the American institution that distorts perceptions of some of us for consumption by the rest of us. In Within the Veil, Newkirk renders compelling evidence that American news media have exacerbated more than ameliorated America's complex racial dilemma." -- Randall Robinson,author of The Debt: What America Owes to Blacks
"In her eloquent take on media Eurocentrism, Pamela Newkirk observes that anti-African exclusion very much characterizes the major media. . . . An hermeneutical tour-de-force." ― New York Amsterdam News
"In telling the stories of forgotten pioneers like Lester Walton, George Schuyler, Earl Brown, Ted Poston, and Ben Holman, and in detailing the pressures felt and obstacles overcome by more recent generations of African-American journalists, Pamela Newkirk's Within the Veil makes a valuable contribution to the history of the American press." -- Ben Yagoda,associate professor of journalism, University of Delaware, author of About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, and coeditor of The Art of Fact: A Historical Anthology of American Journalism
About the Author
Pamela Newkirk is Professor of Journalism at New York University. She is the author of Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of Billion-Dollar Business and Spectacle: The Astonishing Life of Ota Benga.
