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What Now, AAJA?

If you’re in San Francisco on Saturday morning, you might go down to the Hyatt Regency at the Embarcadero and take in what is being billed as a town hall on Asian American issues in media.

Do you care about the coverage you get in mainstream papers? The local television news? Are you concerned about fairness, accuracy and balance of community portrayals? Want to see more Asian male anchors? Tired of the perpetuation of the “Asian anchor babe” stereotype? You can vent all you want this Saturday. Or watch it on CSPAN and throw things at your TV set.

The participants may be a bit groggy, since it all comes after a big banquet, not to mention a night of karaoke. But the town hall is being hailed as the grand finale of the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention this week, celebrating 20 years of existence.

After 20 years, what can be said? As AAJA gathers in San Francisco, shall we invoke Jerry Garcia?

“What a looong strange trip it’s been?”

Borne out of a sense of affirmative action, the group of which I have been a member from the beginning, was at one time really at the forefront of our community’s civil rights charge, leading the way with information and facts. What better way to fight ignorance?

The lofty idea of the group had always been that employment in media will improve coverage and will in turn enlighten a society that is increasingly more diverse.

Even more important, was the sense that media and journalism could not go on without our participation. Does free speech work for all in America? Then we must be included.

But now all that is deemed quaint talk.

AAJA finds itself scrambling to define itself in a world where attitudes toward race issues have changed.

Just how do you take action in an era of no affirmative action?

In the year 2001, AAJA is Sisyphus and the rock is winning.

Talk about rollbacks, does anyone ever dare mention the phrase “affirmative action” seriously in public anymore?

In broadcasting, for example, laws used to tie minority coverage and employment to licensing. It was the reason TV news was always a good barometer for how far we’ve come.

But the beginning of the new era officially came last January.

That’s when a U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington struck down the FCC’s new Equal Employment Opportunity rules as “unconstitutional.”

What was so unconstitutional? The FCC had merely asked that broadcasters outreach to community groups through job fairs and let the FCC know whom they had contacted. The FCC didn’t say any of the outreached folks had to be hired. The new rule was merely trying to make broadcasters more accountable in their diversity efforts.

But to show just how emboldened the other side has become in this new era, a group of broadcasters in the Maryland/Delaware/DC area argued that the rules were arbitrary and capricious and a violation of their Fifth Amendment right to due process.

They won. We lost.

In the current environment, the court’s finding was predictable. It did reject the claim that the FCC rules were arbitrary or capricious. But it also said the FCC rules “put official pressure upon broadcasters to recruit minority candidates, thus creating a race-based classification that is not narrowly tailored to support a compelling government interest and is therefore unconstitutional.”

It’s the color blind standard, which is to say, the standard of indifference. Go ahead, let the cards fall where they may. Anti-affirmative action folks have made fighting for fairness unconstitutional.

There’s no compelling government interest in seeing Asian Americans or the truth of the new America reflected in our nation’s newsroom hiring.

But the compelling need is still there.

In a Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA) survey taken last year, Asian Americans were just 3 percent of all journalists in television, just 1 percent in radio. Management numbers were even lower: 2 percent in television, zero percent in radio.

The latest overall employment figures compiled by Vernon Stone, a professor emeritus of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, puts television employment at 18 percent for all minorities. Radio was at 11 percent.

Lagging behind TV and radio come newspapers. The most recent American Society of Newspaper Editors survey showed minority employment at under 12 percent of the total employee pool. This embarrassing result was achieved after ASNE set 2000 as the goal for when all America’s newsrooms would mirror the country’s diversity.

Twelve percent is hardly representative of minorities in an era where ethnic minorities are already over 50 percent in California.

What can AAJA do? Good question.

Twenty years after an auspicious start, there may not be anything AAJA can do really. In an era where it’s “everyone for him- or herself,” the group has naturally evolved into a haven for careerists, not idealists.

One wonders which will be better attended by the membership: the Saturday town hall or Friday’s karaoke night?

Twenty years after, a strong re-focus on hiring and coverage may not be enough. Perhaps, the times dictate the need for a brand new organization, one where journalists and media professionals are allowed to be real activists in the name of the community. Maybe the real problem is that the ethnic media has been so far ahead of the mainstream, and yet AAJA has been overly weighted toward the corporate mainstream.

As our country’s demographics change, maybe a new organization is the answer.

Anyone want to join me?

Emil Guillermo is the host of NCM-TV-New California Media/The New America Now seen on PBS stations in San Francisco and Los Angeles. His book Amok, won an American Book Award 2000. E-mail: emil@amok.com.