Public Media for All Progress Report
At AIR, we are steadfast in our commitment to ensuring that the voices that tell our stories represent the breadth of who we are as a nation and a world. We know that when we aren’t hearing from the whole community, we aren’t hearing the whole story. We believe that newsrooms and media organizations must reflect the communities they cover.
As we approach the second anniversary of the launch of Public Media For All’s campaign for diversity, equity and inclusion in public media, AIR is long overdue for a progress report. In November of 2020, we made a public commitment to honor the Public Media for All Pledge. That included a commitment to begin to tackle the action items that form Public Media for All’s campaign.
Commit to internal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work by including it in the mission, values, goals, budget, and work schedules of the organization.
In our statement of values we explicitly make this commitment, and AIR programs like Edit Mode and New Voices are designed to support producers and storytellers from diverse backgrounds in the radio and podcast industries. We recognize that the pledge asks us to make this commitment internally and our strongest DEI programs are external, in support of the field, and not in support of our staff, but as an organization of fewer than 10 staffers, opportunities to do this work internally are limited.
Incorporate DEI goals into the annual/quarterly goals of any staff person, who supervises staff or participates in hiring. Make raises and bonuses dependent upon reaching these goals as appropriate.
We actively seek to recruit a diverse faculty of mentors and instructors for SoundPath. We haven’t incorporated explicit goals into staff work plans, in part because we have genuine questions about how to implement this action item without veering into establishing quotas. We’ve consistently been advised that any numerical goals need to be part of a clear affirmative action plan, which would require substantial legal review. We would love to hear from other signatories to the pledge about how they are approaching this action item.
Affirm that in a country that has been rapidly diversifying, where people of color will be the majority in a couple decades, it is imperative to the survival of the organization and the success of its service to rapidly diversify our programming, audiences, donors, staff and leadership.
We absolutely affirm this, and AIR is committed to continuing to push the industry as a whole to sincerely embrace diversity as a core value, and to ensure that reporters have the opportunity to work with editors, managers, and leadership that reflect their own experiences. In letters to our own members, in June 2020 and March 2021 we have reaffirmed our commitment to diversity within AIR and across the industries where our members work.
Recognize that people of color staff and leaders have disproportionately been doing unpaid DEI work, while dealing with discrimination, microaggressions, implicit and explicit bias. Apologize. Create space for people of color staff to heal, re-energize, and be empowered.
In larger newsrooms, this space created takes the form of employee resource groups and internal community. At AIR, we’re much too small for an employee resource group to provide any real community. Instead, we’ve worked with individual staff to re-shape their workload so that they can participate in external communities that provide that space, as representatives of AIR. And we continue to work with the whole staff to foster a culture where staff who identify as people of color aren’t responsible for educating their white colleagues about racism.
Recognize that white staff and leaders have not been doing enough DEI work, while implicitly and/or explicitly enacting racial bias against people of color coworkers. Apologize. Create space for white staff to take ownership of these issues, do work to dismantle racial bias, and learn to listen to and empower people of color coworkers.
We know we need to think more deeply about how we approach the project of creating space for white staff to take ownership of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. As a small organization, we look to everyone to do this work, and we recognize that our approach leaves staff and members of color to endure the problems that we still haven’t fully addressed as an organization. Here, too, we would love the perspective of other organizations on what this particular process looks like in their organization. We know we have work to do.
Conduct an anonymous cultural assessment survey of all staff about diversity, equity and inclusion at your organization. Bring people of color staff and white staff together in mediated safe spaces to facilitate brave, constructive, respectful conversations about race and the survey results. Ensure that there is an empowering balance of people of color talking and white staff listening. In larger organizations, considering segmenting these based on the hierarchy of the organization, so that staff are not influenced by their managers. Make it clear that retaliation will not be tolerated.
With a staff of four, it is just not possible to conduct an anonymous survey. And we haven't prioritized actually budgeting for a mediator to lead a conversation about race and AIR’s culture. However, AIR as an organization is actively navigating a leadership transition, and our culture as an organization is by definition in transition as well.
Create systems that hold staff accountable without jeopardizing the well-being and reputation of the person experiencing the racial bias. These systems should use education and conversation as a first resort, and should also let the staff person go as a last resort.
With a small staff, actual systems for accountability are less important than just recognizing that leadership has a responsibility to ensure, not only that staff are accountable for their words and actions, but also that staff of color know that they have recourse when they do experience racial bias. The onus is on leadership to ensure that staff are not gas lit when they do ask for accountability. This year we did finally begin assembling a Board HR committee, in part to ensure that staff can appeal to the board if they feel their grievances aren’t being addressed at the management level, but we would love to know more about how other signatories to the pledge have approached this action item.
Recognize that unpaid internships are not equally accessible to all, because many cannot afford to work for free. Commit to paying all interns within 1 year.
Paying interns is an easy one. For one thing, it’s the law. Our Guide to Fair Practice explicitly states that most interns are entitled to at least minimum wage, and that interns are entitled to professional rates when they are doing professional work. AIR pays our interns now, and we will continue to educate our members and community about their legal and ethical obligation to pay interns fairly, and to pay professional rates for professional work.
Work with an outside organization to do a comprehensive pay equity review of all staff, and take action to ensure that everyone is compensated fairly without racial and gender bias. Include an analysis of temporary workers, and temp working policies.
AIR is much too small for a comprehensive review by an outside organization to be a good use of our resources, but we did take responsibility for assessing and leveling staff salaries to address long-standing compensation disparities.
Use census data to determine the racial makeup of the communities the organization operates in and to set diversity goals based on equitable representation. Commit to having staff, leadership, and programming that accurately reflects those demographics in 3 years. Commit to having an audience that accurately reflects those demographics in 5 years. Commit to having a donor base that accurately reflects those demographics in 10 years.
As a national membership organization, our staff and board are more diverse than the US as a whole. Our hope is that AIR can continue to reflect the genuine breadth and diversity of the mission-driven audio storytelling universe as vibrantly as possible. Though we genuinely meet this bar as a staff and board, we’re aware that our most recent member survey found that among our membership, at least those who contributed to the survey, 77% identify as white. We know we have work to do to engage more communities of color in our wider network.
Dedicate time and resources for an independent review of your organization’s DEI efforts, and commit to any improvements recommended in such reviews. Make the findings of the independent review easily accessible and publicly available.
It hasn’t yet made sense for AIR to tackle this action item. We really are too small for an independent review to be a smart use of resources. That said, we are genuinely interested in seeing how other public media organizations have addressed this.
As an employer, we are simultaneously proud of our track record and aware that we have work to do yet. But we see our commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging as wider than just our own staffing. We are in a solid position to push the industry that our members work in to embrace diversity and equity much more intentionally.
As I hand the reins over to Keisha Salmon I know she will continue to embody that commitment.
Amanda Hickman
Interim Executive Director