Forget America, is Journalism Ready for a Black President?

"Is America Ready for a Black President?" It's a question that many media outlets have posed recently ahead of a possible presidential run by Senator Barack Obama. But instead of asking if the country is prepared, the press would do well to ask itself, "Is Journalism Ready?" Not necessarily, say political scientists studying media coverage of minority candidates. Their research on black politicians running in majority-white districts turns up some touchy historical patterns that are germane to both Obama-mania and also the national media's readiness to cover a highly competitive white-black contest.

Three main batches of research--the most recent published this winter in the Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics builds on two others published in the summer 1999 Journal of Politics and as the book Voting Hopes or Fears?--focus on mayoral races in New York and Seattle in 1989, and nationwide congressional contests in 1992, 1994, and 2004. It's a small sample by social scientific standards, and shouldn't be considered conclusive. But the primary limit on its size is also a commentary: blacks are still largely absent in the pool of candidates seeking state and national office, let alone the pool of winners. In the 130 years since Reconstruction, only two African Americans have been elected governor, and only three have been elected senator. None have come from a state more southern than Virginia.

Three interesting results emerge from these content analyzes of national and local newspaper coverage. First, journalists disproportionately underscore the race of black candidates, while virtually never identifying white politicians by their color, no matter the circumstances. Second, journalists covering a black candidate are more likely to emphasize party affiliation and voter demographics, while providing relatively less coverage of substantive issues; fewer policy questions are discussed in white-black elections than in any other scenario. Finally, journalists tend to muzzle racial messages from candidates, or campaigns, while nevertheless accenting race themselves.

Read the whole column at the Columbia Journalism Review's CJR Daily.