Beyond Ghetto Sniffing

Out on the frontiers of confrontation, it is tough to be a newsman in the U.S. these days. The reporter is spat upon by students, Maced by cops, subpoenaed by lawyers. It is tougher still to be a black newsman. On assignments, and sometimes in his own office, he is mistaken for a messenger boy, a janitor, an agitator. At press conferences, he will be the only reporter asked to establish his credentials. If he is a broadcast newsman, sources will look right through him and talk to his white cameraman or sound engineer.

Still, more and more blacks are entering the news profession, as employment doors that were once closed continue to open. Many blacks suspect that they are hired mainly because publications feel that they need a token Negro or two around. Even when the job opportunity is more genuine, some blacks do not make it because of sheer lack of qualification. Says Edward Bradley of WCBS radio station in New York: "They were looking for black anchormen, black writers, black reporters. They found one reporter--me." Sometimes employers will lower hiring standards for blacks, many of whom lack training simply because they never received much encouragement to go into journalism. This can lead to resentment on the part of qualified blacks, who feel that it casts suspicion on their own abilities. Says Lem Tucker, a Washington correspondent for NBC: "I can understand the initial skepticism. But after two years of doing good work, it makes me mad." Many black newsmen persist, however, and some have already demonstrated that they are among the best newsmen in the U.S.

Few white newsmen can match the achievements of Carl T. Rowan, a distinguished reporter and foreign correspondent who became Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, Ambassador to Finland and director of the U.S. Information Agency. Rowan now writes a thrice-weekly column carried by 150 newspapers. As a reporter for the Minneapolis Tribune, Rowan made a reputation covering civil rights, later received assignments on major nonblack stories. He covered Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the Midwest and the Hungarian and Suez crises in the U.N.

Most Fascinating. Other outstanding black newsmen: William Raspberry, a columnist for the Washington Post, who has won for the past three years the top award for interpretive reporting from the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild; Thomas A. Johnson, a reporter for the New York Times, who wrote a penetrating series in 1968 on the Negro in Viet Nam, and Lu Palmer, a reporter-columnist for the Chicago Daily News, who wrote memorable pieces on the courtroom shackling of Bobby Scale and the killing of Black Panther Fred Hampton.

Like Rowan, who devotes only one column in about six to racial topics, Raspberry might write about anything. But he continues to keep a perceptive eye on black issues. "The race story is the most fascinating story going," says Raspberry. "So why not want to cover it?" He points out that in cities with large black populations, it is also virtually impossible to avoid race stories. "Even if you're covering something about subways or bridges," he explains, "black people inevitably enter into the picture."

Better Balance. Most black newsmen tend to cover distinctly black stories, and frequently it is by choice. Says Lem Tucker: "There are black stories like riots and Black Power conferences where I feel I can bring better understanding to what's going on, a better balance to the story." But too often in the view of some, blacks are used to write routine race stories, many of which are not printed, and they are then used as legmen for white reporters when a major race story breaks. There are also times when black reporters are available but ignored for white stories.

Black newsmen often get black stories that a white reporter simply cannot get. For instance, some black militant groups refuse to talk to whites. And it is doubtful if any white reporter could have got the chilling interview obtained by former Los Angeles Times man Ray Rogers in Detroit in 1967 from a sniper who offered to take him up on a rooftop and "show him." But black newsmen, too, do not always have easy access to black stories.

Honky Sellout. At least as much as Spiro Agnew--but with better reason--many black citizens are suspicious of the news media. Clearly, white Americans have not been adequately informed about black Americans. There has been a tendency to concentrate on action stories, such as riots and demonstrations, and not enough effort to explain the causes of dissatisfaction. As a result, when a black reporter for a white-controlled news organization goes into a black community, hostility toward his employer sometimes rubs off on him. He may be regarded, in the phrase of some black newsmen, as a "Ghetto Sniffer," an Uncle Tom who has sold out to the "honky" press.

The challenge is to convince black citizens that their story will be told fairly, even when the reporter himself is not sure how his white editors will handle it. The temptation is to promise too much, to report only that which is pleasing, to be a soul brother in print. "It's a delicate job, balancing black consciousness and the ethics of journalism," says Tucker. "Ultimately, the only thing you can do is to be a good reporter."

Adds William Drummond of the Los Angeles Times: "I don't ask for special privileges from militants because I am black." Neither is he about to seek special privileges from white editors. At 25, Drummond has a masters degree from the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, and he is taking courses at U.C.L.A. toward a Ph.D. in economics. "You have got to base your future," he says, "on more than just a shortage of black reporters."

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