Meet the Sheroe Holding the Media to Task for Its Lack of Diversity

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Her mother was a motel maid. Her father could neither read nor write. But their daughter flourished with their unyielding support.

“Education was a prime importance, even though they themselves were denied education,” says Janet Dewart Bell of her parents, who grew up in the rural South. Born in 1946, decades before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, Dr. Bell came up in both a casually and deliberately racist America. She became an award-winning broadcast journalist, a social activist, a labor official, a doctorate-holding book author, a women's rights activist and fierce proponent of inclusion – the list goes on and on. In a very real way, her life honors her parents' struggles and strengths.

 “And I'm proud of my working class background,” she explains. “I say it wasn't white collar. It was no collar, and it was hard scrabble in many ways, but people always had their eyes on the prize... I was honored to be able to have a communications journey which could elevate the stories of people like my parents, Could elevate the struggle for social justice, and that's what I do.”

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Joining a D.C. television affiliate in 1969, she was among the nation's first African American broadcasters and programmers. “What we strove to do was to tell the story – the true story – and not these stereotypes.” She also embraced diversity at National Public Radio, where she hired the radio network's first indigenous person and first Latino. She has won the prestigious Emmy and Peabody awards.

“I always am intentionally diverse, but I am rooted in the history and the struggle of African Americans. And that's what I write about in in my scholarship. And that's what my books are about.” (She has authored three books – most recently “Blackbirds Singing,” which draws its title from the Paul McCartney song “Blackbird.”)

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Through her lifetime, she and the larger Civil Rights movement have seen many violent setbacks, which continue today in the form of police brutality in particular. But she held fast to this principle:

 "We cannot let violence deter us from moving forward, if we give in to violence and intimidation and terror, and that's what it is. And black Americans have lived under terrorism ever since we were brought to this country – and if we give into that we will never progress." 

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“Another cause she has embraced is elevating women's empowerment and roles across media, through the Women's Media Center, founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan. Steinem edited Dr. Bell's first national article, in Ms. Magazine, and has been her mentor “over these decades.”

 “What we do,” Dr. Bell says of the Women's Media Center, “is we hold media to task on their lack of diversity, the lack of involvement of women in decision-making positions. I think we have made a difference, not only for broadcast media, but for Hollywood. We always say that there's so much more to do -- and we were frustrated ourselves that the impact hasn't been greater. But it's not that we haven't been trying,”

Diversity has become an easily invoked catchword across the culture, but in Dr. Bell's view it should go deeper: “Diverse voices must be authentic. They must be inclusive, they must be truthful. They must lead us toward a future for all of us, particularly for our children.”

Publishable story by Richard Leiby Courtesy BIPOCXChange 

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