Loris Taylor’s Remarks
In our webinar on Tuesday, November 10th, our day of action and education for DEI in public media, Loris Taylor from Native Public Media gave an wonderfully personal speech comparing the need for media diversity to that of biodiversity. Thanks to volunteers for transcribing her remarks.
Hello, my name is Loris Taylor, and I am the President and CEO of Native Public Media. Native Public Media represents the media interests of Native Americans through broadcasting, journalism, new technologies and platforms, and public policy.
I come from the Hopi village of Oraibi, noted as being the oldest continuously inhabited village in North America. To this day, my village has no running water, electricity, telephone or internet service. When I was 12, I went away to boarding school because we did not have a high school on our reservation. My life experiences give me insight and empathy about what Native communities face today in terms of the media revolution.
While most of America is repurposing media and embracing the convergence of media, we in Native America are still trying and, in some cases, fighting to hear our own stories and news. We have been fortunate in establishing a media base of 59 Native-owned radio and four television stations that serve Native nations and tribal communities in the United States. These stations serve as critical platforms for education, dialogue, public affairs, and culture. You can hear the Navajo, Sioux, Hopi, Apache, and other Native languages on these stations. These stations play a substantial role in strengthening language vitality and culture in Native communities.
However, let me assure you that the media divide is alive and well. Juxtaposed against the machinery of media consolidation and the gobbling of Spectrum, 574 Native nations in this country face challenges and real barriers of media access, control, and ownership. Our issues are more than just about hardware. Media diversity is key to maintaining our tribal identity and the freedom to be who we are. It is about the old cowboy and Indian westerns where we hope the Indian will finally win. That is why I welcome this opportunity to have this conversation with you about media diversity.
Diversity is part of a broader ecosystem and understanding of the universe. We need only look at plants and animals to know that the variety of life makes for more robust and healthy habitats and ecosystems. As human beings, we thrive and grow with intellect, artistic, cultural, religious, governance, and spiritual diversity. In this way, we are very much like the plants and animals around us. If we focus on media diversity in the context of history as our barometer, we can determine the health of our own media access, control, and ownership.
History is all around us. The common thread in history, except that part written by nature, is humankind and our role in making history. Behind every historic event stands a human being with ideas of right and wrong, views of the necessary and the expedient, acts of selflessness and selfishness. History first is an idea in the mind of a human being.
During the present coronavirus pandemic, we find comfort in medical advancement and the attendant easing of human suffering that it brings. At the same time, we look back on the pages of history and try to comprehend the evil resulting in the genocide of Native Americans in this country, the reign of Hitler, and political intolerance based on race, religion, and creed. Media diversity assures us that the pages we write into history will include stories of our resilience, hope, and truth to power.
Media diversity requires action. Far too many of us stand as detached observers of history's unfolding. We watch as events spin out of control. We trust that someone else will do what is right and take no thought of how our lack of action is influencing the development of history. We are part of humankind, and our actions and inactions play a part in shaping history.
Media diversity is necessary for the advancement of knowledge and truth. A history that has already happened can only be studied and its lessons incorporated into our present lives and policies. History occurring in front of us, and history that is not yet born, has the potential to be shaped by human action. We have the power to report what we see, and to participate in shaping an unfolding history, page after page.
Media diversity is the freedom to develop and hold onto Native beliefs and opinions on any subject we choose, the right to communicate our ideas, thoughts, and opinions, and even random information, through our stories, speech, writing, music, and art. Media diversity supports our right to participate in the decisions that affect our lives, and to engage in the broadest possible exchange of ideas and information possible.
Our judgments, formed in the privacy of our minds, flows out from us and become part of that flowing stream known as public opinion. In turn, public opinion shapes public policy, and public policy becomes embedded in our national culture and expressed through our laws.
Therefore, the repercussions to populations that remain invisible within the broader media landscape, like Native Americans, is to be at the whim of a policy pendulum that swings between popular and unpopular Indian policy. The uninformed, or those not included in our media cultures, unwittingly become history victims, rather than the shapers of its boundaries.
Just like biodiversity, media diversity is kept healthy by a broader ecosystem of citizens, journalists, government, the First Amendment, and our vision that each individual has the right to the power of the pen as an informed human being. Thank you.
KUT & KUTX Publicly Commit To Change
In a courageous open letter to the KUT & KUTX audience published on their website, Debbie Hiott, General Manager & Executive Director, Sylvia Ponce-Carson, Deputy General Manager, Teresa Frontado, Executive Editor, KUT, Matt Reilly, Program Director, KUTX, and the entire KUT & KUTX senior leadership team committed to doing better. They apologized for past mistakes, transparently shared the DEI work they’ve done thus far, and solicited community feedback. Public Media for All applauds this empathetic and bold leadership move.
“Our goal through this process is to increase our outreach to all communities in Central Texas, provide content that better reflects the breadth of culture and experience in the region, and deepen our coverage of the inequities that affect too many residents, particularly those who are Black and/or Latino. We want to make KUT and KUTX a better and more inclusive place to work for all of our colleagues, regardless of their race, ethnicity, creed, gender identity or abilities.”
Read the full statement here: https://www.kut.org/post/our-audience-we-are-committing-do-better-you
Radio Milwaukee Joins PM4A
Jordan Lee, Program Director of Radio Milwaukee, offered the following about why they decided to participate.
“From day one, Radio Milwaukee’s mission has been committed to creating a more inclusive and engaged city. We looked in the mirror and asked ourselves how our staff and leadership can internally rise to the task we’ve set forth in the work we do. While we have seen great forward momentum here in Milwaukee over the past decade, there is so much more work to be done. Participating in Public Media For All not only helps Radio Milwaukee to remain focused on our mission, but it also provides us with tools to benchmark our progress.”
KERA Joins PM4A
Nico Leone, President and CEO of KERA, offered the following about why they decided to participate.
“KERA is proud to support the mission of Public Media for All. We are committed to the action items identified by PM4A and have made this work a core priority for our organization. Addressing diversity, equity and inclusion is a responsibility shared by every member of our staff, and we have encouraged our team to participate in this initiative in whatever way they choose. We look forward to being held accountable for our work. ”
KERA is a community-supported media organization that delivers distinctive, relevant and essential content to North Texans. Through programming that reflects the spirit and diversity of our region, we provide an invaluable alternative to commercial media.
The mission of North Texas Public Broadcasting is to serve North Texans through public television, radio and multimedia resources that educate, engage, inspire, inform and entertain.
KERA serves the fourth-largest population area in the country. Each week, more than 2.6 million people connect with KERA through our television and radio broadcast channels, websites, social media and mobile apps.
Susan Scott’s Remarks
In our webinar on Tuesday, November 10th, our day of action and education for DEI in public media, Susan Scott from UNC-TV gave an inspiring speech with actionable steps to improve diversity in public medai. She’s kindly shared her transcript notes with us here:
Hi, I’m Susan Scott – Chief Growth Officer at UNC-TV. I am delighted to have been invited to share a bit of my story with you as part of PUBLIC MEDIA FOR ALL’s webinar on their day of education and action. I’ll tell you a little about my background and I’ll share some of my philosophies and beliefs about hiring equitably, compensating fairly, promoting, mentoring and sponsoring people of color at all levels of an organization. I’ll also share some experiences and organizations that shaped those beliefs.
My background is steeped in media. I worked for more than 20 years in commercial media. My areas of focus spanned sales, content distribution, marketing, business development, general management and strategic planning. My commercial media career took me all over the world – from Europe to Asia to Latin America. The companies I worked for include brands like Comcast, The Weather Channel, Turner Broadcasting, Frontier Communications and Fox News Channel. Over the course of my career, I developed from a junior account executive to a Senior Vice President with responsibility for generating more than $100 million dollars/year. I have been responsible for leading teams as small as one other person and as large as 300 people. I was often the only black person and/or the only black woman in the room. I recognize that I was a “safe black person” – eager, didn’t challenge the social status quo and worked to assimilate, yet put my intellect and abilities on full display.
For the past 5 years, I have worked in public media. Outside of my current organization, I am still, often, the only black person in the room. I find public media thrilling and vital, yet I also find it insular and hide bound. I observe that the laurels we’ve rested on have been the work we do for others – not the work we do in support of each other. In spite of the public media missions, we do not yet have a strong, collective, unified expectation and approach to equitable hiring, compensating, promoting, mentoring and sponsoring people of color and women. Peter Drucker said “if you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. I bet you’ve all heard “what gets measured, gets managed”. There are models that our industry could work to follow and learn from. I’ll talk about them a little later.
Everything that I believe about fair treatment of people of color was learned from my parents and in the industry where I grew up – the cable and broadband industry.
Let’s start with the third rail – compensation. At one point in my career, I worked for a Japanese-American man. As were negotiating my salary, he asked “how much do you earn now – please include your highest bonuses because I want it to be clear to you that we value your talents. And, we do not want a few thousand dollars to become an emotional roadblock for you”. He took my base salary, added bonuses and 10% and made that my base salary. I have never forgotten that level of respect. He also made it clear that every business development person was compensated within a small range of each other. Be as generous as you can and value positions based upon the work and the importance of the work – not the gender or color of the people doing the work.
My philosophy on compensation in the non-profit world is also informed by Dan Pallotta. Google his TED Talk. He talks about the “overhead myth” asks the public to rethink their assumptions about charities and non-profits needing to keep overhead low in order to win grants and donor funding. Pallotta wonders “why” if this is not a standard that businesses are held to? He wonders: Could a non-profit grow to a size big enough to tackle a problem by investing in great talent, in advertising and marketing and in new ideas?
Three months after his talk went live, GuideStar, Charity Navigator and the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance — three leading resources for nonprofit data in the US — announced that they were “denouncing the ‘overhead ratio’ as a valid indicator of nonprofit performance.”
The presidents and CEOs of these three organizations wrote: “We write to correct a misconception about what matters when deciding which charity or non-profit to support. The percent of charity expenses that go to administrative and fundraising costs—commonly referred to as ‘overhead’—is a poor measure of an organization’s performance. We ask you to pay attention to other factors of nonprofit performance: transparency, governance, leadership, and results.” Where I am able, and I have to admit that this is difficult in the non-profit world, I and UNC-TV work hard to lead and to be competitive in the non-profit space. It’s how you get and retain the best qualified talent.
Everyone can mentor – it is not the exclusive purview of the person with the biggest title. If as you watch this, you ARE the person with the biggest title, I am asking you – besides yourself -who are you sponsoring and are they a person of color? If you are early in your career, have you identified people that you’d like to learn from? If so – ask them to help you and be your mentor. When I was the SVP for Distribution at the Weather Channel we had 810 employees across the country and as a result of an employee survey, we developed culture improvement measures. One of them was a mentorship program. Every employee was eligible to request a mentor. I was the most requested mentor in the company. It was because I take the responsibility of leadership seriously. I asked deep and penetrating questions, I encouraged people to be themselves and did not censure them for their lack of experience or knowledge. I also guided without “telling” them what to do. I respected their individuality – and assured them that there was value in being themselves. I also challenged people to be realistic about the relationship between their reality and their aspirations.
In my experience, often, promoting people is one of the single best things leaders can do to strengthen an organization’s culture. Leaders have a responsibility to check their style preferences and their pre-conceived notions and focus only on the requirements of the work. I once had an opening for a director reporting to me. I had 2 people of color working within my team and they both expressed interest in the role. It didn’t require going outside, yet my boss at the time encouraged me to look for someone “new”, from the outside and then suggested 3 people – all of whom were white. It took some time to convince her that her perception and desires were steeped in style and comfort rather than the needs of the organization. It delayed hiring by 3 months. I ultimately chose one of the two and we outperformed in that category the next year.
There are two organizations that directly influenced my beliefs about mentoring, hiring, sponsorship and compensation. The first is Women in Cable Telecommunications. I volunteered within this national organization for many years and was the Chair of the organization 15 years ago. WICT’s mission is to “create women leaders who transform our industry”.
They do this by providing unparalleled professional development programs, commissioning original gender research, and supporting a B2B network that helps advance women. WICT is especially known for its WICT PAR Initiative that measures the status of women employees in the cable industry based on three main criteria:
Pay Equity
Advancement Opportunities
Resources for Work/Life Integration
It is a comprehensive advocacy program that helps companies set goals, institutionalize policies, measure progress and achieve results. the PAR Initiative showcases best practices in achieving stronger gender diversity. With a goal to improve diversity metrics for women.
The second organization that influenced my beliefs is the T. Howard Foundation. Its mission is to promote diversity in media and entertainment by increasing the number of diverse and under-represented groups and underserved communities within media.
They offer an internship program that provides a professional work experience and knowledge of industry careers and opportunities
A talent development program targeting young professionals and recent college graduates for skills development and training, designed to prepare them to meet employment and advancement opportunities
A diversity advancement program that helps partner companies attract, identify, secure and retain the best diverse talent.
Nothing I’ve mentioned can happen overnight. Yet, I wanted to paint a picture of what is possible, what I have benefited from and what our industry can learn from. I hope that something that I’ve shared will inspire or motivate you to reach up or back, support, question and change your behavior and expectations on behalf of yourself and on behalf of the people with whom you work. Be well friends.