Sunday talk shows said to lack diversity

WASHINGTON -- Only about 8 percent of guests on major Sunday morning talk shows during the last 18 months were African-American, with three people accounting for most of those appearances, according to a new study by the National Urban League.

Black guests -- newsmakers, the journalists who questioned them, and experts who offered commentary -- appeared 176 times out of more than 2,100 opportunities, according to the study, which is scheduled for release today. But 122 of those appearances were made by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, and Juan Williams, a journalist and panel member on ''Fox News Sunday."

''There's very clearly a division, an exclusion," said Stephanie J. Jones, executive director of the Urban League Institute for Opportunity and Equality, which initiated the study, ''Sunday Morning Apartheid: A Diversity Study of the Sunday Morning Talk Shows."

''I watch these shows regularly," she said. ''I just started to notice after a while, week after week after week, that there were no African-Americans on them. I saw people talking about issues, even though they didn't have a particular expertise."

The study analyzed NBC's ''Meet the Press," ABC's ''This Week with George Stephanopoulos," CBS's ''Face the Nation," Fox News Channel's ''Fox News Sunday," and CNN's ''Late Edition." It found that more than 60 percent of programs that aired during the 18-month period had no black guests. ''Meet the Press," the talk show with the most viewers, had no black guests on 86 percent of its broadcasts, the study said.

Network officials said they rely on guests who are newsmakers, most of whom are white men in the top echelons of government.

'' 'Face the Nation' is a publicaffairs broadcast committed to booking the top newsmakers of the day," said Donna Dees, a CBS News spokeswoman. ''Each week the broadcast strives to book guests who provide diverse opinions on the news topic of the day."

Barbara Levin, communications director for NBC News, said ''Meet the Press" interviews ''the same newsmakers who dominate the front pages and op-ed pages of every newspaper in America."

A spokesman for Fox declined to comment, and representatives of CNN and ABC did not return calls for comment.

Studies have shown poor minority representation in newspapers. A 2002 study by the Poynter Institute, ''News and Race: Models of Excellence," cited research that news on minorities accounts for 5 percent to 7 percent of all content, even though African-Americans and Latinos represent more than 30 percent of the US population.

Williams, a senior correspondent for National Public Radio and an analyst for ''Fox News Sunday," is the only African-American who appears regularly on a Sunday morning talk show. ''I don't go anywhere in the country without people saying, 'Thank God you're there,' " he said. ''They say they watch for that reason."

Sunday shows interview the most powerful people, Williams said, and African-Americans often do not fit the bill. ''The ideal guest is the president of the United States," he said.

The Urban League study contends that Sunday morning talk shows are particularly important because they help Americans digest complex political issues.

Paul Brathwaite, executive director of the Congressional Black Caucus, said his organization joined the Hispanic and Asian caucuses in pleading with networks to include more minority members of Congress in Sunday discussions. The study showed three black House members -- Representatives Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York; Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Democrat of Illinois; and Harold E. Ford Jr., Democrat of Tennessee -- and Senator Barack Obama, Democrat of Illinois, have appeared as guests.

''Who are the bookers of these shows, and who are they going to reach out and talk to from week to week?" Brathwaite said. ''At the end of the day, they make the decisions. . . . We're not there, and we're not covered."

The Urban League study did not include appearances by other minorities, but Lisa Navarette of the National Council of La Raza agreed that lack of diversity on the shows is a problem.

''People of color are not quoted as experts, and they don't appear frequently," she said. ''I've seen many discussions of the Latino vote and immigration done with people who are not terribly knowledgeable about the people or the subject."