By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 5, 2004; Page C04

The reporters who write about the White House and Congress for the nation's newspapers are overwhelmingly white and do only a "fair" to "poor" job of covering race-related issues, according to a survey released yesterday by Unity: Journalists of Color, a consortium of four minority journalism associations that is staging a convention in Washington this week.

The survey, "Diversity in the Washington Newspaper Press Corps," shows that white journalists make up 90 percent of reporters and editors in Washington bureaus, while less than 70 percent of the U.S. population is white. Minority journalists -- Asians, African Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans -- make up less than 12 percent of bureau reporters, while minorities represent more than 30 percent of the population.

"There is no justification for any media company to staff its bureau in Washington, D.C., without people of color," Unity President Ernest R. Sotomayor said in a statement with the report, which was funded by the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism. "It's dishonest journalism because it's a willful decision made deliberately to exclude diverse staff."

Herbert Lowe, president of the National Association of Black Journalists, said in a statement: "The numbers generated by this survey quantify what black journalists have always known -- that we don't get to cover some of the most coveted beats in our profession, the ones that involve coverage of the most pressing issues affecting our country overall and our communities."

Unity's organizers are calling on newspapers to assign deserving minority reporters to beats that help push them up the ladder to their national staffs and by taking more time to recruit minorities outside their newsrooms. But others said those requests in past decades have not resulted in significant change.

The lack of diversity leads to a dearth of story ideas on issues affecting minorities, said Sotomayor, a member of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, whose members derive from an ethnic group and can be of any race.

White journalists often fail to quote minority experts, Sotomayor said, as one report pointed out about coverage of an attempt by the Bush administration to extend guest worker status to immigrants. "But if you talk to people on the border," he said, "they don't want a guest worker program. I didn't see any reporters going to the border and talking to people who would say, 'I think this is a terrible idea.' "

At least two editors in charge of Washington newspaper bureaus attended the 11 a.m. news conference regarding the Unity survey at the Washington Convention Center.

John Walcott, bureau chief for Knight Ridder Newspapers, said his organization's distinction as having the highest proportion of minority members on staff "is a dubious honor." Kenneth Cooper, national desk editor for the Boston Globe, said minority journalists are unfairly asked to meet a higher standard than many of their white colleagues who are chosen to work in Washington.

"The Washington press corps is not at all representative of the people who read our newspapers," Walcott said. "Although we finished first in the survey, we at Knight Ridder feel we need to do better."

Cooper said minority reporters are told they must demonstrate their worth by covering local politics, schools and other beats before ascending to national staffs. But young white reporters are hired even if they don't follow that track. "They start out working in general assignment, or organizations like Roll Call or Congressional Quarterly, and then they're here. This kind of thinking represents a double standard."

Liz Spayd, assistant managing editor for national news at The Washington Post, said, "Our staff diversity is better than it used to be, but still not nearly where it needs to be, no question about it. We've added two minority journalists to our political staff recently and as we reshuffle the national staff after the election we'll be looking hard at minority candidates to join our Washington ranks."

The Washington Post national staff's ethnic diversity was in the middle of the pack of large newspapers in the survey, about 9 percent, far lower than the 29 percent posted by Knight-Ridder Newspapers, the 28 percent at Gannett News Service and the 18 percent at the Boston Globe.

Minorities make up about 12 percent of newsroom employees in all newspaper departments, according to a 2003 American Society of Newspaper Editors report.

Christopher Callahan, the University of Maryland associate dean who was the survey's chief researcher, said broadcast news organizations and news wire services did not respond in time for yesterday's release of the survey. Callahan also said that several newspapers, including the New York Times, Hearst Publications and the Washington Times, declined to divulge the ethnic makeup of their national staffs.

Patty Talahongva, president of the Native American Journalists Association, said: "The lack of cooperation is ironic because these same journalism organizations ask, even demand, information on a daily basis and often quote the Freedom of Information Act. When the tables are turned, they seem to have a different attitude."

Catalina Camia, an Asian American editor for Gannett News Service, said young minority journalists who want to work in Washington "are frustrated." As a result, she said, "I'm one of a few. I shouldn't know every journalist of color in the room when I cover events, but I do."