Richard Prince’s Journal-isms™

CNN: Can’t Find Anyone of Color Qualified

Clockwise, from top left, CNN’s T.J. Holmes, Fredricka Whitfield, Don Lemon, Suzanne Malveaux, Roland S. Martin, Soledad O’Brien

CNN’s top executive has all but said that the on-air journalists of color it employs are not ready for prime time, and deployed Mark Whitaker, the former Newsweek editor who recently became a CNN news executive, to talk with the National Association of Black Journalists about finding more suitable ones.

In a statement protesting CNN’s new fall prime-time lineup that was announced Wednesday and includes no journalists of color, NABJ President Kathy Y. Times said she had raised the issue with Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide.

“NABJ Vice President of Broadcast Bob Butler and I talked with President Walton late Thursday, and he told us the network continues to seek and develop a candidate who has the image and substance to carry a prime-time show,” she wrote. “I invited Walton to mount an innovative search during the NABJ national convention next month in Philadelphia. It will be packed with outstanding African American talent.”

via CNN: Can’t Find Anyone of Color Qualified | The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.