EEOC CHAIR DOMINGUEZ TO FOCUS ON DIVERSITY IN THE NEWS MEDIA, AT UNITY 2004 CONVENTION

WASHINGTON - Cari M. Dominguez, Chair of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), will address the UNITY 2004: Journalists of Color, Inc. Convention today from 12 noon to 2:00 p.m., at the Washington Convention Center, 204A (Level 2), located at 801 Mount Vernon Place, N.W.

Chair Dominguez will hold an open dialogue, including a question and answer session, focusing on the state of hiring in the media industry and related diversity issues.  The week-long convention is billed as the largest gathering of journalists of color worldwide, with the number of attendees estimated at more than 7,000.  Additional information on the UNITY 2004 Convention can be found on the organization's web site at www.unityjournalists.org.

"We live in a melange millennium in which the growing diversity of our nation's communities should be better reflected by the journalists who cover them," said Dominguez, pointing to numerous industry reports highlighting persistent under-representation and slow progress in the employment of people of color as reporters and media professionals.  "Media outlets with a diverse workforce often have the greatest insight, broadest access, deepest understanding, and most balanced coverage of the many emerging issues stemming from America's shifting demographic landscape."

EEOC plans on shortly issuing a special report on the media examining the following three industry segments: newspapers/periodicals/books/database publishers, radio and television broadcasting, and cable networks and program distribution.  The report, which will be posted on the agency's web site at www.eeoc.gov, will provide a graphical overview with charts and data tables displaying detailed employment statistics for each of the three industry groups nationwide and for the 10 most populous metropolitan areas, which encompass the major media markets.  The Commission's web site also contains other aggregate employment statistics (EEO-1 data) on the media industries, as well as a special report looking at the demographics of the broadcasting industry based on data from 1995 to 2000.