No Indigenous women and few women of color were TV guests on 2020 Sunday morning news shows

• No Indigenous women and only one Middle Eastern-North African woman made a Sunday show appearance.
• White men were the most frequent guests brought on to talk about George Floyd's murder on-air.
• Often the same, small group of people of color are called on to share their expertise on TV.

Not a single Indigenous woman appeared as a guest on the top 5 Sunday morning TV news programs in 2020.

In fact, women of color generally were omitted from these shows, according to a recent report from the Women's Media Center (WMC) - a nonprofit organization co-founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda, and Robin Morgan that's dedicated to increasing the visibility of women in media.

During a year of overlapping crises and major news events, including the 2020 presidential election, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and heightened protests in the pursuit of racial justice, communications experts say that the overarching omission of Indigenous, Black, Latina, and AAPI women is especially glaring.

Not only does the exclusion of women of color ignore their expertise, but it also has a tangible effect on other people from these communities and their quality of life, such experts say.

"These news shows continue to set the agenda for the week, so they have an outweighed importance when you're looking at the news cycle, which then impacts the way people see themselves represented in legislation," Kate McCarthy, director of programs for WMC, told Insider.

Lack of WOC leads to the erasure of communities of color

The report looked at five major Sunday news shows, including ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, CNN's State of the Union, Fox News Sunday, and MSNBC's Meet the Press.

Only a handful of women of color were featured across all five shows, per the report; in comparison, white men made up approximately 75% of all guest appearances.

Despite making up 9% of the population, Latinas were only 2% of guest appearances, while Asian American women, 3% of the population, made up less than 1% of appearances.

One Middle Eastern/North African woman had a guest appearance on these shows in 2020.

"The results of the report are to be expected, but I was a little surprised that it hasn't gotten better given all of the conversations that have been happening around systemic racism," Isabel Molina-Guzmán, a professor of Latina/Latino studies and communication at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told Insider.

"That Latinas only make up 2% of guest appearances is pretty blatant, especially in the contemporary context where Latinos have been hit exponentially hard by COVID-19, by the recession, and by police violence," Molina-Guzmán explained.

Molina-Guzmán noted the data"really tells us something about how the country has a long way to go in terms of providing access to Latinas and other women of color."

Black women, 7% of the population, made up 9% of guest appearances, but the report cautions against viewing this statistic as indicative of major progress as the "finding implies a greater representation than actually occurred, because of reappearances."

Additionally, white men were the most frequent guests brought on to talk about George Floyd's murder on-air.

"We typically don't hear from the people who are directly affected by an issue, which leads to their narratives being diminished," Rachel Grant, an assistant professor of journalism at University of Florida whose research focuses on race, gender, and class, said.

"It leads to the media moving forward with preconceived notions of narratives and sticking to oppressive tropes," she added.

Joely Proudfit, director of the American Indian Studies Department at California State University San Marcos, told Insider "when the media does bother to talk about our issues, they don't speak directly to our experts." .

"When you don't invite actual people, actual Indigenous voices, to speak, it's a modern form of genocide," she said.

Proudfit, who is the first Indigenous woman to be appointed to California's Commission on the Status of Women and Girls, said she believes things may be slowly changing, as social media has enabled audiences to "hold media to account" in a way it hasn't been before.

She points to the spate of recent coverage surrounding Gabby Petito, a 22-year-old travel blogger who went missing on a trip with her fiancé, as providing an opportunity for the media to speak on missing and murdered Indigenous women.

"Native women have gone missing for years, yet people can't say or name one Indigenous woman or girl or one Black or Latina woman or girl, for that matter, who went missing," Proudfit said.

Indigenous women are not only equipped to speak about gender-based violence, however, Proudfit added.

"They can speak on pay equity, environmental justice, sovereignty and other legal issues," Proudit said. 'We have Indigenous experts on every topic."

Using one WOC as spokespeople for thousands is tokenism

According to the report, when women of color are represented on television news, it's often the same recurring group of people called upon to share their expertise and commentary.

For instance, 12 Latinas made 26 appearances, 6 Asian American women made 10 appearances, and 46 Black women made 143 appearances on the five major Sunday shows last year.

"I could name all the Latina guests on these shows," Molina-Guzman said. "When you have 12 people speak on behalf of 18% of the population, that's a problem."

"They're often called upon to perform tokenizing roles and sometimes used to strategically cover really racist beliefs," she added.

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The report's authors also suggest that pigeonholing experts flattens the nuances and complexities of stories, before criticizing the Sunday shows for perpetuating the "social perception of race as a Black/White issue."

"Racism affects all people of color, and it is alarming that entire communities were completely omitted from the conversation," write the report's authors.

Diversity across the media industry remains an ongoing issue, according to the report's authors, who say their findings are in line with more than three decades of research showing morning shows "remain a mostly white and male affair."

Given marginal progress over the years, experts urge reforms to address the dearth of women, especially women of color, on-air.

Among those reforms include prompting bookers to make an effort to go beyond their immediate roster and seek out leaders from marginalized and underrepresented backgrounds.

"The way things currently are, we're seen as such an afterthought that we're not viewed as human beings," Proudfit said. "That's why it's critical to attack this from every angle."