Journalist Identity and Selective Exposure: The Effects of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in News Staff

Newsrooms are challenged with representing a diverse public, yet news staff are not always diverse themselves. Drawing from research on selective exposure along lines of race and ethnicity, this study explores how journalists’ race or ethnicity affects an individual’s likelihood of reading a news story and feelings of media representation. We find little evidence that different racial and ethnic groups respond differently to hearing and seeing bylines from journalists sharing their race or ethnicity than bylines that do not. In one study, Black participants are more likely to read an article written by a journalist who shares their race or ethnicity than one that does not. In another study, Hispanic news consumers are less likely to read an article written by a Hispanic journalist than a non-Hispanic journalist, although across several replication attempts, these results fail to replicate. We discuss the implications of these studies for selective exposure research and how news organizations display racial and ethnic diversity to their readers.