If there’s one thing journalism schools should know by now, it is not to hire professors based on their DEI credibility, as such moves will likely lead to conflict. But in a world where news outlets seek to promote advocacy over objectivity, such hirings are not surprising.
UNC-Chapel Hill’s debacle with Nikole Hannah-Jones in 2021, while illustrating the point, is not nearly as absurd as the new peak of ridiculousness reached at Texas A&M University (TAMU) in August. As has been widely reported, the institution was forced to settle with former New York Times editor Kathleen McElroy for $1 million, after her hiring process became … complicated. What began as a braggable hire for the university turned into a resignation and a $1 million court settlement, leading many to wonder why American universities are more interested in head-hunting for progressive, DEI-friendly activists than in finding “normal” journalism professors who can teach students to report and write accurately and fairly.
UNC’s instance of a publicly celebrated hire gone awry could be dismissed as a fluke; two instances should concern anyone interested in the state of journalism education, especially when millions of dollars are involved.
In June, TAMU announced it had hired former NYT senior editor Kathleen McElroy to run its revamped journalism program. McElroy—an outspoken proponent of diversity, equity, and inclusion practices—had previously led the journalism department at the University of Texas-Austin.
According to Texas Scorecard, McElroy was part of the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity at UT, a program that advocates for equity-based hiring practices, among other things.
In a 2020 column for UT’s student newspaper, The Daily Texan, McElroy argued for tracking the racial demographics of faculty members.
These examples alone would traditionally have been enough to disqualify someone from teaching journalism, because someone teaching others to be fair, balanced, and unbiased cannot effectively do so if they are publicly unbalanced and biased.
Readers may remember that PBS’s Jim Lehrer decided not to vote while he was working as the anchor of The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer and PBS NewsHour. Can we even imagine such self-restraint now?
We instantly associate today’s major (or recently major) broadcasters with a political bias—Anderson Cooper, Tucker Carlson, Rachel Maddow, and Sean Hannity, for example.
