Still, nearly 45 percent of the nation's daily newspapers remain lily white. Behind the obvious, albeit small, numerical gains, a wide and deep racial and cultural chasm divides blacks and whites in the newsroom. Despite their heightened visibility, African American journalists and their minority counterparts, woefully underrepresented in the industry and in news management, are far from integrated into the newsroom culture, largely because of status quo assumptions about race. While black journalists occasionally succeed in conveying the richness and complexity of black life, they are often left, as was Monroe, restricted by the narrow scope of the media, which tends primarily to exploit those fragments of African American life that have meaning for, and resonate with, whites. For while the media has allowed the complexion of its newsrooms to better reflect society, the target audience of the major media has changed little.
News continues to be constructed for a primarily white audience.
As such, Farrakhan is primarily covered by the media in proportion to the controversial comments he makes about whites, particularly Jews. As Monroe tried to take readers behind Farrakhan's disturbing rhetoric to explain why his message resonates across a large swath of black America, his editors were intent on focusing on remarks they deemed anti-Semitic and racist, which Monroe agreed could not be ignored. But he said centering a story around them distorted the reason for his wide appeal across black America. Nonetheless, the measured, unemotional tone that defined The Bell Curve coverage was replaced with white hot emotionalism in Time's Farrakhan cover story. Monroe's attempt to present a balanced, unfiltered portrait was overshadowed by intemperate headlines and captions which conveyed unequivocal abhorrence for Farrakhan and his views.