How journalists of color are expanding radio’s definition of a ‘good talker’
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In Listeners Like Who? Exclusion and Resistance in the Public Radio Industry, I detail how the racialized evaluation of voice occurs within public radio story production. The vague and subjective criteria of having a story that includes “good talkers” as the main characters, when the network itself is associated with a mostly white, professional class audience, end up favoring experts and guests with experience within and connections to white institutional spaces. But the book also crucially details how contemporary public radio employees move beyond these norms to expand who public radio is for, even if it increases their workload.
Within the public radio industry, people of color I spoke to pushed to broaden the conception of “good talker.” They did so in two main ways: spending more time preparing and editing sources, and conducting interviews in foreign languages with an English translation. These strategies opened up space for a wider diversity of sources while still producing work that reached the (white) standards of the industry.
Some respondents agreed that if guests, sources, or experts were not used to speaking into a microphone, they were less likely to be deemed “good talkers.” A little preparation and patience often helped get past the stiltedness of inexperience. I spoke to Patricia, a Black editor who was committed to expanding the notion of a good talker. She had a mentor early on in her career who guided her through how to prepare guests on a live show. She recognized that “good talkers” are made, not found, but that it is not a typical part of a reporter’s training to elicit “good talk” from folks who don’t have comfort speaking to media:
It’s not really about being a bad talker. It’s about making people comfortable, helping them to explain things and I think that, when we look at diversity, it’s like, certain interviewers work to make people comfortable… which makes for better talking.
Another producer had strategies to ensure the clarity of English-language learners on air, suggesting, “Let’s actually listen to people and what they’re saying and what they’re trying to say and come back to them. ‘Is this what you mean? Did I understand you correctly?’” Meanwhile, a Black editor, Jane, told me how a mentor guided her through preparing guests for a live show:
Sometimes when I hear someone bomb on a live show, it’s like, I wonder how they were prepped. Did they understand the parameters?… I don’t think that producers are trained… on the responsibility that they have to prep guests and that, they, like, make the show in that way.
In addition, I heard frustration over the speed with which white editors would dismiss voices as incomprehensible, even if they added to the story. This producer developed a list of editing techniques she could use to help make the accent “work”:
I would often bring back tape, and I said I’d spoke to an Asian American man. He has an accent. I say, “Maybe we can present it this way.” Instead, you would get, “This person isn’t going to be comprehensible”; or “How much Spanish are you going to put on the air?”; or “People will tune out when they hear Spanish” or whatever the language is. I say, “No, no, no. We can put it on, and then we can summarize.”
Both examples above showcase that the voice standards in broadcasting can be shifted to ensure clear enunciation and speech that is interesting and dynamic, without excluding guests who lack training and experience within dominant institutional spaces. However, producers, reporters and editors are not systematically taught to guide their guests on how to ensure their voices come through clearly and compellingly on air.
Journalists can also diversify the sources and voices eligible for broadcast by conducting interviews in foreign languages and translating them. However, newsrooms often undervalue the labor of translation work by their multilingual employees. Deirdre, a multilingual reporter of color, walked me through the added labor that goes into this process:
Let’s say I conduct an interview in Spanish. It’s an hour-long interview in Spanish. Now, I have to transcribe that interview from Spanish to [written] Spanish and then from Spanish to English. And then I have to pull the important parts in English into a separate document to then organize it into a story. So, even in the production of that story, you’re adding two extra steps. You have to really be committed to wanting to do it, because otherwise it’s not worth the time.
When I asked Deirdre whether her extra work was compensated, she explained that most of this labor remains in the background, invisible to her editor:
[My editor] doesn’t recognize the amount of work that I’m doing on the back end… I resorted to having to pay somebody [online] to transcribe my Spanish stories into Spanish… And then I can just transcribe whatever I want into English, but then I need [help from colleagues or friends] sometimes, because I wanna make sure that I got the translation exactly right.
Sometimes, bilingual producers of color must do this translation and interpretation work for mostly white monolingual English-speaking reporters. A bilingual Latinx producer, Javier, felt put upon at being used as a translator to help report immigration stories when he is trying to build his own portfolio of immigration stories as a freelancer on top of his producer position:
As one of the only Spanish speakers at my station, I have been thrust into this role of interpreting and translating for reporters who are doing immigration work. I’m not compensated for it. It just gets exhausting doing this work for reporters who are very talented, who I adore and admire as colleagues, of course, but who kind of rely on our labor to translate and listen to the interpretations so that they can get the story right. That takes away time [with which] you could be doing your own story on immigration stuff.
These examples point to a racialized double standard when it comes to which linguistic competencies hold enough social currency in the American radio context. Translation and interpretation work remain undercompensated and undervalued as a journalistic credential, even when the work is necessary for producing a story about a non–English-speaking community. While the practice allows for a broader range of sources, it increases the labor (but not the recognition) for translators and interpreters.
I really like the notion of preparing interviewees, and talk show guests in this manner, so that they are “heard” and understood. One word of caution. The author suggests in some cases, repeating back to an interviewee in the reporter’s words and asking “is this what you mean?” While in theory, that’s a good way to elicit clarity, in practice it smacks of two things that are not acceptable in journalism. One, talking down to the subject, or even appropriating their ideas; and two, the very real (and likely) chance that the reporter adds bias, and/or opinion into their version of what the subject said. It’s very common, and it’s a real red-flashing warning light; even if the subect yes “yes that’s what I meant”. It’s leading the witness, or can be perceived as that. And, perception is reality. Generally though, preparing the guest is a terrific idea.