Jacquie Jones

Jones steps down from helm of National Black Programming Consortium

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Jacquie Jones, executive director of the National Black Programming Consortium (NBPC) since 2005, has resigned, effective immediately, but will continue to produce for public media. Stepping in as interim is Leslie Fields-Cruz, programming director, who has supervised distribution of programs to PBS since 2001. NBPC, a 35-year-old nonprofit that is affiliated with the CPB-backed National Minority Consortia, develops, produces and funds public media content focusing on the African American experience, such as the Peabody-winning documentary, 180 Days: A Year Inside An American High School. The 2013 film, which Jones directed and produced, portrayed day-to-day challenges of students and educators at an alternative high school in in Washington, D.C.

Jones will return to film production with the follow-up, 180 Days: Hartsville, a coproduction of South Carolina ETV and NBPC. Her previous television production credits include 1998’s Africans in America— another Peabody winner — and Matters of Race in 2003 for PBS; From Behind Closed Doors: Sex in the 20th Century for Showtime; and The World Before Us for History Channel.

Public Media Policybase

Minority consortia to PBS: PubTV’s ‘stunning lack of diversity’ allowed the Burns flap to occur

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Public broadcasting’s five CPB-funded minority consortia sent this letter to PBS President Paula Kerger on April 9, 2007. Dear Paula:

I’m writing to you on behalf of my colleagues of the National Minority Consortia (NMC), which, along with the National Black Programming Consortium, includes the Center for Asian American Media, Latino Public Broadcasting, Native American Public Telecommunications and Pacific Islanders in Communications. We would like to offer our support to you in helping to address in a positive manner what we view as legitimate community concerns over the omission of Latino voices from Ken Burns’ The War. It is not the idea of an intentional exclusion that raises the flag of indignation from the American public – and not only, as has been suggested, Hispanic Americans. It is the idea that the perspective of those within the public broadcasting system empowered to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate for a public television event of this magnitude do not fundamentally represent the diversity of this society.