NHMC on the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) 2013 TV Staffing Brief

Pasadena, CA. - The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) commends the Writers Guild of America, West (WGAW) on the release of its 2013 TV Staffing Brief. Among the WGAW findings regarding the 2011-12 television season:

• 83.7 percent of the television writers were white; 6.5 percent were African American; 4 percent were Latino; 3.9 percent were Asian American; and 0.3 percent were Native American.
• U.S. Latinos were underrepresented by a factor of 4 to 1.
• 10 percent of TV shows had no female writers and nearly a third had no minority writers.
• Of the 454 executive producers working on the 190 shows examined, 344 were white males (75.8 percent). Women were underrepresented by a factor of more than 2 to 1 among the writers who run television shows. People of color were underrepresented by a factor of nearly 5 to 1.

To counteract these troubling trends, NHMC commends the WGAW's Diversity Department for developing programs such as the Writer Access Project (WAP) that increase employment opportunities for diverse writers in television. WGAW's sincere commitment to increasing diversity at the writers' table is laudable.

"Unfortunately, I cannot say that I am surprised by the numbers released by WGAW. Although NHMC has seen incremental progress regarding to Latino writers, we are clearly not where we need to be. The lack of diversity in this industry makes it much less likely that authentic, multi-dimensional stories will be told, if at all. As a result, depictions of people of color are often based on stereotypes and misinformation that can be harmful to our children as well as to the rest of our nation. To remedy this we need and deserve a multi-ethnic perspective. As the demographics of this country continue to change, the television industry must keep up," said Alex Nogales, President & CEO of NHMC.