{"id":632069,"date":"2025-12-14T14:33:18","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T14:33:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/632069\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T14:33:18","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T14:33:18","slug":"its-not-a-coincidence-journalists-of-color-on-being-laid-off-amid-trumps-anti-dei-push-us-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/632069\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018It\u2019s not a coincidence\u2019: journalists of color on being laid off amid Trump\u2019s anti-DEI push | US news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Trey Sherman was traveling to work on the New York subway when he received an email from David Reiter<\/a>, a CBS News executive, about an imminent meeting on 29 October. Sherman, an associate producer of CBS Evening News Plus at the time, suspected that he would be laid off. CBS News\u2019s parent company, Paramount, had closed a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance in August, and planned to slash more than 2,000 jobs<\/a> as part of corporate restructuring.<\/p>\n

Sherman, who is Black, and Reiter, who is white, had an amicable conversation, according to Sherman. Reiter told Sherman that he was being laid off because his show was being eliminated, Sherman said, and that Reiter was unable to assign the team to other positions. Sherman accepted the news and the two men wished each other good luck.<\/p>\n

But when Sherman left the conference room and entered the newsroom, he said he learned that his white colleagues had been told a very different story. A white co-worker told Sherman that she found it \u201cmessed up\u201d that the people of color on the team had been laid off. Of the nine producers who staffed CBS Evening News Plus, five white people were reassigned to other positions, while the four people of color on the team were let go, according to Sherman and another former staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation. Later that day, Sherman documented his experience in a viral TikTok video<\/a>. CBS did not respond to the Guardian\u2019s multiple requests for comment.<\/p>\n

Sherman\u2019s role may be the latest casualty in a nationwide crackdown on diversity<\/a>. Several high-ranking Black officials have been fired<\/a> from the Trump administration, and thousands of jobs related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)<\/a> have been cut in the private and public sectors. The Guardian talked to seven recently laid off journalists at CBS, NBC and Teen Vogue who spoke of people of color on their teams being let go while their white colleagues were spared, or the chipping away at coverage focused on marginalized communities.<\/p>\n

Newsrooms have long been less diverse<\/a> than the US population, which makes these layoffs in particular especially pronounced. In 1978, the American Society of Newspaper Editors, an organization for media leaders, vowed<\/a> that the racial makeup of newsrooms would reflect the US population by 2000. As the deadline neared in 1998, the society moved<\/a> the date to 2025, but newsrooms still haven\u2019t met that goal. According to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey<\/a> of nearly 12,000 journalists, 76% of respondents were white, 8% were Latino\/Hispanic, 6% were Black and 3% were Asian. The survey showed an overrepresentation of white journalists, since nearly 58% of the population was white, about 19% were Hispanic, 12% were Black and 6% were Asian in the 2020 US census<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Some journalists see the layoffs as capitulation to the Trump administration\u2019s war on DEI. After Trump\u2019s January executive orders calling for an end to DEI programs<\/a> and the termination of affirmative action<\/a> in the federal government, Sherman said that \u201cone by one, we saw companies get rid of their DEI initiatives\u201d.<\/p>\n

CBS and NBC are subjected to regulatory scrutiny by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which oversees radio, television, cable, satellite and wire communications. During his first week in office, Brendan Carr, the FCC chair, announced<\/a> that the FCC would end its DEI efforts by, among other things, removing it as a priority from the agency\u2019s budget, and quashing its advisory group and taskforce.<\/p>\n

Part of their agenda is to, let\u2019s be real, not just get rid of DEI initiatives but diversity in and of itself<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trey Sherman<\/p>\n

Several weeks later, Carr launched an investigation<\/a> into Comcast and NBC Universal\u2019s diversity initiatives, followed by a similar inquiry<\/a> into Disney and ABC. Disney told employees in a February memo<\/a> that it would stop Reimagine Tomorrow, a platform that amplified underrepresented voices, and the corporation\u2019s 2025 annual report<\/a> eschewed the word \u201cdiversity\u201d for the first time in six years.<\/p>\n

In July filings to the FCC<\/a> before the merger, Skydance promised that it would eliminate Paramount\u2019s DEI initiatives and workforce diversity targets. And in October, Bari Weiss, an opinion journalist who advocated to \u201cend DEI for good<\/a>\u201d, was appointed the editor in chief of CBS News. Some CBS News employees have been on edge<\/a> since Weiss\u2019s appointment.<\/p>\n

Then in early November, sources allege that most Teen Vogue employees \u2013 many of whom were women of color \u2013 were let go as publisher Cond\u00e9 Nast announced<\/a> that the outlet focused on politics, fashion and news would join Vogue\u2019s website. A Cond\u00e9 Nast spokesperson said it was inaccurate that most of the staff had been let go. Those reductions came several weeks after NBC News laid off 150 employees<\/a>, and gutted teams on verticals that exclusively covered Black, Asian American, Latino, and LGBTQ+ communities. The equity-focused sections will continue to exist<\/a>, though without a dedicated staff, drawing from content around the newsroom.<\/p>\n

Some institutions within the journalism industry have also steered away from DEI in their company language since Trump entered office. In April, Gannett<\/a> removed demographic data and mentions about diversity from its website, citing Trump\u2019s executive order calling for an end to DEI.<\/p>\n

The Trump administration \u201chas used its power to exert more control over the media than maybe we\u2019ve ever seen\u201d, Sherman said. \u201cIt so happens that part of their agenda is to, let\u2019s be real, not just get rid of DEI initiatives, but to get rid of diversity in and of itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a political climate that\u2019s hostile to diversity, people of color must start their own media outlets and podcasts, said political commentator and National Association of Black Journalists board member Roland Martin: \u201cThese companies are going to learn a hard lesson: if you continue to remove Black, Latino, Muslim and Asian American voices, those consumers are going to go elsewhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s not a coincidence\u2019<\/p>\n

After speaking to his white colleagues, Sherman went to Reiter\u2019s office to confront him about the layoff discrepancies. Sherman said that Reiter told him that he chose to keep people he had previously worked with. After Sherman posted his video recapping the conversation with Reiter on TikTok, he said he received messages from former employees at other media outlets who had similar stories. Mary, a woman of color who is using a pseudonym out of fear of jeopardizing future job prospects, said that she was shocked when she watched Sherman\u2019s video.<\/p>\n

She was laid off from another CBS<\/a> team on the same day as Sherman, and soon realized that out of the dozens of people on her diverse team, the only four who were laid off were people of color. \u201cWe certainly have white producers, we have white reporters who could have been laid off as well,\u201d Mary said. They had to have \u201cknown that would not look good\u201d.<\/p>\n

In a memo<\/a> to employees, the new Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison wrote that the cuts were necessary for the company\u2019s longevity. \u201cIn some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,\u201d he wrote. \u201cIn others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure designed to strengthen our focus on growth.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mary and Sherman, though, say it\u2019s clear that CBS\u2019s methodology for who they chose to lay off reflects the Trump administration\u2019s assault on diversity. \u201cI\u2019m not accusing any one person of looking at my department and deciding to lay off all the people of color,\u201d Sherman said, \u201cbut I am saying that it\u2019s not a coincidence that the layoffs that they chose to do fell along racial lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Sherman would not comment on whether he was pursuing legal action, Mary said that she and several former CBS employees have expressed interest in filing a lawsuit: \u201cThis is very suspicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

In mid-October, the entire teams behind NBC BLK, NBC Asian America, NBC Latino, and NBC Out were laid off, but content from around the newsroom will continue to populate the verticals. Curtis Bunn, the only reporter at NBC BLK, a vertical that focuses on Black communities, was one of the people who was let go. Over the past two years, he said, he watched the team dwindle from four people to two until the final purge. The layoffs also come as most of Comcast\u2019s NBCUniversal cable networks spin off<\/a> into a new company called Versant Media Group, causing NBC News to streamline its operations. (Forty people<\/a> were also let go from NBC in January. An NBC union representative said it does not have a demographic breakdown of the layoffs.)<\/p>\n

Bunn said that he trusts the company\u2019s reasoning, but he is curious about why the teams that covered marginalized communities were eliminated. \u201cWhen you see what\u2019s happening around you, and you see the nature of even the media companies capitulating to the administration,\u201d Bunn said, \u201cyou can\u2019t help but feel like that has some part or some role in what took place.\u201d He said that he was told that he could apply for other roles at the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe journalists behind NBC BLK, NBC Latino, NBC Asian America and NBC OUT have chronicled our communities with depth, nuance and humanity,\u201d NABJ president and co-founder of the 19th, Errin Haines, said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cIf anything, their work has strengthened our democracy and expanded our nation\u2019s understanding of itself.\u201d NBC did not respond to repeated requests for comment.<\/p>\n

We need Black-owned and -run establishments that are going to stay that way<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Aniyah Freeman<\/p>\n

Traci Lee, a journalist who was NBC<\/a> Asian America\u2019s digital editorial manager from 2015 to 2019, said that the vertical helped elevate Asian American and Pacific Islanders\u2019 experiences to a national sphere. \u201cSo often we have other people telling our stories for us, whether it is being glossed over in history books, or perhaps just being excluded from the narrative,\u201d Lee said. \u201cThis was a space where we could, on a national level, tell our own stories.\u201d When NBC Asian America wrote stories about the concentration camps that held Japanese Americans during the second world war, readers reached out to say that they had never been taught about the topic in school.<\/p>\n

Leaders from affinity groups including the Asian American Journalists Association, NABJ and NLGJA: the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists met<\/a> with NBC\u2019s executives about the layoffs in late October, during which NBC promised to continue covering their communities.<\/p>\n

It was soon after this that five<\/a> women of color from Teen Vogue were let go. Cond\u00e9 Nast, Teen Vogue\u2019s parent company, would not confirm the number of laid-off staff or their demographics.<\/p>\n

Skyli Alvarez, an Asian queer woman on Teen Vogue\u2019s editorial team who was laid off, said that she was in a state of shock when she realized that most of the laid-off employees were people of color. \u201cIn the media landscape today, a lot of people of color, a lot of people of marginalized identities, tend to be in these entry-level, associate-level positions,\u201d Alvarez said. \u201cAnd so to me, I was like: \u2018This speaks to a bigger issue beyond all of us.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The Cond\u00e9 Nast<\/a> spokesperson said that the restructure is designed to help the company grow, since Teen Vogue has long faced difficulties in reaching audiences. \u201cRather than continuing to operate independently, bringing Teen Vogue under the Vogue umbrella allows it to tap into a larger audience, stronger distribution and more resources,\u201d the spokesperson said. \u201cAny organizational changes the company makes are purely driven by business strategy to grow consumer engagement with our titles.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTeen Vogue was one of the last really outspoken publications on problems that affect young people, that young people care about,\u201d Alvarez said. She hopes that communities of color and LGBTQ+ people will continue ensuring that their perspectives are heard nationwide despite the publication\u2019s absorption.<\/p>\n

In light of the mass layoffs, some Black creatives have begun gathering online to form a collective in their vision. In early November, Aniyah Freeman, a digital marketer based in New York, put a callout on LinkedIn<\/a> to start a media company with recently laid-off Black journalists. So far, she said, about 200 people have joined a group chat; a core group of 15 recently laid-off Black media professionals from various companies including ABC, Rolling Stone and Cond\u00e9 Nast have met on Zoom several times.<\/p>\n

For now, their media company is called Black Media Caucus, and they are working on business plans for a magazine focused on politics, fashion and culture. \u201cIt\u2019s going to be giving us perspectives that they\u2019re trying to take away from us,\u201d Freeman said. \u201cWe need Black-owned-and-run establishments that are going to stay that way. This current political climate is an inspiration for all of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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