That crisis has been building for years. It's a real shame that my colleagues and employers in public media did not listen to my concerns about misogyny and racism within its ranks for all those years.
https://twitter.com/ElaheIzadi/status/1478776408461750274
I even filed HR complaints about it so that there would be a paper trail. I started doing that in 2013 or 2014. I was told "people of color just don't apply to public media" by HR at one point and I was so shocked that I thought he was doing a bit and laughed. He wasn't joking.
I also got told repeatedly that I was "too cute" to be a "proper reporter" (by editors who later told me I was "too immature" for a full-time job.) That was not a compliment. These experiences were at large local NPR affiliates in southern California.
Public media does a lot of really good work. It is also long overdue a hard and painful reckoning. (And if they'd listened to me back in the day instead of branding me "a maverick," "a troublemaker," "an organizer," and eventually firing me, they could have avoided this mess.)
Anyway, I'm sorry to see these hosts go. Public media in general is much diminished without them. But NPR should have known better. I wasn't the only one trying to call attention to this. (I'm conflating NPR with public media as so many affiliates take their cultural
cues from "the Mothership," although there are other networks. However, NPR has been the most influential in my own experience, and this is a systemic media issue that flies more under the radar in public media.)
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