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ISU Guest Soledad O'Brien: Media Struggles With Diversity

Soledad O'Brien
Keppler Speakers
Journalist Soledad O'Brien says many of her journalism colleagues struggle with reporting on diversity issues.

Former CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien, the guest speaker for Illinois State University's Latino Cultural Dinner next month, said many of her journalism colleagues struggle with reporting on diversity issues.
O’Brien said the problem is most stories are told from a white person's perspective, including a recent report which shows many parents rarely discuss issues of race, gender or class with their kids.
 

“Black people talk to their kids about race all the time and especially if they are black people in white communities,” O’Brien said. “This idea of not really getting the nuance around race that makes a story really important is a failure in the media all the time.”

O'Brien's parents migrated to the United States. Her mother is from Cuba and her father from Australia. Both died earlier this year.

She said much of the U.S. immigration debate is overheated and wrong. She said the media also often accepts the claim that many immigrants don't assimilate into American society.

“When you have someone who is well respected spewing something that is just factually untrue, as if somehow immigrants don’t want to embrace all the opportunities here and also don’t help create a new definition of what it means to be an American, I think that’s malicious frankly,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien hosts a political newsmagazine on Sunday mornings called “Matter of Fact.” She is likely best known for work on CNN, where she spent months covering the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina.

She said covering the Katrina catastrophe and its aftermath became a touchstone moment that shaped her career as a journalist, documentary producer and host.

“You had to be able to tell stories of people who really had no voice, literally had no voice at all,” she exclaimed. “That’s when I think I figured out there was just a lot of power in that.”

O'Brien and her husband run the PowHERful Foundation that mentors women to help send them to college. The foundation has raised over $5.3 million since 2006.

The Latino Cultural Dinner will be Nov. 4 at the Brown Ballroom of Bone Student Center. Ticket information is available on the ISU University Housing website.

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soledado_brien_-_full.mp3
Soledad O'Brien - Full Story

Eric Stock is the News Director at WGLT. You can contact Eric at ejstoc1@ilstu.edu.