PressEthic

Spike Lee, famous filmmaker and noted sports aficionado, has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Morehouse College in order to finance a brand new sports journalism program. Lee hopes to increase the number of African-American sportswriters in the country to cover major sports such as football and basketball, where the vast majority of athletes are black.

Lee, an alumnus of the Atlanta school, told the World Entertainment News Network, that he wanted to help change what he called a "dearth of representation of African Americans" among sports journalists.

"Seventy-five per cent of the players in the NFL (National Football League) are black, an even higher number of African Americans play basketball, but, if you look in the press box and the magazines and the newsrooms, you don't have that representation now, so that's what we want to do," Lee told the network.

I applaud Lee for his efforts in increasing the number of black sportswriters. My question is whether Lee believes black sportswriters would be better able to cover sports that include black athletes. As journalists, we are taught to be as objective as possible and not include ourselves in the story. Therefore, by that description, does it matter who the reporter is, in terms of race, sex, or preferred language? I don't really have an answer for that question, but I thought I would just throw it out there. I think that you could make a strong case that those factors are all important and do play a role in much of our work as reporters.

Nonetheless, Lee's efforts are more importantly a step towards injecting some diversity into a professional field that has historically been dominated by white males. For that, he should be praised.