Earlier this month, a historical event took place on Capitol Hill when an unprecedented number of women were sworn into the House and the Senate. And like one-time rookie Kamala Harris (D-CA), the new set of ladies and especially those of color “ain’t” sitting around waiting to vote on other representatives’ bills. They are already active, proposing bills and speaking out against an administration that seems bent on taking this country back, and one that is certainly not known to stand against racism and sexism.
The latest vocal female representative is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D- New York) who just criticized CBS News Saturday night for what she considers lack of diversity in its team of reporters covering the upcoming 2020 presidential election, reports The Hill and News One. “This WH admin has made having a functional understanding of race in America one of the most important core competencies for a political journalist to have, yet [CBS News] hasn’t assigned a ‘single’ Black journalist to cover the 2020 election,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet. “Unacceptable in 2019. Try again,” Ocasio-Cortez added.
Her tweet was in response to another post shared by an associate producer at CBS News, Ben Mitchell, who shared a tweet showing the news agency’s 2020 election team of reporters and associate producers. “It’s Official: The CBS News 2020 Election Team has assembled!” Mitchell said in the tweet, which also featured a photo of the 12-person team of media professionals. The newly sworn-in congresswoman faced some blowback from other reporters over the criticism, including Josh Kraushaar, a politics editor at the National Journal, who said the New York Democrat had “another thing” in common with President Trump: “media scold.”
Ocasio-Cortez fired back at Kraushaar in another tweet on Saturday night, saying: “Or: maybe having powerful editorial positions awash in people from one race, class, or gender isn’t a good idea; since we get 1000% more takes on ‘brown lady says a curse word’ than an actual white supremacist in Congress. If you don’t look in the mirror, people will do it for you.” The congresswoman appeared to be referencing data released from by the liberal group Media Matters for America on Friday.
The report showed that Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (Mich.) profane vow to impeach Trump received five times more cable news coverage than Republican Rep. Steve King over his latest inflammatory comments questioning why the term “white supremacist” is offensive. In another tweet responding to Ocasio-Cortez, however, Kraushaar wrote that he felt the team’s reporters looked racially diverse “at least based on [their] last names.” He wrote: “For what it’s worth, the mix of 7 embedded campaign reporters looked racially diverse (at least based on last names), with the exception of lacking an African-American. If there aren’t strict racial quotas for every batch of hires, does it mean a company is racist?” But Ocasio-Cortez responded to Kraushaar’s reasoning in another tweet in which she also contended “one race isn’t substitutable for another.”
