For Public Media Organizations & Stations

Organizations and stations that sign up are committing to do 1 of the 11 action items below within 30 days, 5 of the items within 1 year, and 10 of the items within 3 years. If you want help approaching your organization’s leadership about this initiative, or if you’d like more information about what’s involved with this commitment please email contact@publicmediaforall.com for support.

Action Items

• Commit to internal diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) work by including it in the mission, values, goals, budget, and work schedules of the organization. 

• Incorporate DEI goals into the annual/quarterly goals of any staff person, who supervises staff or participates in hiring. Make raises and bonuses dependent upon reaching these goals as appropriate. 

• Affirm that in a country that has been rapidly diversifying, where people of color will be the majority in a couple decades, it is imperative to the survival of the organization and the success of its service to rapidly diversify our programming, audiences, donors, staff and leadership.

• Recognize that people of color staff and leaders have disproportionately been doing unpaid DEI work, while dealing with discrimination, microaggressions, implicit and explicit bias. Apologize. Create space for people of color staff to heal, re-energize, and be empowered. 

• Recognize that white staff and leaders have not been doing enough DEI work, while implicitly and/or explicitly enacting racial bias against people of color coworkers. Apologize. Create space for white staff to take ownership of these issues, do work to dismantle racial bias, and learn to listen to and empower people of color coworkers. 

• Conduct an anonymous cultural assessment survey of all staff about diversity, equity and inclusion at your organization. Bring people of color staff and white staff together in mediated safe spaces to facilitate brave, constructive, respectful conversations about race and the survey results. Ensure that there is an empowering balance of people of color talking and white staff listening. In larger organizations, considering segmenting these based on the hierarchy of the organization, so that staff are not influenced by their managers. Make it clear that retaliation will not be tolerated.

• Create systems that hold staff accountable without jeopardizing the well-being and reputation of the person experiencing the racial bias. These systems should use education and conversation as a first resort, and should also let the staff person go as a last resort. 

• Recognize that unpaid internships are not equally accessible to all, because many cannot afford to work for free. Commit to paying all interns within 1 year.

• Work with an outside organization to do a comprehensive pay equity review of all staff, and take action to ensure that everyone is compensated fairly without racial and gender bias. Include an analysis of temporary workers, and temp working policies.

• Use census data to determine the racial makeup of the communities the organization operates in and to set diversity goals based on equitable representation. Commit to having staff, leadership, and programming that accurately reflects those demographics in 3 years. Commit to having an audience that accurately reflects those demographics in 5 years. Commit to having a donor base that accurately reflects those demographics in 10 years. 

• Dedicate time and resources for an independent review of your organization’s DEI efforts, and commit to any improvements recommended in such reviews. Make the findings of the independent review easily accessible and publicly available.