In the news: Black experts at the press briefing

In early August 2008, the questions were coming in at a rapid-fire pace from reporters gathered in the U.S. Department of State’s press room in Washington. It was Robert Wood’s first day as the department’s acting spokesman, and he answered many questions on Russia’s invasion of its neighbor, Georgia.

“It was an extraordinary moment to begin the job,”  says Wood, now an alternate representative at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. He had dreamed of serving as the spokesman since arriving as an intern in the office of press relations in 1987.

Despite the chaotic news day unfolding on that first day Wood served as spokesman, he felt prepared. As a 20-year foreign service officer, he understood America’s role in the world. And because he had once considered a journalism career, he had insight into and respect for reporters’ role in society.

Looking back today, Wood believes his heritage as an African American helped the world see a more complete picture of America during his time (2008–2010) as spokesman and deputy spokesman.

“One of the strengths of America is her diversity,” Wood says. “When you bring all of these diverse views to the table, you develop a more complete, comprehensive understanding of various issues.”

African Americans have helped communicate America’s foreign policy as far back as the early 1960s, when Carl Rowan served as the State Department’s deputy assistant secretary for public affairs. An acclaimed journalist, Rowan reported for the Minneapolis Tribune on the lives of Black people in the South and caught the attention of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who each tapped him for diplomatic roles.

Black journalists began integrating Washington press pools in the 1940s, a time when discrimination made their jobs difficult. Sometimes they were given much-deserved support from government officials. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt invited Black reporter Harry S. McAlpin Jr. to cover an Oval Office news conference in 1944, despite the White House Correspondents’ Association’s refusal to admit him.

In the late 1940s, Alice Dunnigan covered Washington for the Associated Negro Press, the first Black news wire service, established in Chicago in 1919. Dunnigan was the first African American woman credentialed to cover the White House and the State Department. She later served as an information specialist for the U.S. Department of Labor.

State Department briefings today draw reporters from publications around the world and questions about varied topics. To Pearl Matibe, who covers U.S. foreign policy for publications in the U.S., Nigeria and South Africa, the “diversity of a press pool is of paramount importance.”

US-#SouthAfrica relations | “The United States Government views South Africa as one of the most important and significant states on the African continent.” – a Washingtion insider.

Bilateral ties.https://t.co/iGE1ZTZQfw pic.twitter.com/eRmapg7vLA

— Pearl Matibe (@PearlMatibe) February 21, 2024

Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor at the State Department on September 26, 2023.

Matibe immigrated to the U.S. from Zimbabwe in 2002, amid a crackdown on press freedoms in that country, and has covered both the White House and State Department since 2016.

She says that, as an African, she is able to ask questions that other reporters might miss. “Diverse reporters bring a range of cultural competencies and language skills,” she said. “We can enhance the quality, accuracy, credibility and democratic discourse of journalism, and this fosters a greater public engagement.”

When Jalina Porter became the first African American woman appointed State Department deputy spokesperson in January 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, she worked to continue and even expand access to U.S. foreign policy information through social media outlets and via teleconferences.

Porter has met women journalists in Japan and Jordan who tell her that seeing an African American woman serve as spokesperson was a powerful example.

“People recognized the magnitude of the messenger being the message,” Porter says. “It is absolutely an imperative to have, both at the spokesperson level and at the reporter level, to have a diversity of thought, age, background, demographic, religion, all of those things.”

U.S. Agency for International Development intern Frances Summers contributed to this story.