Laura Garbes Examines Race, Power, and Inclusion in Public Radio

After first questioning why public radio’s voice often seemed so limited, Laura Garbes turned her attention to the structures that shaped the industry. Today, in Listeners Like Who?, she examines how those choices privileged certain voices while excluding others, and how people of color in the industry are working to change that.

Tell us about your publication. What do we need to know?

In Listeners Like Who?, I describe how public radio’s historical formation, donor reliance, and editorial practices have privileged white voices—both literally and figuratively—at the expense of marginalized communities. It examines the early decisions that solidified public radio as a predominantly white institutional space. 

From its founding, National Public Radio and its affiliate stations catered to an upper-middle-class white donor base, shaping programming priorities and reinforcing a singular notion of a "neutral" and "authoritative" voice. These structural factors have influenced hiring practices, storytelling norms, and the exclusion of voices perceived as too foreign or accented for mainstream listenership today. 

Crucially, I also show through interviews with people of color in the public radio industry today that they find strategies to expand who is included on the airwaves, and the types of stories that are told on public radio.

How did you become interested in your topic?

Public radio is well known for its ambitious and impressive mission to serve the United States in all its diversity—it’s been diligent about differentiating itself from commercial radio in this regard. When I saw radio producers and presenters speaking out about the whiteness of public radio's voice in 2016, I realized that there was a mismatch between its mission and practice I wanted to explore systematically.

What question is at the heart of this project?

The broadest articulation of my research is: who gets heard in the public sphere, and why? This research project explores institutional barriers to inclusion in an industry seeking to be as representative of the American public as possible.

I found that people of color in historically white dominant spaces find creative ways to push their organizations to align further with their original missions. These findings have implications for how we think about racial inequality within democratic public spheres. Thus far, the onus for change has been on the marginalized voices themselves or their advocates. This book asks what the world might sound like if we considered these voices when founding and developing new organizations, as well as reforming existing ones.

What's next for you? 

Looking ahead, I remain committed to illuminating the structures that perpetuate inequality in sound and media industries, and to highlighting how historically marginalized groups challenge these structures. In the coming year, I am launching my next major project on the profession of audio book narration, and recent precarity facing long-time narrators from AI voice software and from an increase in celebrity voice actors.

This story was written by Bayleigh Bergner, an undergraduate student in CLA.