Asian Newscasters: Where are the Men?

Connie Chung--former co-anchor of the CBS Evening News:

Ann Curry--NBC's Today Show:

Alina Cho--CNN:

Melissa Lee--CNBC:

All attractive, Asian-American women.  All excellent, professional network newscasters.

Is it a coincidence, that attractive, Asian-American women are doing so well as network newscasters?

Is the fact (and I call it a fact) that white men are so enamored of Asian women a factor in their success?

To put it another way:  Where are the Asian male network newscasters???


Why aren't the Asian men doing as well in network news as Asian women are?

Can you name any Asian male network broadcasters???

I can't think of one ....

I can't help but wonder whether the white male's fetish with the Asian female has something to do with the success of the Asian woman in these positions.

Now, I'm not taking anything away from the professionalism, intelligence, and skill of these women.

But, there are plenty of professional, intelligent, skilled women out there, and I presume that there are plenty of professional, intelligent, skilled Asian men out there, too.

Why don't the professional, intelligent and skilled Asian men get any of those network newscaster jobs?

In a 1994 article, Darrell Y. Hamamoto, spoke of a "Connie Chung Syndrome" that works for Asian females and against Asian males when it comes to getting network newscaster positions. 

Mr. Hamamoto wrote:

The overrepresentation of female Asian American anchorpersons and the near-total absence of their male counterparts  -- the Connie Chung syndrome -- is the material outcome of a complementary system of racism and sexism.  But in journalistic accounts of the syndrome, the roles that racism and sexism play in the casting of TV news anchors is rarely alluded to.  A December 1991 Los Angeles Times article, for example, tiptoed around the twin taboos by reporting the "difficult to prove" accusations made by "minorities in the field" that the "white, male hiring Establishment feels more comfortable seeing a white male sitting next to a minority female at the anchor desk than the reverse."  One of only a handful of male Asian Americans currently working as television news anchors in the entire country, Stephen Tschida of WDBJ-TV (Roanoke, Virginia) [now with Washington, DC's Newschannel 8 cable network] was informed early in his career that he should concentrate on reporting because he did not have the proper "look" to qualify for the top job.  In the meantime, such broadcast news veterans as Ken Kashiwahara, Mario Machado, and Sam Chu Linn, who began their careers in the early 1970s, have been passed over for younger, more beauteous, female Asian American objects of desire.  For, although those in TV news management would never admit to it, there is a belief that "Asian women are exotic looking and thus more appealing to white audiences, while Asian men are not."

In short, Asian women are doing so well in television news because they are attractive to and favored by white men. 


Asian men aren't, because they aren't.



It's my theory that, in matters racial and--especially--matters interracial, the "progress" that is made is typically the progress that white males favor, not that which they disfavor.


Therefore, to me, that very "progress" tends to reinforce the white-male-on-top American social hierarchy, not undermine it.


I think that the "Connie Chung Syndrome," where Asian women fare well in, and Asian men are virtually absent from, network television news, fits very neatly within that paradigm.


Very neatly, indeed.