Black Journalists Are Being Laid Off At An Alarming Rate

Journalists of color at major U.S. media outlets say they have been disproportionately affected by recent layoffs that have swept through news organizations amid a rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts.

Trey Sherman, a Black associate producer with CBS Evening News Plus, told The Guardian that he learned in late October he was being laid off while white colleagues on his team were reassigned. 

“We certainly have white producers, we have white reporters who could have been laid off as well,” a colleague identified only as Mary said in the article. “They had to have known that would not look good.” 

Sherman posted a video documenting his experience on TikTok, where it went viral. 

“Every person who gets to stay and will be relocated within the company is white,” he said in the video.

Sherman continues to explain that the layoff selection was not based on merit but on familiarity, as his boss chose to keep the employees he’d “worked with before.”

Sherman said that in the months following the layoffs, he began receiving messages from journalists at other organizations who had similar experiences. He also noted many of the decisions coincided with leadership changes and corporate restructuring. 

Similar patterns were reported at NBC News and Teen Vogue, where entire teams focused on coverage of racially and socially marginalized communities were eliminated or absorbed into broader operations with little staff retained. 

The layoffs are ongoing and increasingly connected to a political climate that has targeted DEI initiatives. Brendan Carr, chair of the Federal Communications Commission, announced early in the Trump administration that the FCC would end its DEI efforts and remove them as a budget priority. 

Some journalists cited in the article described the trend as part of a broader effort to diminish newsroom diversity rather than the result of isolated business decisions, saying the layoffs “fell along racial lines.”