Posted by Tracy Rosenberg on August 16th, 2014

It’s not life and death, but the distribution of press passes from the White House to the floors of major industry conventions, has long been a fraught process that can confer, or by contrast, remove “credibility” from sectors of the journalistic community. There have been long successive battles about whether citizen journalists are journalists, whether bloggers should get press passes, and about diversity in newsrooms, both ethnic and gender diversity and also viewpoint diversity.

It looks like these battles are far from over.

Comic-Con International is a 45-year old comics tradeshow, expanded from a small one-day gathering in 1970 to a multi-day extravaganza with 130,000 participants in 2014. Comic-Con correctly describes itself as a focal point for the world of comics, an industry that folds in creative artists, politics, youth, independent publishing and some of the biggest media titans in the world. What happens at Comic-Con International matters for media-watchers.

Kevin Robinson is executive producer at Medium Rare, a project of Fractured Atlas. Medium Rare is an online site that chronicles the achievements of women and people of color in television, film and the gaming industry. They specifically try to focus on work that is otherwise under-reported, overshadowed and overlooked.

Robinson identified Comic-Con International as a place where Medium Rare could locate the kinds of stories it wants to tell – stories of people doing innovative work and bringing diverse viewpoints into a field that has traditionally been dominated by white men. So he applied for a press pass to cover the large convention. It was denied without comment. To add a little bit more grist for frustration, Robinson, who got his application in by the deadline, found out via the grapevine that another outlet which had applied after the deadline, had received a press pass, although his own had not. Bothered by the rejection, Robinson decided not to take the verdict lying down and sent a polite letter of inquiry to Comic-Con, asking for a reason. His letter is attached below. Here is the text:

“We were denied press access to Comic Con this year and are trying to understand the rationale for our credential application being denied. Adding to our curiosity, is knowing that at least one other outlet obtained access to the convention after the press deadline. All of our materials were submitted by the deadline and several attempts have been made to contact your Director of PR and Marketing for clarification, to no avail.

We understand that Comic Con is inundated with requests for access, but being a reputable, credible outlet of color should mean something. Addressing a larger issue, we would like to know how many outlets of color did in fact receive press approval.

Although it might be an oversight, we feel that Comic Con may be coming up short in granting fair and equal access to journalists of color. We would welcome the opportunity to help rectify this perceived oversight”.

The letter was copied to Media Alliance, an Oakland-based democratic communications advocacy organization.

Here’s what came back from the public relations department at Comic-Con. Can anyone say “form letter”? (Original attached below).

“Thank you for contacting us. Each year we receive thousands of applications from press outlets around the world interested in covering the convention, unfortunately we cannot accommodate each request. Race or color is not a determining factor on acceptance and is not a criteria on whether an entity is approved or denied credentials. As a result, we have no way of knowing how many entities or individuals of color report on the show. However, a few things we look into when reviewing applications, but are not limited to, are web traffic to the site along with social media following and the regularity of updated content. We hope this information can be useful to your outlet and will be taken into consideration if you choose to apply next year”.

Here is what is striking about this. While we do not mean to infer that Comic-Con does not, in fact, in the lead-up to a convention spend hours and hours researching the web traffic and social media following of thousands of applications for press passes, profit margins probably indicate that hours of research are not done on each and every one of thousands of applications. Judgements are being made, largely as most of us make them, about what is credible, popular, mainstream and important, using the filters that most of us employ, filters that contain individual preferences, bias and stereotypes that enter into the casual judgments we make everyday.

A strict algorithmic analysis of social media metrics and web hits can only lead to the conclusion that the most critical information contained on the web and that is of the most import to the largest number of people is cute cat videos. Does anyone actually believe this?

Diversity-blindness – as caricatured in the “I don’t see race” comics found all over the web – does not generally lead to the most engaging, relevant coverage of an event. Nor does it deliver the fullest range of perspectives, unless one believes that we are all the same. For participants whose work is, as Medium Rare describes, often overshadowed and overlooked, the convention’s inability to consider the advantages of a diverse press corps of small and large media outlets, mainstream and indie, those talking of art and politics, as well as industry trends, as well as those looking for stories of non-typical artists breaking new ground, this policy does not serve them. For the industry as a whole, it provides less relevant coverage for those who look for role models who look like them.

In other words, the press pass policy enforces standardization of content that largely marginalizes minorities of all kinds, not simply demographic minorities, but also viewpoint minorities. What is vitally important does not always get the most clicks, but we are all the poorer if no space is made for it to be said.

It is striking in 2014 to see a major artistic and technology event fail to factor in diversity to its policy decisions. Comic-Con International can do better than this – and it should.

Correspondence Between Medium Rare and Comic-Con PR Department