Black newscaster

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

France got its first nonwhite newscaster for a national news program this week. Audrey Pulvar, a black woman from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, became co-anchor of the main evening news program on the France 3 channel. While France does not keep statistics on race, the population is believed to be about 15 percent nonwhite. Yet until this month, there were no minorities among newscasters, talk-show hosts, or other TV personalities. “There are huge prejudices,” Pulvar told the London Guardian. “For years, there’s been this fear that if black or Arab or Asian people are allowed on television, French audiences will just switch off.”