MSNBC has canceled its weekend morning editorial program Melissa Harris-Perry. The cancellation deals a significant blow to diversity on cable news, as Harris-Perry consistently hosted the most diverse guests of any of the Sunday morning news shows.

But the lack of diversity on Sunday morning shows is just part of a much broader media diversity problem. People of color are widely underrepresented in both print and radio newsrooms, and the percentage of non-white journalists in traditional newsrooms has remained largely stagnant over the past 20 years.

That's not just a workplace problem -- it's an accuracy problem. The absence of people of color in newsrooms and on television allows the biases of white journalists and commentators to go unchecked, resulting in reporting that often overlooks important angles, privileges one side of a story, and fails to provide necessary context to understand news events.  

Media diversity isn't a luxury good that can be jettisoned for the sake of convenience. White newsrooms are broken newsrooms.

Video by John Kerr, Carlos Maza, and Leanne Naramore.