Anti-Black racism and the press cjr.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from cjr.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
In May, Free Press staffers marked the Tulsa Race Massacre, fought for equitable journalism and celebrated a milestone in the fight to close the digital divide.
From the smallest single-person newsroom to the largest media conglomerate, journalists are grappling with how to address prejudice inside the industry, and how to report responsibly about the deep rifts around race, gender, class and ability. Several sessions at the 2021 Knight Media Forum addressed these issues head-on, challenging both funders and news executives to interrogate their own biases and change the ways in which they allocate resources and address historical disparities.
The conference took place in the shadow of the Jan. 6 insurrection, in which perpetrators carried Confederate flags and white supremicist symbols while violently seeking to halt the certification of the presidential election. Speaker Isabel Wilkerson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” stressed the gravity of this transgression during an inspiring and eye-opening talk. However, she noted, it was not, as many have claimed, a betrayal of what America stands
Plus: Bon Appétit gets further filleted, and McClatchy is giving employees a raise.
By The Objective Staff Feb. 12, 2021, 12:01 p.m.
Feb. 12, 2021, 12:01 p.m.
Editor’s note: The Front Page is a biweekly newsletter from The Objective, a publication that offers reporting, first-person commentary, and reported essays on how journalism has misrepresented or excluded specific communities in coverage, as well as how newsrooms have treated staff from those communities. We happily share each issue with Nieman Lab readers.
“Despite even major public failings, they keep coming back because they work behind the scenes to protect themselves and each other to stay in power and preserve the status quo,” writes Jennifer Barnett in her Medium piece: “I Left My Career in Prestige Media Because of the Shitty Men in Charge and They Are Still In Charge and Still Fucking Up.” While working as managing editor of The Atlantic, Barnett discovered a pattern: Men, after leaving newsroom
Published over the weekend, the historic Kansas City Star provided readers with a look at the outlet’s internal review of its past coverage, which, according to editor Mike Fannin, contributed to the disenfranchisement of Black communities in the city.
“Through sins of both commission and omission it disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians,” wrote Fannin in a Sunday editorial. “The Kansas City Star prides itself on holding power to account. Today we hold up the mirror to ourselves to see the historic role we have played, through both action and inaction, in shaping and misshaping Kansas City’s landscape.”