Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 24
IV. The Case for Media Reparations
ENVISIONING, CREATING AND PRACTICING A NEW MEDIA SYSTEM
The fight for a just media system — for media justice — is
a critical racial-justice issue.
presence for power, we can sometimes think something
has happened that hasn’t actually happened.”5
Like all other systems in the United States, the creation
of the media system was never intended to include or
serve Black people. And it certainly wasn’t meant to
help or support Black people in creating self-determined
communities and futures. While some individual
journalists and newsrooms such as Outlier Media
(Detroit),1 MLK50 (Memphis)2 and Scalawag (the South)3
have begun to create racially just, liberated futures —
abundant with new systems and policies — we need
structural change to truly move forward. And that means
envisioning, creating and practicing a new media system.
So how can the fight for media reparations change the
rules and create a media system that serves the Black
community’s news-and-information needs? We can start
by considering these questions:
The white-dominant press has used the power of racist
narratives to subjugate, punish and control Black bodies
and perpetuate white supremacy — both intentionally and
unintentionally. Controlling narrative is about maintaining
power. And that power has been wielded against Black
and other Indigenous and colonized people to launch
disinformation media campaigns from colonial times to
the present.
“White-dominated media has been a part of the systemic
oppression of Black people for as long as we’ve been here
and as long as there has been a media system in place,”
said Sara Lomax-Reese, president and CEO of WURD
Radio, one of the few Black-owned talk-radio stations in
the country.4
Ensuring our media system is equitable for Black people
is essential to dismantling the myth of Black inferiority —
and subverting institutional and structural racism in our
society. Discussions about “diversity” in the media tend
to focus solely on issues of inclusion and representation,
oftentimes in regards to hiring and coverage.
While diversity efforts inside newsrooms and media
outlets are important, they alone are not enough to
achieve a liberatory media future for Black people.
•
What would it look like if we had a media
system where Black people were able to create
and control the distribution of our own stories
and narratives?
•
What would it look like if Black people had
an abundance of Black-led news organizations
serving our communities?
•
What if our stories were covered by journalists
who understand and are a part of our
communities?
•
What would it look like for Black people to
create new narratives that humanize our
communities rather than dehumanize us?
•
What would it look like if media policies
ensured that Black communities had equitable
ownership and control of our own local and
national media outlets and over our own online
media platforms?
•
What if our media system built autonomy and
self-determination for resource-rich Black
communities rather than extracting wealth for
white media owners?
These are just some of the many questions to consider as
we fight to ensure that the harms inflicted on Black people
— and our struggle for a liberated narrative — aren’t
forgotten or lost to history.
“I do think that what we have to recognize is that we
can’t mistake presence for power,” said Color Of Change
President Rashad Robinson. “Power is the ability to change
the rules. Presence is not bad, but when we mistake
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