Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 37
APR 2018
JUN 2020
The Montgomery Advertiser apologizes
in 2018 for its “proliferation of a false
narrative regarding the treatment of
African-Americans,” which it notes
“propagated a worldview rooted in
racism and the sickening myth of racial
superiority.” The paper states that “the
Advertiser was careless in how it covered
mob violence and the terror foisted upon
African-Americans from Reconstruction
through the 1950s.”
On June 23, the Black Caucus of the
L.A. Times Guild sends Times’ owner
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong an open letter
demanding the paper address its lack of
Black journalists and staff. Soon-Shiong
responds with plans for changes at the
organization and an acknowledgement:
I apologize to you today for not
advancing anti-racist priorities as
substantively and rapidly as we had
dreamed.
We dehumanized human beings.
Too often we characterized lynching
victims as guilty before proven so
and often assumed they committed
the crime.
JUN 2020
Amid the global uprising for Black lives
in 2020, with thousands taking to the
streets with banners and chants of “Black
Lives Matter,” the Philadelphia Inquirer
publishes a front-page headline: “Buildings
Matter, Too.”
Days later, 44 of the newspaper’s journalists
of color release an open letter and stage a
virtual walk-out. The following day, executive
leaders respond:
JAN 2019
The Philadelphia Inquirer published a
headline in Tuesday’s edition that was
deeply offensive. We should not have
printed it. We’re sorry, and regret that
we did. We also know that an apology
on its own is not sufficient.
The Orlando Sentinel apologizes for the
role its racist coverage played in wrongfully
accusing one Black teenager and three
Black men — known as the Groveland Four
— of raping a white woman in 1949.
We’re sorry for The Orlando
Sentinel’s role in this injustice.
We’re sorry that the newspaper
at the time did between little and
nothing to seek the truth. We’re
sorry that our coverage of the event
and its aftermath lent credibility to
the cover-up and the official, racist
narrative.
Following the uprising, 20-year veteran Stan
Wischnowski resigns his post as the paper’s
top editor. In September 2020, Wischnowski
is named executive editor of the Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette.
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