Media 2070 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 77
XVI. Are Newsrooms Ready to Make Things Right?
REPAIRING HARM AND REDISTRIBUTING POWER
As Black journalists and other journalists of color are
heroically speaking up, many white media institutions
are showing just how unprepared or unwilling they have
been to deal with a country that is becoming Blacker and
Browner every day.
“We have heard from many black colleagues, and other
people of color around the company, that they do not
feel sufficiently part of decision making, feel fully valued
in our culture, or see a clear path for advancement,” the
memo read.12
In June, the Associated Press announced a change to its
influential stylebook, noting that it will start capitalizing
“Black” when used “in a racial, ethnic or cultural sense.”
This change is intended, the AP said, to “[convey]
an essential and shared sense of history, identity and
community among people who identify as Black, including
those in the African diaspora and within Africa.”7
It also stated that the paper will address such concerns as
how to more fully represent people of color in leadership,
how to “hold leaders and managers across the company
accountable for progress” and how to ensure that coverage
serves a more diverse audience.13 The memo also
noted that the “entire top of the company — executive
committee members, masthead editors, desk heads and
department heads — will participate in training on racial
equity and inclusion.”14
Many Black journalists had long advocated for this
change.8 And since the uprisings began, hundreds of
newspapers and media outlets have announced their
own plans to make the same style change. In the same
announcement, AP also said it will capitalize the “I”
in Indigenous “in reference to original inhabitants of a
place.”9
One of the outlets that will start capitalizing Black
and Indigenous is The Washington Post,10 which also
announced that it will hire more than a dozen new
positions that include journalists and editors.
“This is a historic moment in American history and in
race relations,” said Post Executive Editor Marty Baron. “It
requires us to re-examine our coverage and concentrate
resources on the issues of race, ethnicity and identity that
clearly deserve heightened attention. With this expansion,
we will be more inclusive in our journalism, providing
broader and deeper reporting that today’s social reckoning
demands.”11
In a letter to the paper’s Black caucus and newsroom
staff, Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong
apologized “for not advancing anti-racist priorities as
substantively and rapidly as we had dreamed” and made
a pledge that “we will do everything in our power to end
racism” at the paper. 15
He wrote that “a prejudiced set of structures and attitudes
for too long plagued cultures of journalism. Recognizing
the injustice of racial prejudice is the first step toward
reconciliation and change. At the Los Angeles Times, we
acknowledge a need for change.”16
He also stated: “We appreciate on a deeply personal
level the pain of explicit and unconscious racism; of
structural and interpersonal violence that is the legacy of
colonialism, slavery, and modern institutions designed to
disenfranchise,” Dr. Soon-Shiong wrote in recounting the
racism that he and his wife faced as teenagers in apartheid
South Africa.17
In a memo to its staff, The New York Times promised to
address issues of race within its newsroom.
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