For
years,
newsrooms across America have had a
problem with a lack of diversity and
inclusion. People of color are
underrepresented among news organizations,
which do not reflect the makeup of the
general population and have made little
progress in the past decade.
Although
non-whites make up about 40% of the
US population, journalists of color
comprise only 16.55% of
newsrooms’ staff in 2017, according to the
American Society of Newspaper Editors
(ASNE) Newsroom Employment Diversity
Survey.
Larger newsrooms and digital news
organizations are a little better - 23.4%
and 24.3%, respectively - but not much.
People of color are only 13.4% of newsroom
leaders.
This
comes at a time when society needs and
demands more inclusive news. It’s
been 190 years since the creation of the
black press, and it’s as relevant as ever.
In the absence of an inclusive
environment, the quality of journalism
suffers. Certain stories are simply not
reported, or are told without the nuance or
perspective the circumstances require. The
black press has filled that void for
generations. And with the advent of digital
platforms, a baton has been passed to black
millennial writers to continue presenting
narratives, with underrepresented points of
views, that would otherwise go missing - and
do not necessarily reflect the white men who
dominate the industry.
Far beyond using social media for
entertainment, shopping or communication,
African-American millennials have elevated
Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other
platforms to raise public consciousness
about the issues impacting black people. The
hashtags #BlackLivesMatter and
#OscarsSoWhite are prime examples of this
phenomenon.
According
to Nielsen, 55% of black
consumers between 18 and 34 spend at least
an hour on social media each day, 6%
higher than all millennials. In addition,
29% of black millennials spend three or
more hours daily on social media sites, 9%
higher than that of all millennials.
While black millennials fall below
their counterparts in the percentage of
leisure time spent on social media, they
exceed the general millennial population in
their overall presence on Twitter, Tumblr,
Google+ and Whatsapp. That online presence
has translated into the creation of a
network of black news outlets specifically
creating content that will meet readers and
viewers where they are.
Additionally,
when
the mainstream media covers a particular
issue, the black press may cover it with a
completely different angle - if not a
different issue altogether. For example,
the black press rejected the
mainstream media narrative that white
“working class” support for Trump was
primarily economic in nature, reporting
instead on the presidential candidate’s
appeal to white solidarity, raw racism and
the scapegoating of minority groups.
After
all, white economic angst by itself does not reconcile the fact
that whites always have fared better than
their African- and Latino-Americans. And
while the mainstream news organizations have framed the NFL
protests through the prism of patriotism
and support for the military, the black
press has focused on the
crisis of police brutality and racial
violence that underlie the athletes’
decision to take a knee during the
national anthem.
Fifty
years ago, when unrest rocked cities
across the nation as a result of police
brutality and systemic racism, the Kerner Commission - an
11-member commission appointed by
President Lyndon B. Johnson that
highlighted racism for its role in a surge
in urban riots - took the news media to
task.
“We have
found a significant imbalance between what
actually happened in our cities and what
the newspaper, radio and television
coverage of the riots told us happened,”
the Kerner report said.
“Our
second
and fundamental criticism is that the news
media have failed to analyze and report
adequately on racial problems in the United
States and, as a related matter, to meet the
Negro’s legitimate expectations in
journalism. By and large, news organizations
have failed to communicate to both their
black and white audiences a sense of the
problems America faces and the sources of
potential solutions.”
The Commission made a number of
recommendations, including that news
organizations employ black people beyond
mere tokenism and in positions of real
responsibility, and that they publish
newspapers and produce programs that
acknowledge black people, who they are and
what they do.
Although newsrooms have made some
progress, it’s not where it should or needs
to be. But by empowering themselves and
their followers - without gatekeepers and
intermediaries in the traditional media
sense - young, black journalists have
reached a broad audience. They can educate
and mobilize others to act on a given issue,
and connect with local, national and global
social justice movements.
A videographer or documentarian can
broadcast a crime in progress - such as a
police beating of an unarmed motorist - live
and in real time, before an audience of
thousands if not millions. In that regard,
technology is the great equalizer, a check
on the abuse of official power and a call to
reform harmful patterns and discriminatory
practices.
From its inception, the black press
has been a change agent by shining a light
on the plight of blacks and giving them the
power to write and report on their own
narratives. In New York in 1827, Rev. Samuel
Cornish and John B. Russwurm began
publication of Freedom’s Journal, the first
black-owned newspaper in America. Excluded
from white venues and often insulted in
their absence, black voices found the need
to tell their own stories.
“We wish
to plead our own cause. Too long have
others spoken for us. Too long has the
public been deceived by representations,
in things which concern us dearly,” wrote
the editors in their first edition.
Throughout
the
Civil War, black
newspapers were centers for political
debate on the war and emancipation, and
advocacy for black soldiers. During Jim
Crow and the reign of Klan terror, the
black press fought against segregation,
demanded equal rights for African
Americans and helped elect politicians to
office.
The Chicago Defender, which
had demanded federal intervention from
President Woodrow Wilson to stop
lynchings, played a role in the Great
Migration by urging a mass exodus of black
people from the South.
In the
1890s, journalist Ida B. Wells led a
campaign against lynching at considerable
personal risk. Born a slave, she wrote
about the injustices of racial segregation
in the South. A mob descended upon her
Memphis news office, destroyed her
equipment and threatened her with death.
Over the years, many black
publications disappeared. Others learned to
navigate the new landscape, and a plethora
of new black media emerged with a strictly
online presence, impacting the manner that
black people digest and make sense of the
news.
The days
of “reading the paper” are long gone for
many, but what remains the same is that
the black press doesn’t look like the
theoretical textbook case of objective journalism - and it
was never meant to be - whatever that
means to you.
When narratives are told from the
perspective of a black lens, perhaps there
are no two sides to a story. Perhaps there
is only one side, or numerous sides with
various textures and shades. What is certain
is there is a sense of responsibility to the
community, advocating for that community and
telling their stories from their
perspective.
A digital environment arms
African-American millennial writers with
tools that enable them to carve out their
own territory in their unique and innovative
way - exercising free speech and
contributing to a healthy democracy, and
staying true to the proud history of the
black press.
This commentary is also posted on CNN.com
