Repairing Journalism’s History of Anti-Black Harm

• Published date: 01 May 2023
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00027162231218817
• Author: Joseph Torres,Collette Watson
• Date: 01 May 2023
• Subject Matter: Part III: Demand

208 ANNALS, AAPSS, 707, May 2023

DOI: 10.1177/00027162231218817

Repairing

Journalism’s

History of Anti-

Black Harm

By

JOSEPH TORRES

and

COLLETTE WATSON

1218817ANN The Annals of The American AcademyRepairing Journalism’s History of Anti-Black Harm

research-article2023

This article addresses current debates about the future

of journalism by arguing that efforts to “save” local

journalism will not succeed unless they reckon with the

historical role that journalism has played in undermin-

ing democracy for Black people and Black communi-

ties. The authors are cofounders of a project that calls

for media reparations to reconcile and repair the his-

tory of anti-Black racism in the U.S. media system. We

describe the media industry’s history of racist harms,

the structural racism that enabled those harms, and the

role that government policy can play in creating a

media ecosystem where Black media outlets and voices

control the creation and distribution of their own nar-

ratives. We then discuss prospects for a reparative

approach to the reform of media practice and media

policy that focuses on acknowledging and reconciling

the media system’s racial harms.

Keywords: media reparations; journalism; racism;

Media 2070; media policy

In the short human history of the modern nation

state, it is hard to identify an example of when a

democracy survived the transition in which the

dominant racial, ethnic or religious group

became a numerical minority. More typically,

democracy is sacrificed in order to maintain the

cultural, economic and political dominance of

that class.

—Tarso Luís Ramos, executive director of Political

Research Associates, at the 2018 Facing Race

conference1

Correspondence: jtorres@freepress.net

cwatson@freepress.net

Joseph Torres is the senior advisor of reparative policies

and programs at Free Press and the cofounder of the

Media 2070 project. With acclaimed journalist Juan

González, Torres also coauthored the New York Times

best-selling book News for All the People: The Epic

Story of Race and the American Media.

Collette Watson is the vice president of cultural strategy

at Free Press and the cofounder and director of the

Media 2070 project. Watson is also the director of the

award-winning Media 2070 documentary Black in the

Newsroom.

REPAIRING JOURNALISM’S HISTORY OF ANTI-BLACK HARM 209

It is—and has always been—difficult to achieve racial justice when dominant

media narratives have historically undermined the goals of creating a more just

society. During the early 1960s, TV coverage of the civil rights movement often

captured the violence of white racial terrorists who were determined to obstruct

a democratic future for Black people in the South. TV cameras captured the grief

following a KKK terrorist bombing that killed four girls in the basement of a

Black Birmingham church (National Public Radio 2003). And they captured the

terrifying moment—now remembered as Bloody Sunday—when the police

attacked civil rights leaders and activists attempting to cross a bridge in Selma

during a historic voting rights march. (PBS Learning Media, n.d.).

Few households owned a TV set during the early 1950s. But a decade later,

more than 90 percent did (Library of Congress, n.d.). Changes in technology

transformed the news industry. TV news coverage of the civil rights movement

and the violent actions of Southern authoritarian leaders received international

attention and pressured the federal government to take action.

Broadcast journalism has received a great deal of credit for its role in the pas-

sage of landmark civil rights legislation: the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the Voting

Rights Act of 1965 (Madrigal 2018; PBS Learning Media, n.d.). But even with the

passage of that historic legislation, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had a stark assess-

ment of what had actually been accomplished.

In his final book, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? King

(1967/2010) criticized powerful white leaders and the broader white community—

including the press—for abandoning the Black community in the struggle for

racial equality. King (1967/2010) wrote in 1967 that for the majority of white

people, the first phase of the civil rights struggle was about ensuring that Black

people were treated “with a degree of decency.” Most white people, King noted,

did not perceive the movement as a fight for equality. White America, he said,

“was ready to demand that the Negro should be spared the lash of brutality and

coarse degradation, but it had never been truly committed to helping him out of

poverty, exploitation or all forms of discrimination” (King 1967/2010, 3–4).

King continued,

The outraged white citizen had been sincere when he snatched the whips from the

Southern sheriffs and forbade them more cruelties. But when this was to a degree

accomplished, the emotions that had momentarily inflamed him melted away. White

Americans left the Negro on the ground and in devastating numbers walked off with the

aggressor. It appeared that the white segregationist and the ordinary white citizen had

more in common with one another than either had with the Negro.

When Negroes looked for the second phase, the realization of equality, they found that

many of their white allies had quietly disappeared. The Negroes of America had taken

the President, the press and the pulpit at their word when they spoke in broad terms of

freedom and justice. But the absence of brutality and unregenerate evil is not the pres-

ence of justice. To stay murder is not the same thing as to ordain brotherhood. The word

was broken, and the free-running expectations of the Negro crashed into the stone walls

of white resistance. The result was havoc. Negroes felt cheated, especially in the North,

while many whites felt that the Negroes had gained so much it was virtually impudent

and greedy to ask for more so soon. (King 1967/2010, 3–4)