Penn’s first Black newspaper EIC on racism in media

Last November, I became The Daily Pennsylvanian’s first Black editor-in-chief — an accomplishment that to this day has not fully sunk in, even as I begin my last semester on the job. Yet mixed with the pride and excitement I feel as the head of such a historic organization is fear and pressure. Fear that I’m not good enough, and pressure to prove to everyone, including myself, why I belong.

When we’re young, we’re encouraged to be first. The first to get in line at the water fountain after recess. The first to finish an assignment (accurately). The first to finish conditioning at sports practice. But in a world full of firsts, what if I’m the last? What if I’m not able to effect the change I want to make?

For three years, as a columnist and reporter, I’ve simultaneously been forced to play the role of the voice of the Black community in the newsroom, and the newspaper’s loyal promoter, even if it made mistakes that harmed my own community. And for three years, I have had a difficult time bridging those two identities — and communities — together.

This appears to be the case everywhere. Communities of color and the media have long had a tenuous and exploitative relationship, with journalists reporting about communities of color primarily when something bad has happened, and rarely to highlight development, innovation, or other achievements.

From the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on communities of color, to widespread instances of police brutality against Black and Brown communities, the events of this past year have led to a nationwide racial reckoning, in which institutions such as corporations, governments, and universities have been forced to contend with their respective structures and ideologies.

Yet an onslaught of testimony from journalists of color around the country that they are not supported in their newsrooms has forced the media industry to examine its legacy of racism, and how this history has manifested in today’s newsrooms, which lack Black staff and which insufficiently cover Black communities — despite many newsrooms existing in, and therefore covering, regions that are majority-Black.

This fight for equity has been a long time coming, media experts and journalists of color tell me, and will continue well into the future, if industry leaders neglect to listen to the needs of both their journalists of color and the surrounding community the journalists cover, and fail to prioritize in-depth reporting on race and its intersections with society. This is particularly relevant when it comes to local media that, like PlanPhilly, cover the systems that determine people’s access to housing, education, opportunity and the environmental resources they need to thrive.

“What is important in what you’re seeing is more journalists, particularly journalists who come from marginalized groups, really pushing back against this idea that we’ve ever experienced objectivity,” Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter and the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, said. “Instead, what we’re calling for is an acknowledgment that everyone is reporting out of some type of bias, and that it’s only in being honest about what that bias is or what the biases are that we can actually have the best reporting.”

‘People’s lives are at stake’

Running slave ads. Helping lead coups to overthrow Wilmington, North Carolina’s multiracial government. Arresting a Black editor for publishing stories praising the bravery of Black soldiers and charging him with espionage. Launching television programs that block integration efforts. These are just a few snapshots of American media’s history, as documented by Free Press in their 2020 report, “Media 2070: An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations.”

The essay, which traces the industry’s legacy of profiting from slavery, calls for policies that force organizations to be held accountable for their role in endorsing and perpetuating racial oppression. It demands contemporary media institutions make amends to the communities they’ve harmed.

“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,” the essay reads. “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.”

That history, along with the disconnect between the media representation of Black America and the reality, motivated Hannah-Jones to be a journalist. She first reported on race as a high school student, as part of a school desegregation program. But her awakening to the racist practices still powering the industry came early in her career when she went on to work at The Oregonian and ran into a problem she said many journalists of color face: She was told she could not report on race because it would be perceived as biased reporting.

“I was being penalized and called into editorial meetings because they saw my desire to write about people of color as a bias, and I saw it as the reason why I became a journalist,” she said. “Of course, you don’t see white journalists being called into editorial meetings because they’re writing about white people too much.”

The experience almost drove Hannah-Jones out of journalism.

“To be told that my wanting to write about racial inequality was a problem, that The Oregonian’s white readership wasn’t really interested in those stories, I didn’t see a purpose in being a journalist if I couldn’t do the stories that I got into journalism to do,” she said.

How could such a thing happen decades after mainstream American media declared itself integrated and part of the solution? Experts point to a number of problems that are structural, systemic and highly personal, too. They cited a lack of partnerships with affinity organizations such as the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, and the Asian American Journalists Association; an insufficient number of staff and editors of color; inadequate training on how to properly engage with communities of color; and failure to acknowledge mistakes and harms caused to the local community.

“I understand the news cycle, I understand the crunching of the deadline, but people’s lives are at stake here, and people’s humanity is on the line every time we report on something,” Tauhid Chappell, one of the contributors to the Media 2070 project, said.