Journalism's Racial Reckoning

The News Media's Pivot to Diversity and Inclusion

Brad Clark

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000598476
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Periodismo

This book addresses endemic issues of racism in news media at what is a critical moment in time, as journalists around the world speak out en masse against the prejudice and inequality in the industry.

As the events of 2020 – the death of George Floyd, the rise in prominence of the Black Lives Matter movement – have drawn new and focused attention to inequality, white supremacy, and systemic racism, including in the media, this volume chronicles this racial reckoning, revisiting and examining the issues that it has raised. The author analyses media output by racialized and Indigenous journalists, identifying the racial make-up of newsrooms; the dominance of white perspectives in news coverage; interpretations of ethics downplaying systemic racism and bias; ignorance of racist history in editorial decisions and news content; and diversity and inclusion measures. The actions taken by news organizations in response to the reckoning are also detailed and placed in the context of existing race and media scholarship, to offer emerging strategies to address journalism's longstanding issues with racism in news content and newsrooms.

Grounding the interplay between news media and race within this pivotal moment in history, this text will be an important resource for students and scholars of journalism, journalism ethics, sociology, cultural studies, organizational studies, media and communication studies.

1 The Racial Reckoning in Journalism

DOI: 10.4324/9781003261544-2

Introduction

The murder of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 launched a wave of protest initially aimed at law enforcement, but grew into a broad-based stand against systemic racism in all segments of Western society. As Black Lives Matter (BLM) demonstrators took to the streets across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, Europe, and parts of Africa, journalists of color began to speak out en masse about their experiences of racism in their own organizations and industry. This was driven by frequently stereotypic, one-sided, sensational coverage of police violence and the BLM movement, coverage that drew the condemnation of racialized and Indigenous journalists and their allies in their newsrooms. This chapter chronicles the manifold missteps of mainstream news organizations through the racial reckoning, particularly in the United States and Canada, detailing a string of controversies at The New York Times, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Global News, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Toronto Star, and other news organizations. The unprecedented, ensuing backlash led to resignations, suspensions, job action, apologies, and promises of reform. In Australia and the United Kingdom, there were also editorial conflicts over BLM protest coverage at ABC, SBS, the BBC, and The Age, precipitating debates on the overwhelming whiteness of news staff and its impact on newsroom dynamics and the coverage of racial issues. However, in North America there was generally a much more sustained outpouring of profound critique, analysis, and insight from Indigenous and racialized news media workers in the form of op-eds, columns, personal essays, social media posts, and other published media accounts. That outpouring undoubtedly shaped the discussion in other parts of the world. Despite the varying regional demographics, the impact of systemic racism in journalism is similarly felt in the countries considered here. This chapter captures the racial reckoning in journalism through 2020, describing the conditions and events that sparked a global movement, the response of news media, and the fallout from that response on an industry already in peril on so many fronts.

Police Killings, the Pandemic, and Systemic Racism

The image of a Minneapolis police officer kneeling on the neck of George Floyd, a Black man, gasping the familiar refrain “I can’t breathe!” before dying on the road, was the just latest in a long history of deadly excess at the hands of white police officers and vigilantes in the United States. Through the first five months of 2020, the names Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and Rayshard Brooks preceded Floyd, and before them Elijah McClain, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Trayvon Martin, and many more. At around the same time in Canada, police killings of Chantal Moore, a Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation woman, in New Brunswick, and Pakistani immigrant Ejaz Ahmed Choudry in Toronto, similarly drew attention to the high rates of death in interactions between law enforcement and racialized and Indigenous Peoples. Despite its terrible familiarity, somehow the video footage of Floyd’s cruel death galvanized anger on a mass scale, bringing millions of protesters to the streets, first in the United States, but then in Canada and around the world.

The protesters’ anger was supported by ample data. The discriminatory application of justice in Western colonial democracies is longstanding and well-documented. The difference in the 21st century seems to be that mobile phone video of the excesses of law enforcement against racialized and Indigenous Peoples has become a common feature of social media. The footage shared on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram confirms the overwhelming statistical evidence of systemic racism in policing and the courts. Studies in the United States show a higher “lifetime risk” of being killed by police for African Americans, Native Americans, and LatinX men compared to white people (Edwards, Hedwig, & Esposito, 2019). The risk is highest for Black men, who are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men. There are more Black people in US prisons than any other racial group even though they make up only 12 per cent of the population. The rate of imprisonment for Black adults is almost six times the rate for whites, while Hispanics are imprisoned at three times the white rate (Gramlich, 2019).

The numbers are similar north of the border. The John Howard Society of Canada states that Black and Indigenous Peoples are significantly overrepresented in prisons, “by more than 300 per cent versus their population” for Blacks, while for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples “the over representation is nearly 500 per cent,” and “these imbalances are getting worse, not better” (John Howard Society, 2017). When it comes to police killings, again, “Indigenous and Black people are overwhelmingly overrepresented,” for example, an analysis of data from 2007 to 2017 concludes “Indigenous peoples represented one third of people shot to death by RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police]” despite making up just six per cent of the population, while another report determined “a Black person was more than 20 times more likely to be shot and killed by the police compared to a white person” (Ontario Human Rights Commission, 2018, cited in Stelkia, 2020).

Despite the quick assertions by many white politicians responding to BLM protests that racism is not a problem in the United Kingdom, statistics show an overrepresentation of Blacks and ethnic minorities in British prisons as well; “Black people comprise 3 per cent of the overall population in England and Wales, [while] they currently make up 12 per cent of its prison population” (Koram, 2020). In fact, “we’re locking more of our Black people away than the big, bad USA.” In Australia, Indigenous rates of incarceration are even higher than those for Black people in the United States, making up “slightly more than 3 per cent of the Australian population but comprise 28 per cent of the adult prison population and over 50 per cent of juvenile detainees” (Cunneen, 2020). The death rate of Indigenous inmates in Australia has been so pervasive that a royal commission was struck to investigate in 1987.

The systemic racism borne out of these statistics was also revealed in the apparent double standard in the treatment of white people accused of violence compared to their racialized counterparts. At the height of protests in the United States, Jacob Blake, a Black man in Kenosha, Wisconsin, was shot in the back by police after a domestic dispute and survived. However, in the ensuing BLM protests, a white teenager, Kyle Rittenhouse, was accused of killing two protesters, and wounding a third. When Rittenhouse was granted bail, and not held in custody pending trial, it drew criticism from social justice advocates, who wondered if a person of color accused of double homicide would ever receive such compassion. At the end of a controversial trial in November 2021, Rittenhouse was found not guilty on all charges. While officers involved in George Floyd’s murder were charged, and Derek Chauvin was eventually found guilty of murder, only one police official involved in Breonna Taylor’s death was ever indicted and only on relatively minor charges.

The day after George Floyd’s murder in late May, angry citizens took to the streets in Minneapolis, the first of many protests. A day later BLM marches took place across the country, and by early July BLM had become what The New York Times described as “the largest movement in the country’s history” (Buchanan, Bui, & Patel, 2020). Within days of Floyd’s death, there were rallies, marches, and protests in every Canadian province and territory. Thousands turned out for demonstrations in major cities in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Most were peaceful but in some cases statues of prominent colonial leaders and individuals associated with the slave trade were toppled or defaced. It was not long before demonstrations against racial injustice at the hands of law enforcement evolved into something more: a broad reckoning over racism past and present.

The Resurgence of Black Lives Matter

BLM was founded in 2013, originally as a hashtag, after the acquittal of the man who killed Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. The organization’s website states that:

Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. is a global organization in the US, UK, and Canada, whose mission is to eradicate white supremacy and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

Black Lives Matter (2021)

The network is described as a “decentralized, grassroots movement” that seeks to support Black people and challenge racial discrimination, particularly in the justice system (Leazenby & Polk, 2020). In addition to the global network there are local chapters.

However, after the murder of George Floyd, support for BLM and antiracism initiatives reached levels never seen before. In addition to demonstrations around the world, donations to BLM and other groups took off. According to Candid, which tracks global philanthropy, “roughly $5 billion in pledges and commitments were made to racial equity organisations” between May 25 and the end of July (Murphy, 2020). What started out as protests against anti-Black police brutality grew into a movement much wider in scope, touching virtually every aspect of society. Corporations sought to address their own complicity in racism by donating to social justice causes and charities.

In addition to writing cheques, there were prominent actions taken to address longstanding racist history. While protesters removed monuments of racist leaders or slave owners in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada, governments and public institutions also took down such artifacts and began renaming places commemorating figures with a racist past. Companies and universities were called out for poor records on diversity, despite promises to the contrary, and issued statements promising to be more inclusive and to fight systemic racism. Brands featuring stereotypic namesakes – Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben’s – were finally dropped after years of criticism. In the world of sport, players in European soccer leagues wore BLM slogans and knelt in solidarity before games, emulating Colin Kaepernick, the Black, former quarterback who was blacklisted for that exact form of protest by the National Football League only a few years ago. The Canadian Football League’s Edmonton franchise dropped the nickname Eskimos, a term offensive to Inuit, and the Washington Football Team played its first NFL season after dropping the derogatory Redskins from its mantle after years of pressure. Every North American sports league rolled out antiracism campaigns of one kind or another. The Women’s National Basketball Association dedicated its season to the memory of Breonna Taylor. The broader, society-wide movement for racial justice came to be known as “the racial reckoning,” and virtually every institution was forced to consider its own culpability in systemic racism. In the United States, job postings for diversity officers surged (McGregor, 2020). Equity legislation and measures were adapted in many government jurisdictions in the United States and beyond.

The United States, pushed by the BLM movement after the death of George Floyd, became the epicenter for global action on racial justice. The lethal excesses of law enforcement had been highlighted by viral social media video in the past, but Floyd’s murder was different, as one activist told the BBC, “it was a completely unambiguous act of injustice – where people could see this man [Floyd] was completely unarmed and incapacitated” (Cheung, 2020b). The pandemic had undoubtedly further heightened awareness of systemic racism as racialized, Black, and Indigenous Peoples experienced disproportionally higher infection and death rates, and more unemployment (Chavez,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Introduction – 2020: “A Year Like No Other” in Journalism Too
• 1 The Racial Reckoning in Journalism
• 2 In Their Own Words: Journalism and the “White Normative View” of the World
• 3 ‘Twas Always Thus: Systemic Racism, Newsgathering, and Content
• 4 Five Decades of Diversity Measures
• 5 News Organizations Respond to the Reckoning
• 6 Conclusion: Strategies That Work
• Index