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Friend,
Since our nation’s inception, news media have weaponized anti-Black narratives to oppress Black communities and preserve a white-racial hierarchy. To remedy this history of harm, we need media reparations. Reparations will lead to a future where Black people have the capital and power needed to own and control our own stories from ideation to production to distribution — and are central to achieving a fully realized multiracial democracy.
Over the past year and a half, I’ve researched how journalism engages in the process of media reparations to redress its legacy of anti-Blackness. I learned about putting repair into practice from both movements around the world and Black journalists in the United States. I’ve listened to people describe how news outlets have created harmful narratives in their communities — and express their visions for a way toward repair.
This resulted in the creation of Free Press’ Reparative Journalism video series, which our News Voices project manages. The project builds on the research and vision of Free Press’ Media 2070 project to explore how the journalism industry has profited off of anti-Black narratives, stolen resources and benefited from inciting violence against Black communities and other communities of color. News organizations must atone for these harms and return resources to Black media-makers and other media-makers of color. Reparative journalism seeks to kickstart the repair processes.
In our latest video, "What Journalists Can Learn from Global Repair Movements,” we study three different movements — like South Africa’s post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission — and highlight how journalists can incorporate practices of repair into their reporting:
There’s a directive in countless newsrooms to protect the myth of “objectivity” — to separate journalism from community-building and movement spaces. Black and Indigenous journalists, as well as other journalists of color, are often chastised for — or excluded from — covering protests or engaging in social-justice issues.1
But movement journalism has taught us to respect the critical knowledge, community-building, information and resource sharing that movements foster, particularly Black liberation movements.2 Our video series honors the knowledge of movements that have responded to centuries of violence, theft and oppression.
Explore more in our video, "What Journalists Can Learn from Global Repair Movements," where we study how truth commissions create space to correct the public record,3 how the Indigenous #LANDBACK movement helps us consider what it means to be in “right relationship” with the community around us4 and how reparations can teach us to investigate the lasting legacy of anti-Blackness in our community infrastructures.5
And stay tuned for future videos in this series, where we’ll explore where repair is blossoming in journalism spaces and cast visions for a reparative future.
Thank you,
Diamond and the rest of the News Voices team
newsvoices.org
freepress.net
1. “Editors Barred a Black Reporter from Covering Protests. Then Her Newsroom Rebelled,” NPR, June 8, 2020
2. “Is Movement Journalism What’s Needed During This Reckoning over Race and Inequality?” NiemanReports, Aug. 25, 2020
3. “The Impossible Task of Truth and Reconciliation,” Vox, March 24, 2022
4. “The Healing Work of Returning Stolen Lands,” YES!, Nov. 15, 2021
5. “Reviving the Case for Reparations,” Vox, Sep. 1, 2022 
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