From the editor
“Here’s the cold, hard, uncomfortable truth: No one in the United States is immune to the influence of white supremacy, not even a Black Southerner like me,” Issac J. Bailey writes in his searing essay about how we as journalists must change the way we cover racism and white supremacy. “Acknowledging that truth may be the only way for journalists to effectively navigate the complexities of race.”
In that essay and in a separate op-ed, “Will This Racial Reckoning Finally Force Newsrooms to Listen to Every Staffer’s Voice?”, Bailey argues that the racial reckoning taking place in news outlets across the country is a long-overdue corrective, one that is “about ensuring voices that have been marginalized for far too long no longer will be.”
And it’s a reckoning happening in European newsrooms, too. The impact of migration on the European Union has revealed critical failures in E.U. institutions, including journalism institutions facing calls for more inclusiveness. Our piece on how refugee reporters are telling stories that would otherwise be missed explores how a handful of nonprofits is addressing European journalism’s diversity problem by matching migrant journalists with news outlets.
As Tabea Grzeszyk, co-author of the book “Unbias the News” and co-founder of the collaborative journalism platform Hostwriter, told Nieman Reports writer Charlotte Alfred, “Diversity is not about political correctness, it’s about the quality of media.” And that quality metric — accuracy, fairness, representation — can only be met when newsrooms reflect the communities they cover and every voice in the newsroom is heard.
Sincerely,
James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports
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