From the editor
“What if the people storming the Capitol on January 6 had been Black?”
Adeshina Emmanuel, editor-in-chief of Injustice Watch, poses that question in his examination of how coverage of police violence is changing in response to last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Many newsrooms contrasted how law enforcement handled the largely white pro-Trump rioters and white supremacists who roamed freely through the halls of Congress after invading the Capitol on January 6 with the force deployed against the diverse group that gathered outside the White House on June 1 to peacefully protest the police killing of George Floyd.
A new dynamic is emerging in coverage of police violence and criminal justice. Adeshina’s piece explores how news outlets are telling stories about police violence victims that focus on their lives, not just their deaths. This shift is accompanied by other initiatives seeking to acknowledge and address past failures. Last week, The Boston Globe announced “Fresh Start,” a process through which the paper will consider appeals from people regarding their presence and characterization in older stories.
And more newsrooms are conducting audits of their race coverage in an effort to account for their pasts and to rethink their futures. Mará Rose Williams, education writer for The Kansas City Star, writes about how she and her colleagues decided to show readers the paper’s failure to adequately and accurately tell the rich stories of Black people’s contributions in Kansas City. Her essay is part of our ongoing series on the racial reckoning taking place in newsrooms across the country, "The Newsrooms We Need Now."
"The further back we look, the further forward we can see," to paraphrase an aphorism often attributed to Winston Churchill. Initiatives like the Star’s, and the emerging models for covering police violence, offer fresh perspectives on what’s ahead. “We will approach every story we write differently,” Williams writes. “We will question our intentions, use of language, placement of stories, and decisions about what we cover and what we don’t. Doing this project changed the way each of us does day-to-day journalism.”
Sincerely,
James Geary
Editor, Nieman Reports
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