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By Diamond Hardiman and Nyasia Almestica
A system founded on White supremacy and sustained by racialized capitalism has long dominated our nation’s media landscape. This system has perpetuated harm toward communities of color through centuries of exploitation and dehumanization.
News Voices — a Free Press project that builds people’s power to win local media collaborations that people need to thrive — is advocating for a much-needed overhaul of our media landscape that’s grounded in healing and repair.
News Voices’ inaugural video, A Journey Toward Reparative Journalism, unravels the threads of history, spotlighting three instances where media harm etched deep wounds in Black communities and other communities of color.
Traditional journalism practices have perpetuated systemic biases.
Instead of informing and empowering, these practices marginalize and endanger the lives of people of color. Even into the 21st century, there exists a catalog of racially biased narratives that presently both misrepresent and underrepresent communities of color.
The weaponization of language
One of the most powerful tools at our disposal is language. When news outlets intentionally weaponize language, they perpetuate White supremacy. For instance, the media’s use of coded language — a linguistic strategy that implicitly triggers racial stereotypes and negative connotations — avoids explicit racism.
When Academy Award winner Lupita Nyong’o was featured on People’s “Most Beautiful” cover in 2014, The Daily Mail, Forbes, and The Hollywood Reporter called her “exotic.”
This coded language perpetuates the colorism so prevalent in Hollywood and reinforces the harmful stereotype that beautiful dark-skinned women are a rarity and, therefore, must be in a category of their own.
The media’s preference for light-skinned and biracial Black women champions beauty standards aligned with European ideals, intensifying the struggle for self-acceptance among Black women.
Serena Williams is another critical example of how the media builds narratives of otherness when it comes to Black women.
Over her decades-long career, Williams has faced countless media assaults, particularly in connection with her fashion style and her physique. Comments have ranged from criticism of her outfits and hair to outright dog-whistle racism in response to her body.
The media’s privileging of European standards always creates the opportunity for people who don’t fall within those standards to be attacked.
The experiences of Nyong’o and Williams speak to the media’s preoccupation with a racially skewed set of ideals that significantly undermine the achievements of Black women.
Criminalizing Black and Mexican people
Another glaring example of media harm is the press’ portrayal of police shootings involving people of color. Media coverage of police shootings is often hyper-fixated on the victim’s criminal record or alleged involvement in illegal activities.
In the aftermath of police officer Darren Wilson’s murder of Michael Brown, some media outlets published images of Brown throwing up a supposed gang sign, though his friends disputed the claims that he was involved in gang activity.
Even for those implicated in gang-related and criminal activities, the legal sentence is not that of execution. This framing — which failed to acknowledge that Brown was unarmed — implied that Brown deserved his fate.
In 2015, three police officers fatally shot Antonio Zambrano-Montes, a farmworker in Pasco, Washington. Rather than address the systemic issues at play that led to his murder, media coverage often emphasized his immigration status and mental-health issues.
Some news outlets drew comparisons between the protests following Zambrano-Montes’ murder and the Ferguson protests, pitting Black Lives Matter activists against Hispanic Latinx communities. This isn’t an isolated incident: Media narratives routinely perpetuate divisions, obscuring the shared struggle for justice that eludes underrepresented communities.
Distorted crime reporting is a product of the skewed power dynamics within the journalism industry that allow racially prejudiced narratives to persist. This challenges the essence of justice and exacerbates the corruptive forces driving the U.S. criminal-justice system.
A Journey toward reparative journalism
Journalism must confront its history of violence and white supremacy, which has long fueled systemic racism disguised as fair reporting. News Voices’ The Reparative Journalism Project urges newsrooms to abandon racially biased narratives and instead opt for thoughtful, nuanced reporting that actively restores dignity, justice, and equity for BIPOC communities.
Reparative journalism is more than an idea: It’s a transformative approach to reporting that is grounded in repair and truth. Inclusion is an experience, one that is painfully absent when marginalized voices are systemically sidelined from the crucial conversations shaping our collective narrative.
In this commitment to truth and repair, the Reparative Journalism Project is a beacon guiding newsrooms toward an era where journalism helps dismantle oppressive systems and fosters a society where storytelling is an instrument of justice and equality.
The journey toward reparative journalism invites reporters and news leaders to cast aside the weight of historical biases and embrace stories that are both inclusive and anchored in remediation. If you’re interested in being part of this conversation, register for the Media 2070 project’s 2024 press briefing, where we will delve deeper into this movement.
Diamond Hardiman is the reparative journalism manager at Fress Press, where she’s part of the News Voices and Media 2070 teams. Nyasia Almestica is a publicist at Manon Media, an agency led by CEO Tianna Manon.
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