An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations AN INVITATION TO DREAM UP MEDIA REPARATIONS Collaborators: Joseph Torres Alicia Bell Collette Watson Tauhid Chappell Diamond Hardiman Christina Pierce a project of Free Press 2 WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 9 I. A Day at the Beach 13 II. Media 2070: An Invitation to Dream 18 III. Modern Calls for Reparations for Slavery 19 IV. The Case for Media Reparations 24 V. How the Media Profited from and Participated in Slavery 26 VI. The Power of Acknowledging and Apologizing 29 VII. Government Moves to Suppress Black Journalism 40 VIII. Black People Fight to Tell Our Stories in the Jim Crow Era 43 IX. Media Are the Instruments of a White Power Structure 50 X. The Struggle to Integrate Media 52 XI. How Public Policy Has Entrenched Anti-Blackness in the Media 56 XII. White Media Power and the Trump Feeding Frenzy 58 XIII. Media Racism from the Newsroom to the Boardroom 62 XIV. 2020: A Global Reckoning on Race 66 X V. Upending White Supremacy in Newsrooms 70 XVI. Are Newsrooms Ready to Make Things Right? 77 XVII. The Struggles of Black Media Resistance 80 XVIII. Black Activists Confront Online Gatekeepers 83 XIX. Media Reparations Are Necessary to Our Nation’s Future 90 XX. Making Media Reparations Real 95 Epilogue 97 About Team Media 2070 98 Definitions 99 #MEDIA2070 3 TRIGGER WARNING There are numerous stories in this essay that explore the harms the news media have inflicted on the Black community. While these stories may be difficult or painful to read, they are not widely known, and they need to be. ABOUT TEAM MEDIA 2070 This essay was co-created by a collective of Black staff at Free Press. The use of “our,” “we” and “us” throughout this essay reflects that. 4 WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG To try to foretell the future without studying history is like trying to learn to read without bothering to learn the alphabet.1 —Octavia Butler A Snapshot of Anti-Black Harms MEDIA AND RACE IN EACH CENTURY 1704 1957 The Boston News-Letter, the nation’s first In Jackson, Mississippi, continuously published newspaper, is the first paper the White Citizens’ Council involved in the slave trade: It runs a slave ad less produces a TV program — than a month after its founding. The ad, from a local merchant, seeks a purchaser of “two Negro men” and Citizens’ Council Forum a “Negro Woman & Child.” The paper’s publisher, John — to “thwart” the fight for Campbell, acts as a broker. integration. The program airs on WLBT-TV, an NBC affiliate, and receives free airtime since the station’s general manager is a member of the Council. The program also receives funding from the 1898 Mississippi state government — which means that taxpayer dollars from Black residents help subsidize it. In North Carolina, the white-supremacist publisher and editor of Raleigh’s News & Observer, Josephus Daniels, helps lead a coup that overthrows Wilmington’s multiracial government 1995 — the only armed overthrow of a local government in the nation’s history. The Republican-controlled Congress passes legislation that ends the FCC’s minority tax- 1917 certificate program — which since 1978 had helped increase broadcast- station ownership by people of color from After a white policeman attacks a Black woman in less than 1 percent to 3 percent. Houston, a riot that kills at least 15 people ensues. A Black newspaper, The San Antonio Inquirer, publishes a letter from a Black woman who praises Black soldiers 2017 involved in the riot. The government arrests G.W. Bouldin, the paper’s editor, and charges him with espionage — even though A Color Of Change and Family Story he was out of town when the letter was published. study finds that Black families In 1919, he receives a two-year prison sentence and represent 59 percent of spends about a year incarcerated. Meanwhile, 13 Black stories about poverty in news and soldiers who participated in the riot are hung, and 41 opinion outlets like CNN and Fox News — other soldiers are given life sentences. even though they make up just 27 percent of poor families in the country. 6 WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG Since the colonial era, media outlets have used their platforms to inflict harm on Black people through weaponized narratives that promote Black inferiority and portray Black people as threats to society. #MEDIA2070 7 Special thanks to artist Micah Wilson for the Media 2070 cover illustration. • • • 8 WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG INTRODUCTION We are living through historic times. a racial-caste system and in some cases allowed their platforms to be used as recruitment tools for white The racial-justice uprisings that have been happening supremacists.5 All of this has contributed to the death of across the country and throughout the world since the Black people. public execution of George Floyd in May 2020 are both inspiring and heartbreaking.2 Media organizations were complicit in the slave trade and profited off of chattel slavery; a powerful newspaper This insurgency is happening at a time when the publisher helped lead the deadly overthrow of a local COVID-19 pandemic has exposed — once more for government in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Black everyone who cares to see — many of the societal people held power; racist journalism has led to countless inequities that have ensured that Black lives don’t matter. lynchings; southern broadcast stations have opposed integration; and, in the 21st century, powerful social- Fueled by Black death and by those who refuse to accept media and tech companies are allowing white supremacists it, the public uprisings have forced a reckoning in this to use their platforms to organize, fundraise, recruit and country.3 Powerful institutions, from governments spread hate.6 to museums to universities to newsrooms, are being challenged to address their own anti-Black racism.4 The We also tell the stories of how Black activists and institutions and systems people are protesting have all journalists have challenged racist media institutions and contributed to the prevention of Black freedom and policies — despite the violence they have faced for the liberation. radical act of speaking up in a country where Black people have yet to fully realize their ability to speak freely. This essay documents how anti-Black racism has always been part of our media system’s DNA. On the pages that This essay is a living document. follow, we explore the harms inflicted on Black bodies by our nation’s white-dominant media companies. We also The examples we provide are far from comprehensive examine the harms inherent in government policies that — there’s still so much we need to learn about how the consolidated media power with white owners and made white media have created and perpetuated the myth of anti-Black racism a central fixture of our media system Black inferiority. And there is still so much we need to since colonial times. learn about how the Black community has fought for a just media system and the health and well being of our In this essay, we provide historical and contemporary communities. In particular there’s much to uncover about examples of the active role white media institutions have the work of Black women and Black queer people, and played in promoting and perpetuating anti-Black hate Black transgender and gender-nonconforming activists and violence on their platforms. Since the colonial era, and journalists — all of whose stories often go untold due U.S. media organizations and institutions have protected to the forces of patriarchy, homophobia and transphobia. #MEDIA2070 9 While this essay makes the argument for media States when democracy has never been fully realized for reparations for Black people, any group that has been Black people. harmed by our government or by corporations has the right to demand reparations to reconcile and repair What we do know is that a sustainable, multiracial the injuries caused to their communities. Colonialism, democracy will not happen without a struggle. And it capitalism and imperialism have been destructive forces will not happen until we address our nation’s shameful, for people of color in the United States, starting with our racist legacy and imagine that transformation is necessary nation’s Indigenous communities. and possible. But that transformation will not take place without reconciliation and repair. We named this essay — and the larger project we’re launching — Media 2070. And for the purpose of Media And media reparations are central to achieving a fully 2070, we define “Black” as the identity lived by people of realized, multiracial democracy since our nation’s news the African diaspora. media have historically weaponized narratives to further the political goals of protecting and preserving a white- Over the past century, there have been multiple racial hierarchy. commissions that have investigated the root causes of racial-justice uprisings — and examined the news media’s We recognize that there are many people who are role. The 2020 uprisings have resulted in Black journalists the keepers of our stories — elders, activists, artists, and other journalists of color publicly challenging racism technologists and more. It will take all of us to collect within their own newsrooms. a more complete record that documents the history of harms our nation’s media institutions and policies This essay — and project — is an invitation to dream of have inflicted. At their best, policies determine whether the media we want to see 50 years from now. It is a call institutions operating within a media system (or industry) to reconcile and repair the harms that institutional and are accountable to the communities they serve. And like structural racism have caused.