Media 2070: An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations - Article / Essay - Page 36
Media Apologies & Acknowledgements
of Anti-Black Harm
MAY 2006
JUL 2004
Kentucky’s Lexington Herald-Leader admits
that it refused to cover the local civil-rights
struggle because it wanted to “play down the
movement” — noting that the outlet’s “stance
was not unusual among newspapers across the
South.”
MAY 2006
The Tallahassee Democrat apologizes for
taking “the side of the segregationists” in
columns and editorials that opposed the 1956
bus boycott by the city’s Black community.
We not only did not lend a hand, we
openly opposed integration, siding
firmly with the segregationists. It is
inconceivable that a newspaper, an
institution that exists freely only because
of the Bill of Rights, could be so wrong on
civil rights. But we were.
Following the report’s release, the
News & Observer apologizes for its
role in the coup and acknowledges that
“this newspaper was a leader in that
propaganda effort under editor and
publisher Josephus Daniels.”
MAR 2018
Susan Goldberg, editor of
National Geographic, addresses the
magazine’s racist history in a special issue
on race:
MAY 2006
In Waco, Texas, the Tribune-Herald
apologizes for its coverage of the 1916 lynching
of 17-year-old Jesse Washington, stating:
We regret the role that journalists
of that era may have played in either
inciting passions or failing to deplore the
mob violence. We are descendants of a
journalism community that failed to urge
calm or call on citizens to respect the
legitimate justice system.
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A commission convened by the
North Carolina legislature to study the
1898 Wilmington race riot issues a report
finding that “members of the Democratic
white elite in Wilmington and New Hanover
County achieved their political goals
through violence and intimidation” and
that “involved in the conspiracy were men
prominent in the Democratic Party, former
Confederate officers, former officeholders,
and newspaper editors locally and
statewide.” The commission also calls for
reparations.
WWW.MEDIA2070.ORG
Until the 1970s National Geographic
all but ignored people of color who
lived in the United States, rarely
acknowledging them beyond laborers
or domestic workers. Meanwhile
it pictured ‘natives’ elsewhere as
exotics, famously and frequently
unclothed, happy hunters, noble
savages — every type of cliché.
