Repairing Journalism’s History of Anti-Black Harm

Abstract

This article addresses current debates about the future of journalism by arguing that efforts to “save” local journalism will not succeed unless they reckon with the historical role that journalism has played in undermining democracy for Black people and Black communities. The authors are cofounders of a project that calls for media reparations to reconcile and repair the history of anti-Black racism in the U.S. media system. We describe the media industry’s history of racist harms, the structural racism that enabled those harms, and the role that government policy can play in creating a media ecosystem where Black media outlets and voices control the creation and distribution of their own narratives. We then discuss prospects for a reparative approach to the reform of media practice and media policy that focuses on acknowledging and reconciling the media system’s racial harms.