How black reporters report on black deaths
August 19, 2015 9:35 AM   Subscribe

"[W]e don't stop being black people when we're working as black reporters." "Over the past month, I've talked to a dozen other black reporters who've covered race and policing since Michael Brown's death — or even further back, since Oscar Grant or Ramarley Graham — and it's been a relief to learn that I'm not the only one."
posted by theorique (8 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Even after reading this, I cannot imagine the emotional toll this must take, but I am very grateful and very glad that these reporters are out there, making sure these news stories get heard.
posted by Kitteh at 9:46 AM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


Dear gods, even on NPR, even on Code Switch, don't read the comments.
posted by Etrigan at 9:52 AM on August 19, 2015 [13 favorites]


This is powerful and heartbreaking. Just following the stream of hashtags, from when I was still an editor last fall to now, has been overwhelming to me at times, and I don't have the additional layers of having to deal with it as a person of color who faces the same discrimination she's writing about. The phrase that springs to mind is that these reporters are doing God's work—but that's the other part of this, that there is that sort of pressure to live up to that level of standards in reporting on this.
posted by limeonaire at 10:50 AM on August 19, 2015


Holy shit the comments. They should just shut them off.

I'm never harassed by cops, or likely to be, and I find the stories hard to keep up with too. I think he's right that news organizations need to see this as akin to war reporting; which tells you what kind of racial atmosphere we're actually living in.

And the stories that haven't even made the news that people keep sending to them; what to do with those? Some sort of grim StoryCorps project aimed at recording these injustices, in hopes that maybe some of them might get investigated/addressed someday?
posted by emjaybee at 10:56 AM on August 19, 2015 [2 favorites]


Ugh, no. Breaking news from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch just now: St. Louis police shoot and kill suspect on city's north side. I'm hearing helicopters outside.

:(
posted by limeonaire at 11:02 AM on August 19, 2015


A friend of mine is a pretty high profile black reporter. She regularly posts her reports to Facebook, which is public, and the comments when it's a story involving race... my god. I remember when people thought Facebook comments would save online discourse because clearly people wouldn't be racist/evil with their own names attached.
posted by cell divide at 11:06 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


I try to leave a short appreciative note in Facebook comments or send it through email (in addition to sharing their work), especially when I can tell that the reporter is struggling, but it's obvious that the thankful sentiments are drowned out by pretty extreme hatred (and being called "the real racist" 1000 x per day). And it's not like they're well-compensated to make up for it (like money could even heal those wounds...). Some of the people doing the most in-depth reporting aren't part of big, fancy news organizations who could presumably pay for people on staff to offer therapy.

In case this helps even the littlest bit, I particularly appreciate the work of: Wesley Lowery, Roxane Gay, Brittney Cooper, Collier Meyerson, Shaun King, Jamelle Bouie, Adam Serwer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jelani Cobb, Rembert Browne, Jamil Smith, Wesley Morris, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Michael Eric Dyson, Greg Howard, Kiese Laymon, Devin Allen, Charles M. Blow, Claudia Rankine, Cord Jefferson, and many others I'm surely forgetting.

To be tough enough to take this punishing work as a witness and withstand the constant racism flowing at you specifically (both because of your race and because of your writing), and yet maintain your emotional sensitivity enough to write or create work readers and viewers feel a visceral connection with - those journalists are superstars to me and I am so grateful to them.
posted by sallybrown at 11:50 AM on August 19, 2015 [7 favorites]


"[Yamiche Alcindor] said she's learned to recognize strong feelings about her stories as a sign that she's fully tuned in. "I don't ever want to stop completely being emotional," she said. "I feel like my humanity strengthens my reporting. I don't want my reporting to be cold.""

This is so important, I think. A lot of the Platonic Ideal of objectivity ends up being detached, removed, cold. I don't think those qualities work when we're talking about the lives and deaths of people, who are none of those things.

Also this: "I asked David Gilkey, a staff photographer at NPR who's won a slew of awards for coverage in war and conflict-ridden corners of the globe — Afghanistan, Haiti, the Balkans, Somalia — about that comparison. "I think the difference for you guys," Gilkey said, "is that you got caught covering a story that became really gruesome and no one really checked to see if you were OK." In newsrooms that house war correspondents, he explained, there's an editorial tradition of checking in on those who parachute into the front lines. He wondered if the scattershot nature of race and policing stories makes it harder to psychically prepare."

I remember reading some psychology articles which posited that most people of color in the US likely have PTSD from repeated primary and secondary trauma. Symptoms include difficulty sleeping, increased irritability, hyper-awareness - a lot of things Demby talks about in this article.

I read the article, then the byline, and I know Demby's voice from his semi-regular visits to Pop Culture Happy Hour along with other members of the Codeswitch team. The second read through, it was in his voice for me, and there's a way in which that took an already difficult topic and made it more immediate. There is something powerful about the shift in narrative from attempts at "objectivity" to reporting which includes the acknowledgement of the human element. It comes at a cost, though, and I wish more people respected that cost.
posted by Deoridhe at 4:07 PM on August 19, 2015 [3 favorites]


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