Black Media Matters
A corps of DC journalists report what the rest leave out.
The press are the white press.
Journalism’s problem with diversity isn’t new. It’s been half a century since newsrooms promised to get better. On a progress card they can be given, at best, an incomplete. (We’d receive the same grade.)
Hence black media: national institutions like Jet, Ebony and BET, but also — for much longer — local newspapers like the Pittsburgh Courier, the Portland Scanner, the Oakland Post, the Los Angeles Sentinel and more.
Last week, the Shaw Library hosted a panel discussion to talk about the black press in DC. Hosted by Denise Rolark Barnes, publisher of DC’s Washington Informer — which just celebrated its 50th anniversary — the panel also included A. Peter Bailey, who was a founding member of the Organization of Afro-American Unity with Malcolm X and a contributor to Jet, Essence, the New York Times and more; Jazmin Goodwin, a senior at Howard and editor-in-chief of The Hilltop; and James Wright, who has covered everything from Capitol Hill to Afghanistan for the AFRO.
Collectively, they argued that the role of the black press outstrips the mere function of hiring the black reporters that the mainstream media won’t. It extends into the very human work of liberation.
It’s no mistake that some of black history’s most celebrated champions, writers from Ida B. Wells on, doubled as journalists.
The dual mantle of journalist and activist is inherent in the roots of the black press. As Peter Bailey explained, the earliest instances of black journalism were inseparable from advocacy: the first African-American owned and operated newspaper, the Freedoms Journal (1827), existed to rebut the racist attacks that went unchallenged elsewhere.
The same mission extends through one of Washington’s most famous residents, Frederick Douglass, the Lion of Anacostia, who published the anti-slavery North Star, and continues today with Washington-based publications like the Washington Informer and the Baltimore-based AFRO, but also Howard University’s student newspaper the Hilltop.
“The [Washington] Post is going to give you a minute picture,” Peter Bailey says. It’s an allegation that, after four years following DC news as closely as anyone, I wouldn’t contest. A great example is the AFRO’s recent reporting on the gentrification of the Wharf — something you might be able to get from the Post, too, but only after sifting through reviews of its $$$ restaurants.
Bailey outlines four functions of the black press:
- Answer attacks.
- Serve as a watchdog.
- Preserve black culture.
- Present new viewpoints.
“We’re fighting for coverage of our communities and stories,” Jazmin says. “It’s important to have representation in [white] newsrooms, but black media is essential.”
This isolation doesn’t come without drawbacks. Just like the rest of the media, the black press has been eviscerated by the collapse of classifieds. But in some ways they’ve been less able to cope without compromising: for example, they’ve had to turn to wire stories from the white media to fill space, a compromise others don’t have to consider. And Peter and James agreed that black intellectuals no longer contribute to the black press the way they used to, convinced by the greater reach of mainstream media that their talents are best spent elsewhere.
I learned a lot from the panel, including about the history of repression of black media during WWII (because the federal government considered it unpatriotic to shed light on racism while war was on) and the litany of publications I’d never heard of, like the Washington Bee, in whose motto of “Liberate, solidify, instruct” I heard echoes of our own instruction to “inform, provoke, engage.”
I was also challenged. Peter Bailey, for example, believes that Brown v. Board of Education had the ill effect of teaching black people that nothing of their own could ever be worthwhile. It’s an angle you don’t get in most history books. And I could stand to expand my horizons: I was surprised when almost everyone in the room said they’d heard of Africa Live, a news program about the continent on China Global Television Network (syndicated on basic TV throughout the region). In fact, over all, I was impressed by the zeal and wealth of knowledge that the audience — which was nearly full — brought to the subject, as they recalled long-shuttered papers they read in their youth or argued passionately over the profession’s history.
But most of all, I was challenged to do a better job bringing viewpoints unrepresented in the white press to 730DC’s readers. You don’t need to be black to recognize that dialogue and community have something to gain from a discourse maintained for the liberation.
“We have a story to tell,” says Jazmin. “There is no better vehicle for that story than the black press.”
