When newsrooms are dominated by white people, they miss crucial facts

[Judi Lynn]

Jelani Cobb
In a time where race has emerged as a central theme in politics, the media has a problem with representation

Mon 5 Nov 2018 07.00 EST

Five years ago, I came across an article in the New York Times about a spate of robberies in the Bronx. It was the kind of story that has been a staple in the metro sections of newspapers since there have been metro sections in newspapers, focusing on the reaction of people living in the neighborhood where robberies took place. But there was a notable wrinkle: Confronted by armed antagonists, the article sighed, many people refused to surrender their belongings, even when they had only a few dollars on them. The article tsk-tsked at community members for tempting fate. A criminologist offered a suggestion that it was “nuts for the victim to refuse”. A few dollars, readers were told, are not worth one’s life.

The article stuck with me in part because I’d once lived near that area and understood the realities of crime there. But I also was struck by the ways in which the efforts of a journalist, an editor, an expert, and even neighborhood residents seemed only to further a narrative of liberal condescension, missing crucial facts about life in this place.

Here’s what I knew: people who live in a rough neighborhood and are confronted with a demand for money are forced to make calculations that people in safer, more affluent areas rarely think about. The few dollars in their pockets may represent their only way to get to work; surrendering cash is not only an immediate loss but also one that jeopardizes a future paycheck. More crucially, people who are known to be easily victimized likely will become frequent targets, a reality that may make their neighborhood virtually unlivable. What, to the journalist, seemed inscrutable was, to many residents, reasonable.

It was not lost on me that the journalist who wrote the story was white and that the neighborhood was largely black and Latinx. The article represented not simply a case of a journalist missing a story. The story, to me, spoke to the problem of what happens when the demographics of the Times – and American newspapers in general – look nothing like the demographics of the communities they cover. The people who are most likely to appear in these kinds of stories are the least likely to have a say in how those stories are told.

More:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2018/nov/05/newsroom-diversity-media-race-journalism

[happy feet]

1. K&R

[Dan]

2. Your comments are really insightful..

(hope I got that right).

Sadly, you can't afford to be considered an easy victim - and sadly, you have to balance using your life.