The Press On Blacks And Whites
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
As a child, it was hard to miss the many newspapers and magazines that cluttered our West Philadelphia row home.
There was the usual suspects sprawled out across the dining room table: the New York Times, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Time magazine.
But my parents also purchased and read the Philadelphia Tribune, the New York Amsterdam News, and Jet and Ebony – black newspapers and magazines that almost everyone else we knew also seemed to consume.
When it came down to the reporting of news about black folks, my father in particular was adamant that only the black publications would get it right. He would routinely read the mainstream papers with a pen in hand, circling all of the negative depictions of blacks.
He would demand that my siblings and I read the weekly black publications for information that he said was hard to find outside of those tabloid or broadsheet pages.
From time to time, my father would examine a major news event and compare how different the coverage was in the black and the mainstream press.
“It’s like we’re living in two different worlds,” I remember hearing him tell a group of his friends who would congregate at our home to talk politics.
“Whites and blacks often see two different realities in America, and that is shown in these papers.”
Wanting to test my father’s hypothesis, I recently did the same exercise, looking at the mainstream press’s coverage of the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe juxtaposed with the way the black press – which includes more than 200 black newspapers and magazines – tackled the hurricane and its aftermath.
Looking at a week’s worth of reportage, I was dismayed by the mainstream press’s depiction of blacks as “looters.” I was encouraged by the black press’s decision to criticize the federal government for its slow response in aiding most black residents of New Orleans.
In short, the coverage was substantially different, which may be a testament, if my father is correct, to the different realities that blacks and whites experience in this country.
I recently gave a lecture at a college on the importance of the black press, and a wide-eyed college freshman couldn’t seem to understand why black people readily supported black newspapers.
“It seems like you guys want to be separate,” he said quite forcefully. “Don’t the mainstream newspapers cover your issues sufficiently?”
My obvious answer was: “Of course not. That is why the black press was created in the first place.”
From the creation of the first black newspaper, Freedom’s Journal, in 1827, blacks vowed to tell their own stories, no longer allowing others to speak for them.
In doing so, these black newspapers quickly assumed an advocacy role in articulating the hopes, dreams, and outrage of the black community.
Whether it was Ida B. Wells, the prominent black journalist who risked her life to tarry in the South to investigate lynchings, or Ethel Payne, the black White House correspondent who regularly challenged President Eisenhower’s policies, the purpose of the black press has always been to agitate for change.
Last year, the Lexington Herald-Leader, a Knight-Ridder newspaper, publicly apologized to its readers for failing to adequately cover the civil rights movement. The admission by the newspaper had wide-range implications, as other publications have now come clean about their reluctance to expose the viciousness of Jim Crow laws that permeated the American South.
Unfortunately, some of the national press outlets that were once solidly owned by blacks have been sold to majority white-owned companies. Black Entertainment Television and Essence magazine are two examples.
The recent decision by the New York Times Company to open a black newspaper in Gainesville, Fla., has been opposed by some black newspaper owners. They feel the Times is not in a position to run a black newspaper, especially when one considers the dearth of racial diversity among its reporting staff.
Sadly, I suspect that many struggling black-owned newspapers ultimately will be purchased or close up shop. The declining readership across the board and their lack of financial resources leaves many of these institutions quite vulnerable.
The current challenge is to build up a new generation of black journalists who understand the historical importance of these publications and are willing to ensure their longevity while pushing mainstream publications to cover the black community in all of its diversity.
Mr. Watson is the executive editor of The New York Amsterdam News. He can be reached atjamalwats@aol.com.