Unraveling the Protest Paradigm
In 2018, Sacramento police shot and killed Stephon Clark, a twenty-two-year-old father of two, in his grandmother’s backyard. Early coverage favored a police statement that claimed Clark “turned and advanced toward the officers,” who “believed the susp
via Columbia Journalism Review: https://www.cjr.org/criticism/protest-journalism-black-lives-matter-floyd.php
Unraveling the protest paradigm requires radically repairing journalism’s foundations—work that includes re-evaluating our foundations and interrogating traditional ideas of who we grant legitimacy to, and why. Police reports are made readily available, but they don’t tend to humanize Black people. We don’t need more reckonings, or explainers of how racism works; we can’t continue to debate if racism is a real problem. Find Black advocates, activists, community members and leaders in your community, and give them a voice in your coverage.