Situation Analysis: After Eric Garner died in 2014 while a New York police officer had him restrained in a chokehold, his daughter Erica Garner became a strong advocate for criminal justice reform. When Erica died of a heart attack in December 2017 an associate of hers requested that only black journalists get in touch about interviews about her death (Bailey 2018). This not only brings up the ethical question of if white journalists should be able to report on news pertaining to another race but also if they can do so well.
Analysis: Whoever made the request about black journalists and Erica Garner’s death was probably angry. Angry that Erica was dead, angry that Eric Garner had died at the hands of a police officer. However, good journalism can not be based off of anger. It is true that many of the decisions that people come to are based on identity, and race is a large part of identity, especially in the United States. Representation matters and people who live the stories are going to have a finer appreciation and a different outlook. However one report says that this does not mean that only journalists of color should tell stories about people of color (Bailey 2018). Journalist Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone spent years writing and researching for his book “I Can’t Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street.” The book is about Eric Garner’s death and the journalist Matt Taibbi is white. In an interview, Taibbi made it clear that his race complicated things. Taibbi said there were definitely certain pressures but “if I had backed off this story because I was white, then I’d never have learned so much history about this kind of police violence and bureaucratic prejudice…” (Bailey 2018).
It is important for journalists to get things right but it is also important for them to learn and grow and to try to be the best journalists that they can be. While it is crucial that journalists understand that they may be seeing things from a certain perspective that others may not see, it is clear how in Taibbi’s case, reporting on this story allowed him to learn more about black lives and become a better journalist. Collier Meyerson, a reporter with The Nation, says that while a reporter’s race can have an impact on how people perceive them, it should not make a reporter afraid to report on something outside of their own race. She states that “When [she] walks into a housing project in the South Bronx, [she] is perceived differently from a white reporter. That should not preclude a white reporter from doing a story in the South Bronx, but to write or report on race is to understand that it begins with comprehending how we fit into the stories…” (Meyerson 2017). It is not about not reporting on stories because you are white or because you are black, but instead being aware of your race and making a conscious effort to see how that can affect stories as a journalist.
Conclusion: The associate was wrong to only allow for black reporters. When dealing with articles on racial tensions, violence or anything else in relation to race, it is not about what race the journalist is but whether they are aware of their race and how it fits into the story that they are telling
BAILEY, I. (2018). “WE HAVEN’T FULLY GRAPPLED WITH HOW MUCH WE UNWITTINGLY JUDGE JOURNALISM THROUGH A WHITE LENS”: Newsrooms need to examine biases and decisions about which journalists cover stories about race. Nieman Reports, 72(1), 32–33. Retrieved from http://ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=128189537&site=ehost-live&scope=site
Demby, G. (2015, August 21). How Black Reporters Report On Black Death. Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/08/20/432590298/how-black-reporters-report-on-black-death
Meyerson, C. (2017, September). Covering a country where race is everywhere. Retrieved from https://www.cjr.org/special_report/race-media-trump.php/