Our Perception in Media

THE PERCEPTION OF US IN MEDIA

Negative media coverage of Black and Brown communities is a significant issue across the country.

In our 2021 listening session, participants provided thoughts on how the media portrays Black and Brown communities, including:

“Black men do not see themselves or their experiences depicted with humanity and authenticity in the media; what they do see offered up as worthy of their community’s attention is either depraved or unattainable.” — Jennifer Kho, author of “The Story of Us: Community Image in the News and Other Forms of Media” “Media coverage of young men of color needs to take a more expansive view of who young Black men are, what roles they can play in society, and the contexts in which they are being brought up.” — Jennifer Kho, author of “The Story of Us: Community Image in the News and Other Forms of Media” “We see that rehabilitation happens in the public eye for our other racial counterparts and we get to see what redemption looks like and what hope looks like, what future looks like for someone who is non-Black and non-male … and we don’t get to see that a lot when it comes to Black males. The empathy for Black men isn’t there because, in terms of media, we don’t show a lot of that transformation.” — Olivia Obineme, Director of Journalism and Media Engagement at Public Narrative “Newsrooms without a cultural knowledge base make mistakes.” — Brandon Pope, Anchor and Reporter at CW26 Chicago Chicago has gained a narrative of being an overwhelmingly violent city. And disproportionately at the forefront of this narrative are Black faces. But, the truth is that this narrative is incomplete and is missing key reasons why some areas in Chicago have higher crime rates in Black communities. The Circuit, a Chicago-based collaborative journalism investigation that explores and exposes millions of cases over three decades and shares correlations they discover hidden in the Cook County courts, published several stories that shared some of those missing reasons. In a December 2021 publication, reporters Josh McGhee and Jared Rutecki found that of the more than 3 million criminal cases filed in Cook County between 2000 and 2018, over 60% of them were against Black people. Although crime rates overall were reportedly down in the last two decades, Black people are still overrepresented in the system. Scholars they interviewed suggested this could be because of “long-standing disinvestment and overpolicing in Black The Story of Us: communities.”2