II. ATTITUDES TO NEWS

Trust

Trust and authority increased as participants were more specific about their sources. So most participants expressed mistrust for “the media” generally (which was not meaningfully differentiated from “the news” or “social media”) and characterized “the media’s” content as often “sensationalized” and prone to including misinformation.

When participants named specific media outlets, they spotlighted hyperlocal online outlets, such as Block Club Chicago or the South Side Weekly, rather than more established print or radio institutions. Brandon Pope, who is the National Association of Black Journalists president and an MBK committee member, summed up his rubric for how he evaluates news: “Trust, reliability, impact.”

As mentioned in the introduction of this report, two participants said they follow individual reporters they trust, rather than news organizations. Harvey prefers reporters who explain the nuances beneath the surface of a story and include the voices of the people affected. Beyond reporters, Ballesteros also follows other people who keep tabs on issues that he cares about to stay informed. He explained that “the importance of following journalists, specifically, is because our industry is so tumultuous, and it’s so prone to layoffs or people switching jobs.”

TV News

The consensus among participants was that TV journalism was singularly bad. “TV as a medium for news in this country is bullshit,” was one particular assessment. Some cited the brief length of news segments in a halfhour local newscast as being structurally insufficient for adequate, nuanced coverage. Some, speaking of national news channels, cited partisan bias and “bickering” as a turnoff for news consumers. Others said local broadcasts are not meeting audience needs, particularly given local news’ superficiality and its tendency to feed into the stereotypes noted in previous sections of this report. (Consider in this context the fact that Pew reported in 2019 that roughly 60% of Black Americans prefer to get their news from TV.) As Harvey explains, in the case of how the few success stories local broadcasts feature get told, “we aren’t really telling this young man’s story most of the time. We’re not talking about the actual story; we’re talking about whatever he’s done that’s been digestible to the world at large.”

There are, of course, exceptions. “There are great TV reporters. They’re definitely out there,” Ballesteros said. “Here in Chicago, we have a few for sure that I really appreciate their work.”

The problem isn’t the medium but limitations in the way that network TV news works specifically in the United States, he said, in which local news programming is so timeconstrained that each news segment gets only a few minutes.

Crime Coverage

Many participants raised the heavy concentration of crime news in Chicago as sensationalized and over-covered, compared to the good news about their communities. “Certain media, they view Chicago as ‘Chi-raq,’ which everybody who lives in Chicago hates that term,” AbdusSaboor said, “because we know what’s actually going on in the city and all the systemic issues.”

Touzin, based in New York, only hears about Chicago in the context of crime. “You always hear about the gun violence,” she said, especially how poor, broken and violent the South Side is. “It’s like Chicago is often followed by tragedy whenever I hear about the city.”

Within that crime coverage, participants thought that Black and brown crimes are treated differently. One example of bias is the term “Black-on-Black crime,” said Evan F. Moore, a reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times. “We know that crimes are really only committed due to proximity, not race. We don’t say that about someone in Appalachia or anywhere else. It’s weird how intercommunity violence is labeled that way.”

Another example is the focus on culture — when and how Black and brown children end up on the wrong side of the law, he said. “With Black and brown children, the thing we hear more is, ‘Oh, where were the parents? What music did they listen to?’ Or the community they’re from, their culture and everything else. We didn’t say that about any of those folks that stormed the Capitol building. We didn’t look into the music they listen to, their culture or their families. Why is it only put on Black and brown families? … There are plenty of people out there who grew up in two-parent households and still made decisions and did dumb things.”