Journalism plays a pivotal, not always positive, role in the struggle for racial justice, according to Kathy Roberts Forde.
The effect that journalism has had on social justice issues, specifically having to do with race, can be traced back through the post-slavery history of the United States, at least as far back as 1989. Forde, the journalism department chairwoman and journalism historian, traced this history on Thursday afternoon before a room of about 80 students and faculty.
Speaking at the Cole Lecture in Contemporary Issues, titled “Journalism and the Enduring Struggle for Racial Justice,” presented by the UMass Amherst College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Forde shared her research connecting journalism and racial injustice. She specializes in research of the First Amendment and the African American Freedom Struggle.
Forde flashed back to the turn of the 20th century in Wilmington, North Carolina, and in Atlanta, Georgia to expose how journalism played a role in two important racial injustice cases. But then, Forde transferred into the present, speaking about The Marshall Project and the mass incarcerations that have happened in the United States throughout it’s history.
In Wilmington, North Carolina, a coup d’etat ran black officials out of town. In Atlanta, Georgia Sam Hose was lynched after being accused of assault. Newspapers, specifically the Atlanta Constitution, during the coverage of Hose when he was on the run, created a “frenzy,” Forde said. In a time where yellow journalism thrived, some journalists criminalized the lives and minds of African Americans, including Hose. Forde also noted that different sources, including W.E.B Du Bois, had “different perspectives and “different roles” than the Atlanta Constitution leading to more just ways in reporting this social injustice.
Forde brought her speech to where our nation and world of journalism stands today by discussing the Marshall Project, which describes itself as, “A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering America’s criminal justice system.”
Recently 6,000 prisoners with nonviolent drug charges were released, and 6,000 more are planning on being released. Even if all offenders of nonviolent drug crimes are released tomorrow the United States would still have the highest incarceration rate in the world. “We have 5% of the world population, and 25% of the world’s prisoners,” Forde said.
Forde touched on how in order to resolve this conflict the prisoners must become visible. Yet due to warden’s control of prisons, and the inability for journalists to get inside jail cells, the mass incarceration rate and mistreatment of prisoners will remain.
Forde hopes to inspire others to become historians and journalists because, “Social Science helps us be better journalists,” she said. As people, and especially as journalists, we should be better and “care about the role of news in public life.”
Looking forward to the future of journalism, Forde believes that the connection between journalism and the social justice movement will grow and still be connected to be able to give the truth. In the words of Ford, “If journalist’s first obligation is to the truth, might the second be to social justice?”
UMass Journalism 300 