ABSTRACT

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder, a host of Black and minority journalists are spearheading a national conversation about how racism within the news media has resulted in its failure to adequately and accurately cover the Black community and to report on racial injustice. This article puts that conversation into historical context by considering its antecedents in calls to address the news media’s whiteness problem in the mid-1960s and beyond. Focusing predominately on the television news industry and the print press, it reveals how American newsrooms appeared to lower their colour barriers but did not commit to substantive change. The article shows how the journalists of colour speaking out today inherit a struggle waged by generations before them. The biggest obstacle they faced in turning desegregation into full-blown integration, however, has not been overt white supremacist racism in American news media, but the enduring commitment of white media owners, managers, and editors to white-defined ‘objectivity’.

摘要

在乔治·弗洛伊德（George Floyd）被谋杀后，许多黑人和少数族裔记者带头进行了一次全国性的对话，内容涉及新闻媒体中的种族主义如何导致其未能充分，准确地报道黑人社区并报道种族不公正现象。本文通过考虑其对话来解决1960年代中期及以后新闻媒体的白度问题的先例，将对话置于历史背景中。它主要关注电视新闻业和印刷媒体，揭示了美国新闻编辑室似乎降低了色彩障碍，但并未致力于实质性改变。文章显示了今天有色人种的新闻记者如何继承了前代人的奋斗历程。但是，他们在将反种族隔离转变为全面融合方面面临的最大障碍是，