 Hi, good afternoon. My name is Karen Brundlett and I'm a Journalism Director at the Knight Foundation. Thank you so much for joining us, for informed and engaged. After the death of George Floyd and after millions of Americans protested against police brutality and systemic racism, American newsrooms began interrogating how they covered the black community. Some have hired new teams to report on the topic of race. Race is not a new topic. Top editors and news leaders have asked what stories have been missed or under-reported? There is a lot of reflection happening. But what does research show about the experiences of black adults with media, the audience? What does the black audience think and see about news and journalism? We are going to start off by digging into the data, the research, and then we are going to talk with a panel of four great journalists. Our first guests are Priscilla Standridge, Senior Researcher at Gallup, and Amy Mitchell, a Director at Pew Research Center. Thank you both for joining us. Let's begin with Priscilla's findings. Priscilla. Hello, thank you for having me. So I'm going to be sharing data from a study that we did in partnership with the Knight Foundation this past year. This is a study that we do every two years. It's a very large sample of over 19,000 Americans. And I want to start by talking a little bit about this overall trend that I don't think will surprise anyone of the increasing feeling that there's a great deal or a fair amount of bias in the news coverage that people experience in this country. These are trends that at Gallup, we don't really expect them to move a whole lot over time. So this upward trend in bias that people see in the news that they consume is really striking. It's increased nearly over 20 percentage points since 2007. So this is really something that we see creeping into people's feelings about news in general. And we dig into that by asking people about specific areas where they might be seeing bias and being afraid of the bias that they're that's creeping into the news coverage. One area is the increasing number of news sources that report the news from a particular viewpoint. And this is a big concern to people. And what's interesting here is that while around 70% of Americans overall, he this is a major problem, we do see some interesting differences by gender and by race, especially in this area. So if we look at the difference specifically between white men and black men, black women, this is where we see the sharpest difference between those perceptions. And black women are those who see this as are less likely to say that this is a major problem in the news that they consume. Similarly, one thing that we saw this year was that Americans overall increasingly see a malicious and an intentionality behind the bias in news that they're consuming, which is very concerning. There are a strong majority of Americans who think that the media is intentionally trying to persuade people to adopt a certain viewpoint, 80% of Americans feel this way. And this is something that is actually lowest among black adults. And black adults are more likely to say that this bias is probably due to an ability to cover the news accurately fairly rather than an intentionality. But what's really striking here is that one in 10 Americans really across the board actually now have begun to say that the news is intentionally trying to ruin our country. And this will pretty constant across all of these groups. One area where black adults have a more positive view of the news is around the idea that the news actually carries the blame for the political divisions in our country. There's this idea of sort of a chicken and egg scenario where the news is feeding the bias or vice versa. And we see that among black adults, we see the least amount of responsibility attributed to the news media specifically in creating political divisions in this country. And not surprisingly, we see also a smaller degree of black adults that feel that the media can actually heal these political divisions. What's interesting here is that Americans overall think that while the media is responsible, it could also fix these problems. So probably the lower percentage of black adults that feel this way is because they actually see less blame to begin with in terms of the media's role in this specific issue. This year we also asked quite a bit about how people felt about diversity in news. Of course, this has been a conversation for a very long time and it's definitely a concern that's come to the forefront, especially recently. And we asked Americans whether or not they thought that representing diversity in the US was a critical goal for the news media. Here we're looking at what is the responsibility of the media in specific areas in society. And we see a strong percentage of Americans overall who do think that this is a critical goal for the news media, but really there's a strong percentage of black adults who feel this way that it's critical or very important for the media to reflect diversity in the US compared to white adults where that percentage is significantly smaller. And in addition, we also asked about the responsibility that news organizations have to hire reporters from diverse backgrounds. This was another interesting question that we asked people and Americans overall, you know, a strong 80% really feel that this is something that news organizations in general should do. And this feeling is higher among black adults in particular as well as Asian adults in our country just slightly lower among Latino and white population. But what's interesting here is that when we dug into specifically the areas where news organizations needed to hire more diversity and ask people what kind of diversity are you actually thinking about? We really start to see those divides and those perceptions start to diverge. We asked about a variety of different types of diversity from race and ethnicity to political views, income and social status as well as age. And Americans overall definitely see that race and ethnicity and political views are the two chief areas where there should be greater diversity. But among black Americans, there's 60% of them that say that race and ethnicity should be the main area where we need more diverse staff. And among Republicans, there's a much stronger view that political views should be the diversity that is more represented in the news media. So with that, I'm gonna hand over to Amy Mitchell from the Pew Research Center. And I think that she has some more steps to give to this conversation as well. Thanks so much, Priscilla. And I will, if you turn off your screen, I can share mine. And I'm going to build off of some of what Priscilla was speaking about. We certainly have seen a number of the same similar types of findings in terms of black adults in the US generally being more positive about the news media, compared with white adults in particular, expressing greater interest specifically in local news and intending to be larger followers of local television specifically. So I'm gonna sort of build off where Priscilla was and share a little bit more of our data that comes from a range of different studies on both these specific topic areas and areas of news of black Americans, particular express higher levels of interest in, and then some of what they're looking for in the news media and the sources that they turn to. So this is asking about sort of how big of a problem different issues and issue areas are in the country. And you can see here, the one that's highlighted is one that had to do with the particular study at the time that was around made up news and information, but you see the ranking here much higher among white adults than among blacks or Hispanics. Drug addiction tends to be high across the board, but then you start to get to a lot of areas of difference with racism and violent crime, gap between rich and poor much higher among the black adult population in the US compared with the white still high among Hispanic adults, but in some cases not as high. And even if you look here in something like the gap between the rich and the poor, it's 70% of black adults who are saying it's a very big problem compared with 45% of white adults. So even though their ranking is similar, the portions there are still particularly different. So if we look at the protest, which certainly have been a major part of the news agenda and the narrative of what's happening in our country today, this was a survey that was asked in the early part of June just to put it in context, but you can see here, even though it's been followed quite closely by US adults overall, much higher portion of black adults that have said that they're following this story line in particular, very closely. And then we also asked about how the news organizations are doing covering it and about the messaging that Donald Trump has been delivering in response to the protest following the death of George Floyd. And again, you see here also very large differences with the black adults in particular giving higher ratings to the news media for how they're doing covering the protest following the death of George Floyd. And where negative marks to the response that Donald Trump has been giving as well. When we ask about sort of different story lines within the protest, whether they've been getting the right amount of attention too much, too little coverage in the news, you also see differences between black adults and white adults here as well with two of the larger areas of difference in the amount of coverage being given to the decision of whether to prosecute officers involved in George Floyd's death. And again, this was asked, this was a survey from June 4 to 10. So that's the context of the timing of the story at that point. And then also more black adults saying too little coverage has been given to the larger issue of race relations surrounding the protests. Some areas where there is general agreement as well. And then if we think about one of the other big story lines that's been with us for now quite some time, the COVID-19 outbreak in the US, we also see here that black adults tend to be discussing it almost all the time with others to a greater degree than Hispanic adults or white adults. And then we ask here, both at the national level and the local level, the degree to which people are following again different story lines within the coronavirus outbreak very closely. And you can see at the national level, this first question, the health impact on people like me. A 19 percentage point difference between a portion of blacks, 55% black adults who say they're following this news very closely compared with 36% of white adults and Hispanic adults following in the middle. The 16 point gap between very closely following the availability of US hospitals to treat people, the number of cases and deaths in the US as well. And when we ask about local story lines, again, you see the availability of testing being a very high difference between black adults and white adults in the US, 23 percentage point difference. And this was, we've asked, we've done a number of different studies around the outbreak and this was one that was late April. So it was at a time period where the availability of tests was a question. And also the status of nearby hospitals in the local area, 23 percentage point difference, 21 percentage point difference in the availability of unemployment and other types of aid, 20% to 41%. So quite striking differences in the story lines that black adults compared with white adults in particular are following very closely. And then just also, we'll pin it to look a little bit about what black Americans say they're looking for in specifically, excuse me, in their news sources. And if you look at the US population overall, Americans overall see journalists demeanor, that sense of them seeing friendly and warm as most important in choosing news outlets. So this side here with the dark is the very important, somewhat important. And if you look at these then by race and ethnicity, you can see again, significant gaps here with Hispanic adults often in the middle, although sometimes aligned much more closely with black adults in the US. But the question of, excuse me, the question of the fact that they cover people like me, much more important here among black adults than among white adults specifically, 68% to 41%. And again, you see this question of journalists seeming friendly and warm much higher among black adults in the US compared with white adults not quite as big of a gap here. And then sharing my views also becomes important as well. And again, if we look at sort of how people feel about news organizations, the majority of Americans overall, same news organizations don't understand them, but then we followed up with that and said, what don't they understand about you? And here's where you see these differences with the largest segments of whites talking, white adults talking about political views is what they don't understand about me. Whereas among black adults, the largest segment says personal characteristics. And Hispanic adults have a little bit more of an even sort of spacing across a number of different factors. And then finally, I'll just end with a slide that looks at the industry itself and the employment. And you can see here that this is comparing newsroom employees in these numbers to the US workers overall. So newsroom employees compared with employees overall. And you do see that newsroom employees are less likely to be non-Hispanic white. I mean, sorry, are more likely to be non-Hispanic white here, 76% less likely to be non-Hispanic black or Hispanic. And these are data that are coming from a five-year census block that went up through 2017. So with that, I will turn it back to you, Karen. And I think we'll have some conversation. Thank you. Okay, and you're muted. Sorry. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. And thank you, Priscilla. That's really gonna inform our conversation. A lot of important themes to pull out of that. I do wanna introduce our four panelists. We have four great journalists with us. Okay, we'll start by introducing Dorothy Tucker. She is the president of the National Association of Black Journalists and also a longtime television investigative reporter at the local CBS station in Chicago. Then we have Tofer Sanders. He is a race and justice reporter at ProPublica. He is also one of the founders of the Ida B. Wells Society for investigative reporters. We have Karen Hawkins. She is the co-editor-in-chief of a publication called Chicago Reader. And Joann Strader. He is the main news anchor at the Miami NBC station. And he also hosts a program called Black Voices. Thank you, all of you for joining us today. I really appreciate the time. Thank you. So there are definitely journalists watching, but there are also, this is an audience of lots of different kinds of folks. So I just wanna start, let's just get some terminology straight. Okay, show of hands if you describe yourself as a journalist. Show of hands. Show of hands if you describe yourself as a member of the media. Okay, all right. Joann, would you, you're the one who's raising your hand. So let's talk about that. What is, what's the difference between those two terms for you, Joann? Well, me personally, I don't see a big huge difference, but I will say being a journalist is what's most important to me than anything. As I always try to teach and educate young journalists coming into this business, it's important to be a journalist first more so than anything else when it comes to this business. So the media, of course, to me falls under everything else. It's just, to me personally, it could be something that, it's almost like an umbrella that you could be thrown into. But most importantly, when it comes to fact finding, when it comes to explaining, when it comes to sources, getting your information correct, to me it's about being the best journalist that I can be. Thanks. Okay, Karen, I saw a little smile from you, so I just want to know what those two terms mean to you. Sure, and I didn't raise my hand because I feel like when people, when I hear the term media, I think mainstream media, obviously, and I work in alternative media and have worked in alternative media for a long time. I've also worked in mainstream media and I feel like I have made a very conscious choice in my career to work in media that disrupts the mainstream media ideas and the notions that mainstream media practices. So that's why I didn't raise my hand, but I absolutely identify as a journalist as something I've been trained to do and then I take really seriously. Thank you. Karen, I want to talk a little bit about Chicago Reader. Chicago Reader is co-owned by an African-American. You are a co-editor and the board of the organization is 50% African-American as well. What does that composition, what is the goal of that composition to serve community? How does that affect how you serve community at Chicago Reader? Sure, I do think it was a very intentional move by the reader to better represent Chicago. The Chicago Reader was founded in 1971. We got new owners two years ago and I feel like as we were going into this next stage into middle age, we were really looking to better represent what the entire city of Chicago looks like we have always covered the city of Chicago but not always well and everybody can guess what communities those are that we have not covered well. So this bringing in of different ownership, this bringing in of different leadership was really an effort to do better by everyone in Chicago. Thank you. A lot of themes, a lot of data coming out of the presentation very much. There, Americans are seeing more bias in the news and the news has accelerated. It is infinite and it is immediate. It is coming at us on our phones. It is coming at us in social media. They're 24-hour news cycles but the black community is saying that diversity is important to it and when they talk about, and when the black community talks about diversity they're talking about race and ethnicity whereas we specifically had numbers about white and Republican audiences talking about diversity of political ideology. Dorothy, I'd like to ask you as the president of the National Association of Black Journalists. There's been a lot of agony and anger and criticism about what news organizations have really done to serve black audiences and it's come not just from the outside but from the inside. How is the National Association of Black Journalists, NABJ, responding to that? We are seeing a reckoning in the newsroom just as we are in every other industry and in this country. So on a national level we are definitely joining everybody on a local level. What's going on in the newsrooms in some cases is almost a little bit of an uprising and quite frankly it's about time because for so long black journalists have been waiting for their turn they have suffered through unequal pay, a lack of mentorships. They haven't had opportunities for those prime assignments. You don't see them covering or as many as we would like to see covering politics. They aren't in the investigative units. So there are a lot of issues there which is why I think you're seeing this kind of uprising again within the newsroom. So we are talking to many CEOs and publishers and top leaders and owners of newspapers or media companies because now it's not just print, it's digital, it's their television, it's everything. I probably have two or three meetings a week sometime early in the mornings before I start my day yet another CEO discussing with them what they are doing in their newsrooms. Not just talking about diversity but also talking about the culture of the newsroom. Pushing for more black managers and finding things that quite honestly are very disheartening. When I speak to some of the managers who are in major markets and they have either just one black manager or they have or they have no black managers and they wonder why there was something stupid that ended up on television or ended up on the newspaper or on the website. There was, I'm like, so where was the black president at the table? Well, there was not. So it's, we're having lots of conversations, meaningful conversations, but the thing that probably frustrates me and I will shut up in a minute, but the thing that frustrates me more than anything is that many of these managers, they come out with these statements that say, we support black lives, we support black lives matter. They come out and they support diversity, they support inclusion, but yet and still when we ask them to publicize their numbers on diversity, their silence, they don't want to do that. And it's very difficult for us to measure success if we don't have the data. And that's what we're asking for now. We need these managers to really, put their money where their mouths is and not just talk about how important this is, but to allow us to help them. But to do that, we need to measure success. We need the numbers. We need them to publish the diversity numbers because our concern is that, maybe they don't look that good. Well, thank you Dorothy. They're not good enough. We certainly have numbers from the Radio, Television, Digital News Association and we certainly have numbers from the NLA. And they don't align with what the populations are. It's not about specific organizations, but it does not align with what the populations are. Topher, something that Dorothy just brought up and she's an investigative reporter herself. So you founded the I'd About Be Well Society. What is that? And why is it necessary? Yeah, thank you for the question and thanks for everybody being there. This is a really important conversation. I'd Be Well Society for Investigative Reporting is a nonprofit that's looking to do kind of exactly what Dorothy's challenging everybody pay attention to is increasing numbers of black and brown people who have opportunity to do investigative work, both as reporters and as editors. So Topher, like why is that even a thing? Aren't there just black reporters working? Like what's the big deal about becoming an investigative reporter? Sure, so investigative reporting is, at many organizations is the work that they pour a ton of resources in and that they allow their reporters many weeks and months to develop and to pour over and make sure it's pristine and that it's also targeting important issues in the community. And so when those are kind of your gold standard reporting teams within an organization and they lack diversity, what types of projects will they pursue? What type of things will they find important to pour those resources in? And it's a no-brainer. When you have diverse thoughts and perspectives on those teams, it shows up in the work and it starts to show up in the community because oftentimes the work generator from our investigative teams and investigative reporting has real impact in our community. And so when you diversify those spaces, you can really start to see those impacts happening right there where you live. So Topher, you did a series of reports. It was called Walking While Black. That was a large project. Talk to us a little bit about how long it takes to kind of lift that so it does get published. I mean, it doesn't happen in a day. Right, yeah, Walking While Black, we reported on over a period of about seven months, about five or so of those months before the first story published. And the way a story like that begins, for public is kind of a special place where its entire mission is devoted around deep dive investigative work. But even there, you still have to push and find ways to get certain things out there. So Walking While Black was never really intended to be the project that it turned out to be. The editor originally was, when I brought the concept to the editor, the editor said, hey, let's take a few weeks on this and let's turn in something quick. There's this other big thing I want you to do and a couple of weeks turn into five months. And to that editor's credit, that's how the conversation began. But as I began to present more and more material about what we were finding, as me and my co-writer Ben Konach were doing our reporting, the editor began to see the vision that me and Ben saw in the very beginning and Walking While Black eventually became what it began. Thank you. Joanne, I want to turn to you now. You are the main anchor, but you also host a program called Black Voices. And I'd like you to talk to us a little bit about how a program like that comes about and what it kind of takes to make that happen and keep going. Well, first and foremost, again, I want to thank the Knight Foundation. I want to thank you, Karen, as well as your colleagues for this important conversation. I believe that education is the key to success no matter where you're from, no matter what level, how old you are, this is important, something all of us can take from this conversation. Voices basically has been around for two and a half years now with NBC. I give them credit for allowing me to use this platform in order to educate and better our community. We found out that, and I had been telling them for years that I've been at the station, that we need more representation on the air when it comes to us in our community. It's the main reason I got in this business in the first place, because I got tired of not seeing enough faces and people that did not look like me. And I got tired of seeing so many people that were not as educated say that they were putting on a screen, making us look a certain way. And so I knew that there were other voices out there. And so now I have that platform. So we've done stories breathing while Black. This was last year before George Floyd when we had voices from the community talking about some of the issues going on in the Black community where it came to driving while Black, walking while Black, swimming while Black. And sure enough, George Floyd happens and then we have another breathing while Black town hall. We've talked about prison reform, Black entrepreneurship, Black Afro-Latino conversations, Black hair, you know, Black youth attempting suicide. So every week that we have this show, we wanna make sure it's a time and a way for people that we do not hear from every day, which is why it's called Voices. They get a chance to talk about some of these issues that are impacting the Black community. And there are so many issues. It's not just one thing, so many issues. And it gives our viewers a chance to see people and hear from people that look just like them, which is extremely important. Thank you. Karen, I wanna go back to you. I wanna hear from you a little bit more about, we had talked early about ethnic and Black publications and news outlet partnering with commercial, larger commercial properties. How would that look? And what might larger commercial properties learn from an organization like Chicago Reader? All right, thank you so much for that question because it's a project that I love talking about, that I love that we are working on. So the Chicago Reader has created the Chicago Independent Media Alliance and we are nearly 70 outlets from the community and ethnic media all coming together, working on fundraising projects, working on editorial projects. And one of the things that I find interesting about being in SEMA, we call it SEMA at this point in time is that I'm also watching larger legacy mainstream organizations having all these conversations about pipeline and how do we diversify and how do we reach hard to reach communities in the neighborhoods. And the community and ethnic press is made up of people of color and are reaching all these communities you all are trying to reach and have been doing it in some cases for a century. And I think there is a ton of course that the community and ethnic media can learn from mainstream press and we would love to have access to your resources but there is a ton that you can learn from us. And I think at least when I was coming up in journalism there was this notion that you worked in community and ethnic media as a jumping off point so that you could get the bigger job at the bigger platform and that people kind of turn their nose up at those jobs. And now I hope we're in a place both because of the economy and because of where we are as a culture that people see this as a place where you spend your career. Not everybody wants a big mainstream media job. Not everybody wants to work in newsroom where no one looks like them. And so I am hoping that we have more of these conversations now that SEMA is coming together that we have more of these conversations with our colleagues in larger media outlets. Thank you. Dorothy, you have been in Chicago which is your hometown for a number of years. I know you're wearing your NABJ hat but I wanna talk to you about how I wanna hear from you on how you have engaged with the community over that time and how it's changed. What are you doing today with community? How has your role changed? Well, I don't know that my engagement has changed drastically. I mean, because I am now fully an investigative reporter I am not out on the street covering stories on a daily basis like I used to. So it has changed in that regard. But I make a point and I always have. I mean, not just because I'm from Chicago but I make a point of attending various events as a Chicagoan. I happen to be a general when I go but if there is a fair going on, if there is a church event, I mean, I go and I do that. And I know that really allows people who see me to say, oh, wait a minute, I have this story. Let me tell you about this. Let me tell you about the other thing. So that, I engage in person, obviously I engage like so many of us do on social media. But the one thing that I will say is that what I have found in the stats that you guys lay out, very interesting. Local reporters, I think we have, we are not seeing, we are more trusted than I think those on the national level. So people turn to us and they do expect us to represent them. They do expect us to be truthful. So we get a lot riding on our shoulders in that sense. So there's an obligation, you were gonna do it anyway but there's a little bit more weight when you do a story especially when you do a story that is that slice of life about the black community or that really focuses on something, some systemic racism that's happening in the black community. I'm not sure that answered your question because I wasn't quite sure where to go but the follow up. So let me ask you also, this report specifically what Amy Mitchell from Pew spoke about the trust and also frankly that more black adults are choosing television as one of their sources. So at the local level, if there's this viewpoint that there is more bias in the news and local is more trusted, what is local doing well? What do you see local doing well? You know, I think local is covering the neighborhoods. I think local is really out in the community when we talk about the COVID stories or we talk about the protest stories, the local reporters are because we're connected, we're the ones that are telling the story of that part of the community that is overlooked because we know them because they called us so that when you talk about even the COVID related stories, we can really get in there and reveal different things and about the history of a neighborhood, for example. So when we talk about something like, you talk about the number of the disproportionate number of African-Americans who are dying, we can then look at that story and break it all the way down to the neighborhoods. We can talk about the stores, the grocery desert that exists and where those stores are and so I think what we do well is just really dive in a little deeper on the neighborhoods because we know the neighborhoods. Yeah, Karen Hawkins, I see you nodding. Did you wanna chime in on that? Yeah, I'll just add and I just wanna say what an honor it is to be on a panel with Dorothy. Thank you, but I'm trying not to fangirl, but I also grew up in Chicago. So what are local media outlets doing, right? I also, I feel like we are engaging with audiences in a completely different way. And like Dorothy said, we're in neighborhoods, we're reporting on neighborhoods and if you're a black journalist and your outlet does something that people don't like, they're gonna let you know. Like I feel like another thing that news organizations are spending all this money on is gathering data from readers and from viewers. We wanna know what you think we wanna engage with you. We wanna have conversations and I feel like I have conversations with people all the time. So it's not that people have a dearth of opinions. I feel like another thing that we're doing right is that we are closer to our readers than that. It is already more of a conversation than other media outlets might have. But let me, I saw a question here that I just have to respond to. Somebody said, they're not with the media and what can they do to help? They're just somebody who, a viewer. Is that on the chat? Is that on the chat? That was on the chat, yeah. Okay, yeah, that's Leona Gwynn, yeah. What can ordinary members of the community, those of us who are not CEOs and managers, do you just support the work of our black brothers and sisters? What power does the everyday community have to affect these issues? And to Karen's point about that engagement, you can complain and you can compliment, you know? And that really makes a huge difference. If you see something on television, if you see something, you know, un-lined and you don't like it, if it disturbs you, don't, in addition to social media, you know, still do the old fashioned way, write the letter, send an email, make a phone call and then ask all your friends who probably are chatting about it at the barbershop, you know, if you don't like it, say something and let management know that that was offensive. You know, at the same time, if that story really finally strikes a chord, if you haven't seen that story anywhere else and you really appreciate what that reporter did, what that reporter wrote, then compliment them so that management will sit back and go, oh, so that one resonated. Let me put another story like that, you know? Oh, that was offensive. Let me make sure we don't do that again. So that, I mean, the power of the public is huge and we still need the public to support us. Thank you, that's incredible. I, and Dorothy, also thank you for reminding me to get to the questions from the audience. There is a question here. We have spent a lot of time looking at the data around the idea of bias and there, to be honest, there has been a robust discussion amongst journalists about what does objectivity mean? And there's a question here. How do you handle pressure to fit in with established news values? What tactics do you use when you are told an idea is not newsworthy? I'd like to put that one to Tofer. Tofer, would you talk about that a little bit? It's from Jocelyn Ford. Yeah, I wanna make sure the topic that question was about, can you repeat the topic of the question? Sure, how do you handle pressure to fit in with established news values? I don't know that I have that pressure. I don't know that I feel that pressure. I don't think I've felt that pressure at any place I've been. I feel like when I came into journalism, I had pretty strong feelings about what was newsworthy, what was ethical. And I don't see that being different at any of the organizations that I've worked at. So I haven't had a pressure to necessarily fit in. I don't know if maybe that is about like story selection and the stories that you wanna cover. There's some, there's elements there that we could speak about. And I don't know if I've had pressure more than just uphill fights and battles to kind of cover the kind of stories I want. So I don't know if that's answering that. You gotta go deeper there. If you gotta go deeper on that, that was, yeah. Well, I mean, no, it's everything from, when Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida and trying to advocate for coverage from the news organization I was at when I was in Florida, that that was an important story and that we needed to cover that story and we needed to be present in that story. And all you can do when you're a reporter, particularly if you're a junior reporter, which I was at the time, is all you can do is make the arguments and fight for it. And in that instance, I happened to be pulling a cop shift. I don't know if anybody knows what that is anymore. But when you work at a newspaper, you pull the short straw or you work at a television station, you may have to man the scanner for a weekend or whatever. And I had to man the scanner one weekend to cover cops and happened to be like maybe the second big rally that they were having in the community where Trayvon was killed. And what it looks like for me is saying, that's what I'm gonna use my cop shift for. I'm gonna drive two hours down the street and I'm gonna cover this rally because this is an important story and this is what I wanna do. And I'll come back if there's something major happens, but if not, I'm not gonna cover the bar mitzvah that weekend. This weekend I'm gonna go cover Trayvon Martin's rally. And so I think it's subtle moves like that that you can make in the newsroom trying to see where you can fit in and how you can push for those stories to get out there and be important. We want you to keep your jobs. We want you to stay employed. So don't be too rebellious, but be as rebellious as you feel you can be to get that coverage out there. Thank you. Joanne, you are in Miami. So I'd love for you to reflect on what coverage around Trayvon Martin looked like as opposed to the coverage of today and how the movement has changed and the kinds of questions that the newsrooms are asking as they cover this. Well, it's changed a lot. Now we have their ear more so than we have before since George Floyd, but we should have had their ears years ago when it comes to editors and managers in the newsroom because again, as Dorothy said and as your research has shown, it does not reflect us, our newsrooms. And so now we're trying to change that. So let me do one better. And Sabrina Fulton is actually a friend of mine and a good friend of mine actually, Trayvon's Martin's mother, but I'm gonna do one better and actually devastate. I'm gonna talk about the church shooting in South Carolina where nine members were killed by a white supremacist. So that's in South Carolina, that is not in Miami. So when that happened and I woke up that morning and I found out about what happened, I felt compelled to go to my manager who's an Hispanic woman and tell her I'm in, we're in Miami, but you have to send me to South Carolina to cover the story. And she's, I'm like, listen, I have to go. This represents all of us. This does not just represent South Carolina. And so she said, hold on just a minute, I'll get back to you, talk to the GM. She said, pack your bags, you're on a flight, you're going to South Carolina. Now, let me tell you this, our rating leading into that newscast was the worst it could be. It was like a .001. That newscast, because we pushed that we were going to South Carolina and let our viewers in out Miami know it's out Florida jumped almost triple that night because of our coverage. I feel the anger from South Carolina talking about this mass shooting by white supremacist and that what we were starting to see and we've been seeing, but just on this type of scale in our country, but you have to push, as Topher said, you have to do it in a way though, where we don't come across as the angry black man or the angry black woman. There's a way to do it without coming across a certain way. Now, if they would have said, no, I may have turned into that angry black man, but they didn't, but you have to be willing to take a risk. Okay, I heard angry black man and I see Dorothy, she's down to jump in. Are black journalists biased? Are black journalists biased? Let's, I need you to, I need somebody to tell me, are they biased because there's that assumption, Dorothy? No, black journalists are biased. No, I mean, we come to the table with who we are with all of our experiences, but that's an unfair question and it really upsets me when anybody even raises that question because you don't ask white journalists, are they biased? Black journalists are the only ones that are ever asked, are you biased? Can you be fair? No, professional, we do our jobs. Thank you. We can cover any story and we can look at every angle there is in that story. And even if we may not agree with that person, but personally if something we may object to something they do or don't do, it doesn't make a difference. We're going to cover that story, but we have to bring our experiences to the story and that's what makes us have the advantage in a newsroom because we are black, because we understand what that person in the neighborhood may be going through because we speak the language, because we share a culture that we can bring all of that to that story that perhaps someone who is not black cannot bring to that story. But we're not buyers, we're doing what everybody else does. We're being who we are and we're being professional. Can I say something real fast, Karen? Of course. So someone asked and talked about the whole angry black man, angry black woman comment. Let me tell you this. There is a stereotype unfortunately that we have as black people, not only as black journalists, because we continue to get stereotype anytime we try to speak up. So this is not just being a journalist, this is just being a professional in general. Whenever we are a confident black male or black woman, we are stereotype of being, if we disagree with someone of another race, of being an angry black man or being an angry black woman. And so that's what I was talking about. I wasn't talking about, that's who we are. But if they want to call me that, they could call me that because I'm gonna still come with it with confidence. It's not confidence, it's confidence as a black man. I wanna piggyback on that and just say the word rebellious resonates with me. I founded a magazine called rebellious and I used that word because my boss told me I was being rebellious when I was in the mainstream newsroom. And the reason was that I had asked for too many weekends off in a row. That's what I got called rebellious for. And I feel like it also speaks to, like we've been talking a lot about culture, about coverage. But I think we also, of course, the other part of that equation is newsroom culture, is how black journalists get treated in newsrooms in general and the culture of newsrooms that supports the status quo idea that you have to be straight and white and middle class in order to be objective, that that is the default position for viewing the world. And if you are not those things and you are biased. So I mean, it's both about culture and about, it's both about coverage and about newsroom culture and the culture of journalism as a whole. Thank you. I'll jump in. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, yeah. And also just the positioning of bias versus of each other is false in and of itself because the two are not polar opposites to each other. And I just said, I'm not objective. I have a viewpoint. I have a perspective. It just doesn't make its way to my news coverage. And it also, but it does guide my interests. Does guide the way I see the world. For instance, walking while black would not come to be had it not been for my lack of objectivity. So I'll give you the origin story. My colleague who was white, great reporter, Ben Connard, he wrote a daily story about a viral video where a young black man had this encounter with the police. So it was a daily story. It wasn't going to be anything more than a daily story. He astutely in that daily story identified that the cop tried to give Devonte a ticket for walking around, a ticket for not having his ID, which is illegal and you can't do because guess what they've been doing that for say about a hundred so years, right? So I saw that video. My homeboy in Jacksonville wrote a daily story. I watched the video. And as a black man was offended by what I saw, I was offended that the officer tried to give my man basically say, hey, can I see your walking papers? Is what he tried to say to him on the street. And he was flanked by two other officers who did not bat an eye. So watching that, I was like, oh, that's real casual. They've done that before. And so then that's where I started to put on my skills hat and say, you know, I know how to obtain the data to show that they've done that before. And that's where the journalistic pursuant begins. But it began in the beginning from my lack of objectivity and watching the video and seeing what was happening to the young man and recognizing that it was wrong, it was unjust. And as a journalist, I can ask educated questions that can lead to a story that could have profound impact on that issue. Yeah, I totally agree with Topher. I totally agree with Topher because I'm sorry, but I grew up as a black man. And so raised by a single black woman. And what I went through growing up, the trials and tribulations I went through growing up helped to mold me to the man I am today to help me tell some of these amazing stories. And so what happened with George Floyd? I'm sorry, I felt the pain. I cried, it hurt me. So when I'm on television that evening and they're burning down and we are protesting peacefully, some of us, some of us took to the streets and started fires and started rioting, I had to speak out against that. Now I received some backlash, very few, but also received a lot of support from our community for speaking out because at the same time, I didn't want it to take away from the message. So I believe that there is a way based upon what we came from, you can add perspective as a journalist. It's okay to add perspective, but you have to be careful on when you add that perspective. And you can be objective at the same time. And it adds humanity to who you are as a journalist. Like I said, yes, I'm a journalist, but at the same time, I'm also a black man. Joanne, I think we need to redefine this a little bit. Don't you, Karen? I mean, because the word bias, objectivity, I think this unfortunately probably means a longer conversation, because I think the same thing, you know? Yeah, you are doing too many. And I'm using the language of bias very much from the research. Objectivity is something that is really being interrogated and litigated all over social media. What does that mean today in a world where news is infinite and immediate, constant? That's really a conversation going on at NABJ, National Association of Black Journalist Conferences at journalism conferences across the industry. So it's a really important issue that I really wanted to get at. We just, we have a few more minutes. The chat is fire. There are just a ton of comments. I can't even get to all of them. But I do wanna let you know, I am gonna ask you for final thoughts, like a quick final thoughts. So start thinking of that mic drop genius thing of all the things you could say. But I do wanna get at a little bit. Look, the other thing that this research really shows is that white Americans and Republicans, there is a partisan divide around diversity. And so I just wanna get at that a little bit. How does that strike you for your work? This idea of bias, that those voices are left out. Does anybody wanna take your crack at that, Tofer? Do you think you can talk about that? I just wanna make sure I understand the question. Could you repeat it, please? So some of the research shows that there is another, there is another group Republicans and white audiences that are losing trust in journalism that think it's bias. So what does that mean for journalism? What does that mean for the work? I'm not sure. For me personally, I don't know that it means much because with each story that I do, I apply intense scrutiny to the story because again, given my position now, that I'm given some latitude to kind of choose the projects I work on, I often work on things I think has an import to the community and I want it to resonate. And so for me, it must withstand the most intense of scrutiny in order for it to resonate. And so I don't know that, you know, the trust that's being lost of some white readers, white viewers, and I don't know if it's gonna impact or change the way I pursue my journalism because I've always pursued it in Atlanta that would I hope end up with a result that's above reproach, so. Would you talk about the scrutiny that goes into producing the journalism that you produce? What does it entail? Just for the nonjournalist audience, let's see. Sure, so I mean, we just published, I don't know, maybe it was a 9,000-word story about NYPD's inability to consider civilian complaints. And in that story, 9,000 words, we fact-checked every single sentence. And so it means two and a half days of going through a sentence and arguing over the verb in that sentence and whether it's fair to the complainant and fair to the officer. And that's what the fact-checking process looks like for me. And I think that's the kind of level of intense intentionality is kind of built into the reporting as well. Thank you, it is not a casual, it is not a casual effort at all is what you're saying. Okay, final thoughts. I'm gonna start with Joanne. Do you have a quick final thought? We just have a couple of minutes. Okay, yeah, I'll just make it real fast. First of all, I just wanna thank all of our panelists. I wanna thank all those that tuned in for this conversation. Extremely important, I wanna thank the panelists who joined us. Dorothy, it's always an honor to work with you. Tofer, Karen Hawkins, I love just hearing from Tofer and Karen, just different minds. And Karen, thank you once again. I just wanna encourage everyone to continue to be a voice in your newsrooms. If you are not in a newsroom, be a voice out there for the community. You have the most powerful thing, use it. If you don't feel like, hey, I can't speak about it, well, you can write about it. If you can't do that, then contact someone who can. Who can be that voice for you. Remember, you have that power, use it. Use your mind. We're all surrounded by different things that are happening in our communities. It's important that we put pen and paper. And lastly, as I always say, education is the key to success. If you believe you will succeed. Thank you, Karen Hawkins. Joanne, that was fabulous, Karen Hawkins. Yes, thank you again. Quick final thoughts from you. Absolutely, thank you again. This was an amazing conversation. And I just would leave with people to support community and ethnic media. Support your local journalists. There are more than 100 independent media outlets in Chicago alone. I'm sure there are dozens at wherever you live that you know nothing about. It's important to seek those out, to support them. Vote with your wallet. I'm sure they're running membership drives like right now we all are. So if you believe in local journalism and you believe that you want it to survive, please support it however you can. Thank you, Karen. Toe for Sanders, final thoughts. Yeah, Karen stole my outgoing message, but I love it, so I'm gonna just echo it. Like, please support local journalists. It's what Dorothy said earlier. Complain and compliment, I love that, right? If you like something, say it. If something rubbed the wrong way, say that as well. But you gotta subscribe to your local newspaper. You gotta watch your local newscast. You gotta do that, because local journalism, as much as at the Republic, I do national stuff now, but it goes nowhere without local reporting. All of the stories I'm most interested in are about local issues. So please support your local reporters is vitally important to our democracy. Thank you. And finally, Dorothy Tucker, president of the National Association of Black Journalists. Thank you. It was really a pleasure being here with all of you. I learned a lot. It was great engaging with all of you and hearing from all of you. Let me just say that I know that many journalists are really going through a very challenging time. I know it is difficult sometime to find your voice, which is why the National Association of Black Journalists exist. We are here for you. So if there is something going on in your newsroom, please do not hesitate to call. I'm at that point where I have no problems with making another phone call, helping you out, giving some advice. We have an entire board just really kind of standing by waiting to help you. That's what we are here for. So we got your back. Thank you. Thank you to this amazing panel, to this really truly engaged audience. Complain, compliment, pay for it. And yes, this is recorded. Bye-bye. Thank you.