On #BlackLivesMatter and Journalism

Sarah J. Jackson

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11425

Authors

Sarah J. Jackson Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Sarah J. Jackson studies how media, journalism, and technology are used by and represent marginalized publics, with a focus on how communication arising from Black, feminist, and activist communities contribute to US progress. Her first book, Black Celebrity, Racial Politics, and the Press (Routledge, 2014), examines the relationship between Black celebrity activism, journalism, and American politics. Her co-authored second book, Hashtag Activism: Networks of Race and Gender Justice (MIT Press, 2020), focuses on the use of Twitter in contemporary social movements. As a 2020 Andrew Carnegie Fellow, she is working on a third book on the political power and industry innovation of African American media-makers. She is an associate editor of Communication Theory and serves on the advisory boards of the Center for Critical Race and Digital Studies and the Social Science Research Council’s MediaWell initiative.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11425

Keywords:

#Blacklivesmatter, Political Protest, Civil Rights Movement, Newsrooms, Values

Abstract

In this refined version of a 2020 talk given to journalism students at Duke University, Professor Sarah Jackson reflects on the newsroom controversies and tensions that have accompanied the rise of #BlackLivesMatter. She argues that normative news values have always been at least partially subservient to the larger values of society, which means that, in the United States at the very least they are unavoidably and structurally racist even as they simultaneously represent real efforts on behalf of an occupational group to enact values that help democracy function properly. Jackson’s goal in this powerful piece is for journalists to be more self-reflective about the manner by which their professional efforts can harm particular people and groups even while it purports to benefit society at large.

On #BlackLivesMatter and Journalism

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