#nafari vanaski

[toshootforthestars]

via Nafari Vanaski, posted 13 July 2020:

Then I saw my column after he “edited” it. It’s hard to put into words what it was like seeing at least a couple of weeks worth of research, interview time, and writing reduced to 16 inches of open-ended toothless musing about police discretion.

The few quotes that remained from the taxi driver — a man who hesitated for days before talking to me — were trimmed down and didn’t reflect the fear and anger at the police that he had mentioned to me. The quotes from Davenport? Gone.

My closing about the increasing frequency of situations of police going too far and about the long-lasting impact the incident had on all involved? Somewhere under a “delete” key in Pittsburgh. The paper didn’t even print the photos.

The worst part is that the column that ran is not something I would have written. It wasn’t me or my voice — and my readers noticed. Several of them emailed me after the column ran, asking especially about the ending and why it was so soft.

Something broke in me when George Floyd was killed. Given the protests worldwide, that is true for a lot of people. But maybe it hit Black journalists in a certain way. A few of us have been waylaid for trying to raise hard questions long before Floyd died at the hands of police. But when you think about it, the newsroom is the perfect place to shelter racism and white supremacy.

Racism is well-baked into all the institutions in our country, and journalists are told to remain objective. So any attempt to point out flaws in a racist system, especially by a Black reporter, is usually met with some sort of lecture, often from a White editor, about how important it is for news writers to remain neutral. Or met with the proverbial head being chopped off a story about the long-term consequences of police misconduct.

When I left journalism, I felt guilty, wondering if anyone will tell the stories some of us had been discouraged from. There’s a lot of great dialogue going on in newsrooms about how to make that happen, but I’m skeptical.

Right now in Pittsburgh, a Black reporter, Alexis Johnson, got taken off the protest beat after Floyd’s killing because of a joke she made on Twitter. And it was a great joke. And what she said was true. Yet her editors said she showed bias. See what I mean about objectivity as a cloak?

[siddysthings]

I’m a Former Black Reporter Who Left Journalism. Here’s Why. | by Nafari Vanaski | Jul, 2020 | ZORA