New York (AFP)
The protests that have agitated the United States since the death of George Floyd also shake the editors of many American media, forced to question their coverage of the racial question and, sometimes, their lack of diversity.
A few days ago, a platform that suggested mobilizing the army to manage the protests unleashed a storm in the ranks of the New York Times, to the point of pushing the head of the Opinion column to resign.
At the Philidelphia Inquirer, a title ("Buildings Matter, too" - comparing buildings damaged during protests to African Americans killed by police) was enough for part of the drafting, there too, rises.
"The struggle that we see in the streets is invited in the American newsrooms, because journalists are outraged by the cover or because they are prevented from covering these subjects because of their ethnic origins", summarizes Martin Reynolds, co-director of the Maynard Institute, an institute that promotes diversity in the media.
A black reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette said she was left out of the protests after a provocative tweet.
Dozens of colleagues stood up for him, but editor Keith Burris justified his decision in the name of respecting objectivity.
"There is a huge reluctance to accept that non-white journalists are not biased," said Akela Lacy, a Métis journalist for the online news site The Intercept. "It is painful to see that the benefit of the doubt is systematically given to those who have defined the rules", that is to say the whites.
"No one is objective", regardless of their skin color, says Martin Reynolds, for whom objectivity is an "illusion". "But everyone can be honest, especially if you are aware of your biases."
"A journalist can cover everything (...) if he is trained," he said, calling for more reflection and internal pedagogy in the media on the treatment of racial issues in the United States.
- "Put everything on the table" -
Internal tensions in many media and the general atmosphere in the United States since the protests began have made dialogue difficult, acknowledges Akela Lacy, who says she is the only color journalist in her editorial staff.
"There is a real fear of saying something stupid, or of giving in to the crowd that demands awareness," she said, but "you have to put everything on the table. There is no silly question."
The debate refers to the lack of diversity in newsrooms, at 77% white according to a study by the Pew Research Center published at the end of 2018, while the proportion is 65% in the entire working population.
Former editor-in-chief of the American national daily, USA Today, Ken Paulson sees it as a regression, after progress during the 80s and 90s.
Owner of USA Today, the Gannett group then notably linked the remuneration of its executives to the diversity of their teams but also to the representation of minorities in the pages of the newspaper, he recalls.
But the crisis the press has been going through for over a decade and the massive job cuts have cut corners, he said.
Now director of the center for freedom of expression at Middle Tennessee State University, Ken Paulson is not so worried about the coverage of the "dominant", like the coronavirus or the demonstrations, which he considers "very good" ".
"The challenge is to tell the little stories, which describe what's really going on" in American society, he says. "Journalists and diversity are therefore essential".
To the problems of representation and diversity is added that of the omnipotence of the image and the news channels, often accused of damaging the complexity of racial questions.
The images of burnt buildings and thugs, which briefly punctuated the demonstrations, notably turned in a loop and "diverted part of the debate for a while", observes Martin Reynolds.
"Everything must be visual," regrets Ken Paulson. "Nobody is going to send a team to film a hearing on civil rights. (Television) does not lend itself to careful thought, and yet that is what the United States needs today."
© 2020 AFP