Moving past perceptions to establish reality

(Originally published November 23, 2011)

by C. Denise Johnson

For New Pittsburgh Courier

      Distortion through media images is not a new phenomenon nor is nor is it going to disappear. It has been a part of our collective culture as long as baseball and apple and, until recently, unchallenged. Locally there has been concerted resistance that can easily be traced to the birth of the Pittsburgh -Courier in 1910 and the tenant of Black-owned newspapers. It seems lately, however, that change is beginning to occur. The effectiveness and permanence of that change is to yet to be determined.

More than a century later in the report of a Heinz Endowment-funded media audit released Nov. 1, analysis suggests that Pittsburgh’s mainstream media contribute to a consistent pattern of what a background paper from the Dellums Commission calls “systematic omissions.”

     “Negative stereotyping is a core component of media images of young men of color,” the commission said, and “the media contribute to the denial component of racial sentiments mostly by what the usually omit.”

     Combine what’s missing with what’s present in local media coverage and its association of Black men with crime and you get confirming examples of the studies on negative frames of reference.

      “In my opinion, the young Black males that appear before me in court are greatly impacted by the negative images that they see on television on a daily basis. I am fully aware that these youth are at a highly impressionable stage in their development and if they are fed a diet rich in negative images of themselves, they will grow to emulate those negative behaviors,” said Juvenile Court Judge Dwayne Woodruff, one of the few Black judges on the bench in Allegheny County.

      A key strategy to combat those perceptions is to increase public recognition of the deficit framing used to discuss the successes and challenges facing Black men and boys, resulting in community action to eliminate that framing and to increase positive images of African American males in the public sphere.

      “I believe there is a great appetite for the positive, “reality” stories of African Americans and I do not buy into the theory that only bad news sells,” said Woodruff. “I also believe that the media can have a far reaching impact on not only Black males but the community as a whole if it chose to expose the reality of Black life, which is definitely not as negative as the media portrays.”

      The game plan is changing -- from the defense to the offense.

      In 2007, the Heinz Endowment established an African American Men and Boys Task Force to identify and increase the educational, economic, social and leadership opportunities for African American males in the Pittsburgh region. This mission uses an asset-based approach in working with the African American community to create improved life outcomes for this population.

      As the Heinz Endowment began its work others were also of the same mind. Some of those people included members of the Black Political Empowerment Project, which wanted to find way to partner with media in finding solutions and for the media partner with community for implementation of strategies for decreasing violence in the community.

     In April, the Black Political Empowerment Project (B-PEP) convened a media summit (hosted by local NBC-affiliate WPXI-TV to explore ways the Black community may engage news executives to provide a balance in the reporting some believe contribute to escalating violence and a conspiracy of silence towards police cooperation in reducing the  frequency of Black on Black crime. That dialogue is ongoing.

        For the Endowments, the studies were the initial step on a long journey toward the goal of transforming this bleak landscape. The audits have provided powerful illumination of a way forward that has included creating forums for conversations with media executives; supporting efforts that enable African American men and youth to control their own narratives through film, radio and various online media; and developing opportunities for more of their voices to be heard.

      “We are working to create new programs or fund existing organizations that are about providing African American boys and young men with the capability of telling their own stories,” said Endowments President Robert (Bobby) Vagt.
     “There are several promising projects already underway, but one foundation recognizing this as an important community issue won’t be enough to bring about the change we want to see. There must be more conversations in communities that are most directly affected by the mis-perceptions and limiting portrayals that are documented in the audits,” said Vagt. “In fact, we would welcome ideas from these communities as to how to make more use of the media audit report.”

      One of the projects includes the New Media Academy, a collaboration of One Hood and the August Wilson Center for African American Culture which provides a forum where African American teenage boys are trained to critically analyze media messages and produce their own stories for a variety of media.

     Just on Monday, a group of Black photographers launched a partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette an online photography blog aimed at providing more positive, fuller images of African American life in Pittsburgh. ”Feel Like Going On” (http://communityvoices.sites.post-gazette.com/index.php/opinion/feel-like-going-on) is a collective of Black photographers showcasing the positive and uplifting side of Black life and times in  the Pittsburgh and surrounding area. It is rooted in a community project that began six years ago to willfully counter some of the all-too-often negative portrayals of African American people in the local mainstream media. 
      The project was inspired by the work of Charles “Teenie” Harris, whose work is on view in a major retrospective at the Carnegie Museum of Art through April 2012.

      To view the entire report, Portrayal and Perception: Two Audits of New Media Reporting of African American Men and Boys, A Report from the Heinz Endowment's African American Men and Boys Task Force, please go to www.heinz.org/UserFiles/Library/AAMB-MediaReport.pdf.

      In addition to identifying areas for improvement, the Heinz media audit offers suggestion for going forward. They include:

(excerpted from Portrayal and Perception: Two Audits of News Media Reporting on African American Men and Boys – A Report from The Heinz Endowments’ African American Men and Boys Task Force. Pittsburgh Pennsyvania – November 1, 2011)

The media audit’s content analysis, the survey responses and the interviews, all superimposed on the Pittsburgh media landscape, suggest that there’s a big upside.

For local media

Recommit your efforts to mirror your community fully by providing fair, inclusive and contextual coverage of all populations, including African American men and boys. Re-examine your beats and expand and widen your sources for expertise and commentary. Review your neighborhood coverage patterns and assess the breadth and depth of your sources to better understand why systematic omissions and imbalanced topical coverage may be contributing to negative stereotypes and unfair frames of reference in Pittsburgh.

Actively find and feature everyday examples involving African American men and boys. Review your human and financial resources to determine and ensure that they’re balanced; listen to and engage your own African American staffers in the process. Use the 2010 U.S. Census as the springboard for a deep dive into the lives of all Pittsburghers — including African American men and teens.

Partner with and engage your readers and viewers. There’s no shortage of interest, nor lack of interested parties, in changing the status quo of media coverage in the digital age; your legacy media readers and viewers are joined by a new generation of digitally literate partners. But you have trust issues with the African American community, and skepticism from younger readers and viewers who find you irrelevant. Find ways to increase your civic engagement with readers and viewers directly; develop channels of civic media and citizen journalism. There are willing partners among the many nonprofits, educational institutions and public venues in Pittsburgh for a constructive conversation. Offer and promote new forms of  participation using social media, shared storytelling, crowd-sourcing, comment and feedback.

Embrace and extend innovation. Recognize the ubiquitous use of cell phones in the African American community and develop or tailor more content designed to be delivered in that format. Help to increase the size of the local blogosphere and add more African American voices in the process. Develop more outreach to potential African American journalists or citizen news participants through existing or new workshops or summer programs. These can be arranged in cooperation with the public schools and the public library system or in concert with the existing annual Internet training program known as Pod Camp. Of particular note is the summer program conducted by the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation for high school students. Other potential partner / sponsors

are local niche media, foundations, higher education institutions and nonprofits. Special emphasis on new media would be especially beneficial.

For the African American community

Value information and be good news consumers. News and information is a core community need, as important as education or services or infrastructure in the life of a vital community. Be aware of gaps in the information you need to vote, volunteer, participate or just lead active lives. Familiarize yourself with the reporters, columnists, commentators, editors, photographers, videographers and executives who work in local media. Actively use the channels available to you to engage with the media: Post-Gazette and Tribune-Review reporters and columnists include their email addresses; editorial pages publish letters to the editor; news sites like post-gazette.com invite your comments (and actively work to find and nurture such comments). Being a good news consumer means reading, watching and listening actively. Get news from a broad base of sources; don’t fall into the “I get my news on NPR” or “I watch Fox News because it reflects my views” rut. You may not agree with Rush Limbaugh or Jon Stewart, but it’s wise to know what they’re saying.

Be proactive. If you’d like to see the media report more stories featuring African American men and boys in their own voices, help them out. Invite them to take a first, second or deeper look at events in your neighborhoods. Introduce local media representatives to the exemplars and experts, the influential people they may be seeking — or missing. Question the status quo; if you think coverage is unfair, incomplete or inaccurate, or promulgating stereotypes, call the media on it and point it out. Call when you see inaccuracy. Write when the story’s incomplete. Insist on accuracy.

Help grow the blogosphere. The local blogosphere is overwhelmingly white and, with the exception of the New Pittsburgh Courier’s offerings and a minuscule cluster of others, presents little local content that is specifically oriented to the African American community. Start-up financial costs are low, but personal time and personal energy costs are high. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, provide opportunities for African American men and boys to communicate online as well, but a significant commitment of time and energy is required to use these tools effectively as direct channels of communication.

For funders and their nonprofit partners

The Dellums Commission offers a set of options for ameliorating the gaps and omissions in media coverage of African Americans. Several of these options are specifically aligned with the strengths of funders and their nonprofit partners.

Employ subsidies for digital media as outlets for positive images. The Endowments is already doing this with its “In the Spotlight” series, but this report clearly shows a need to add diverse voices to the predominantly white blogosphere. Plan these efforts to align with other projects under way (e.g., the Pittsburgh Foundation’s new community news / investigative journalism website).

Conduct well-designed inter-group dialogues and educational programs. The Endowments’ African American Men and Boys Task Force has considered starting down this road; this project’s report and edited video interviews will be useful tools for that outreach. Reach out to and partner with the media to help them extend their reach (and find new sources of information) in greater Pittsburgh. An educational avenue to explore (with Duquesne University or the University of Pittsburgh) is media literacy.

Local funders might begin by researching centers of media literacy across the nation, such as New York’s Stony Brook University. Investigate the movement in journalism schools to equip new graduates with entrepreneurial skills; developing a pilot program in Pittsburgh might help build a new generation of young media moguls.

Heighten awareness and vigilance through systematic monitoring. This audit is a good first step, and it establishes a baseline. Subsequent reviews of the media’s coverage will help all

parties identify progress, regression or status quo. But this audit still hasn’t fully tapped one of the most important veins of information: young African American men themselves. Take another step by developing a survey   specifically targeting their interests, and use it to develop a deeper understanding of how they’d like to be represented in local media coverage.