The institution built 200 years ago to give Black Americans a voice is fighting now for survival when it’s needed most.
Next year marks the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Black press. It was born with a mission to tell the stories of Black communities accurately. That mission is more urgent than ever heading into the midterm elections.
The point became even more clear this year, when the Supreme Court’s Louisiana v. Callais ruling gutted the racial protections of the Voting Rights Act. Analysts say the seats of as many as 20 of the Congressional Black Caucus’s 62 members are under threat in this year’s elections.
Last week’s Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Legislative Conference in Washington, D.C., highlighted the urgency of the current moment while reminding everyone that this is the same battle Black Americans have fought for generations.
URL Media, along with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the Washington Association of Black Journalists, dug into the media side of the equation in a morning event Thursday, Sept. 17 at the National Association of Broadcasters headquarters.
Independent journalists Joy-Ann Reid and Don Lemon, The 19th editor-at-large and National Association of Black Journalists president Errin Haines and URL Media co-founder and president Sara Lomax led the first part of the event. They discussed the unique lens Black journalists bring to coverage and how Black-owned media organizations need people to subscribe and support their work financially.
They later were joined by Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and Tennessee State Rep. Justin Pierson, who is running for Congress. The discussion focused largely on where mainstream media fails in its coverage of issues important to Black news consumers, including voting rights.
The throughline is that a press tradition was built to fill an information gap for Black Americans and has been an invaluable resource during a voting rights fight that never ended. Now we’re in a midterms election season where both of those things collide. As redistricting fights play out, where and from whom people get their information matters as much as the ballot itself.
