Since the start of this nation, the predominant narrative about Black people has been one of inhumanity. In order to justify enslavement and later establish racial hierarchy, media and culture have been shaped to tell a certain story. We are bombarded with headlines comparing unarmed Black men to animals, some even giving them “superhuman” strength and simply parroting unjust police talking points. Local TV news outlets disproportionately focus on crime in our neighborhoods, instead of featuring Black families, leaders and human interest topics.
More than 60 percent of Black Americans say the news they see or hear about Black people is often more negative than news about other racial groups.
Yet, the mainstream news covers violent crimes as if that is all that comprises our communities. Since the colonial era, media outlets have used their platforms to inflict harm on Black people through weaponized narratives that promote Black inferiority and portray us as threats to society.
Once we examine the anti-Black roots of our media system, this pattern comes as no surprise. The Media 2070 essay, An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations, outlines this history of racialized media harm. Colonial newspapers were complicit in the slave trade and profited off of chattel slavery. A powerful newspaper publisher helped lead the deadly overthrow of a local government in Wilmington, North Carolina, where Black people held power throughout the city; racist journalism has led to countless lynchings; Southern broadcast stations aired vociferous opposition to integration; and today, powerful social-media and tech companies are allowing white supremacists to use their platforms to organize, fundraise, recruit and spread violent hate. The Big Tech Broligarchy has aligned with right wing extremists and attended the 2025 inauguration, all too ready to enable the autocratic, anti-democratic MAGA agenda.
A free press is often cited as a cornerstone of democracy. Journalism as an institution is under attack – from corporate consolidation that has undermined reporting in the public interest, to financial problems that have shrunk newsrooms, replacing writers with AI to support the bottom line. The leaders of the hostile federal administration have called the press “fake,” “liberal,” “the opposition,” and “the enemy of the American people.” Tech billionaires have taken ownership and control of once revered and respected media corporations and are censoring dissent. Black media institutions may be the last line of defense in providing honest coverage to the communities most targeted by systemic oppression.
The examples of Ida B. Wells, Freedom’s Journal, The North Star, and the New York Amsterdam News illustrate the rich legacy of Black journalists and Black-owned media acting as messengers, storytellers and community information networks that helped to blaze the trails for Black liberation movements, from emancipation to the calls for Civil Rights and Black Power. Facing our future means we must respect the critical knowledge, community-building, information, and resource sharing that movements foster — particularly Black liberation movements. How will Black media makers answer this call?
Popular power is contested via our media and communications systems. Black communities too often lack the access and resources to control and disseminate information and narratives. As a result, our communities lack the infrastructure necessary to effectively build power which is critical to affecting the necessary change to drive social movements.
That’s why Media 2070 has declared February Black Narrative Power Month, which is critical to the ongoing fight to demand better news coverage from mainstream mass media. It’s part of the ongoing media reparations movement – a long-term effort to completely dismantle harmful news structures.
After all, reparations isn’t just money owed — it’s the absolute restructuring of our very society to end centuries of oppression. Media 2070 works to advance reparative journalism practices, such as our newsroom pledge to care, on the path to a future where reparations are real. We have called on the vast majority of nonprofit and public funding be invested in the short- and long-term sustainability of BIPOC media institutions and BIPOC organizations. This would serve as a beginning step toward reckoning with the centuries of harm journalism has inflicted on communities of color.
While some individual journalists and new media newsrooms such as Outlier Media (Detroit), MLK50 (Memphis) and Scalawag (the South) have begun to create racially just and liberated futures, building on the work of the legacy Black press — abundant with new systems and policies — we need structural change to truly move forward. And that means envisioning, creating and practicing a new media system.
This work happens together and Black Narrative Power Month is a reminder of the work we all must undertake. If we’re going to dream this new system together, we need the time, public spaces and the energy to do so. What would it look like if we had a media system where Black people were able to create and control the distribution of our own stories and narratives on a larger scale? What would it look like if Black people had an abundance of Black-led news organizations serving all of our communities? What if more of our stories were covered by journalists who understand and are a part of our communities?
These questions guide both Black Narrative Power Month and media reparations more largely.
Before we can achieve the transformation we need, we have to dream of a world we deserve that does not yet exist. That is why with the release of this essay, we seek to work in a Black-led coalition that is abundant with journalists, technologists, artists, activists, policymakers, media-makers, organizers and scholars, including those who have long fought for reparations.
We have several ways to engage in this work this month. We invite you to join us:
- Black Narrative Power Month toolkit
- Watch our livestream Roundtable panel on the Black Storytelling Tradition on February 27th via Youtube
- Download and Read or listen to the audio narration of the Media 2070 Essay.
We invite you to dream with us. To learn more about the media reparations movement and to get involved, visit our website mediareparations.org
Anshantia Oso is the Senior Director of Media 2070, where she works to advance the work of media reparations and build Black Narrative Power. Media 2070 is committed to the radical dismantling of oppressive news structures and media systems. This work is an idea, welcoming critique and feedback. It is liberation work within a lineage of civil-rights activism, racial-justice organizing and calls for reparations.