Racializing Objectivity
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A Black National News Service: The Associated Negro Press and Claude Barnett
A01=Gwyneth Mellinger
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and the Awakening of a Nation
Author_Gwyneth Mellinger
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Black editors and press history
Black press history
Brown V. Board of Education
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJ
Category=HBJK
Category=JBCT
Category=JFD
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Category=NHTB
Category=WQH
challenges to journalistic objectivity
civil rights reporting controversies
COP=United States
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Don Shoemaker
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eq_history
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eq_society-politics
freedom struggle media coverage
Gene Roberts
Hank Klibanoff
Henry Lewis Suggs
historical media bias in America
history of journalism objectivity
Ida B. Wells
Jim Crow and journalism
Jim Crow-era media strategies
journalism and systemic racism
journalism as a tool of white supremacy
journalism standards and race
Language_English
Lawrence D. Hogan
media complicity in segregation
media framing of civil rights
media portrayal of Black Americans
NAACP
objectivity in news reporting
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Patrick S. Washburn
press neutrality and racism
press response to civil rights movement
Price_€20 to €50
professional ethics and race in media
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race and journalistic impartiality
racial bias in journalism
racial narratives in American press
racial objectivity in the press
racialized journalism ethics
racism in American media
Richmond Times-Dispatch
segregation and press coverage
softlaunch
Southern Education Reporting Service
southern newspaper editors
southern newspapers in the civil rights era
southern press resistance to desegregation
Southern School News
The African American Newspaper: Voice of Freedom
the Civil Rights Struggle
The Race Beat: The Press
white privilege in journalism
white southern press history
white supremacy and the media
Product details
- ISBN 9781625348104
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Dec 2024
- Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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When the civil rights movement began to challenge Jim Crow laws, the white southern press reframed the coverage of racism and segregation as a debate over journalism standards. Many white southern editors, for instance, designated Black Americans as “Negro” in news stories, claiming it was necessary for accuracy and “objectivity,” even as white subjects went unlabeled. These news professionals disparaged media outlets that did not adhere to these norms, such as the Black press. In this way, the southern white press weaponized journalism standards—and particularly the idea of objectivity—to counter and discredit reporting that challenged white supremacy.
Through deep engagement with letters and other materials in numerous archives from editors, journalists, and leaders of newswire services, Racializing Objectivity interrogates and exposes how the white southern press used journalism standards as a professional rationalization for white supremacy and a political strategy to resist desegregation. Gwyneth Mellinger argues that white skin privilege gave these news professionals a stake in the racial status quo and was thus a conflict of interest as they defended Jim Crow. Her study includes an examination of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objectivity project whose impartiality, she contends, instead affirmed systemic racism. In a pointed counternarrative, Mellinger highlights Black editors and academics who long criticized the supposed objectivity of the press and were consequently marginalized and often dismissed as illegitimate, fanciful, and even paranoid.
Elegant and incisive, Racializing Objectivity unequivocally demonstrates that a full telling of twentieth-century press history must reckon with the white southern press’ cooptation of objectivity and other professional standards to skew racial narratives about Black Americans, as well as northern whites and democracy itself.
Through deep engagement with letters and other materials in numerous archives from editors, journalists, and leaders of newswire services, Racializing Objectivity interrogates and exposes how the white southern press used journalism standards as a professional rationalization for white supremacy and a political strategy to resist desegregation. Gwyneth Mellinger argues that white skin privilege gave these news professionals a stake in the racial status quo and was thus a conflict of interest as they defended Jim Crow. Her study includes an examination of the Southern Education Reporting Service, an objectivity project whose impartiality, she contends, instead affirmed systemic racism. In a pointed counternarrative, Mellinger highlights Black editors and academics who long criticized the supposed objectivity of the press and were consequently marginalized and often dismissed as illegitimate, fanciful, and even paranoid.
Elegant and incisive, Racializing Objectivity unequivocally demonstrates that a full telling of twentieth-century press history must reckon with the white southern press’ cooptation of objectivity and other professional standards to skew racial narratives about Black Americans, as well as northern whites and democracy itself.
Gwyneth Mellinger is a Ruth D. Bridgeforth Professor of Telecommunications at James Madison University. Her books include Chasing Newsroom Diversity: From Jim Crow to Affirmative Action. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in several journals, including American Journalism, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, and Journalism History.
