Gen Z Media Changing the Narrative
More than 50 years after the Kerner Report, people of color in the U.S. still face the same issues of media representation. Gen Z media groups are here to change that.
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson created the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, to investigate the cause of race riots happening across the U.S. at the time. After seven months of investigation, the Kerner Commission came back with a report that identified the media’s representation of Black people as one of the contributors to the country’s racial divide.
“Far too often, the press acts and talks about Negroes as if Negroes do not read the newspapers or watch television, give birth, marry, die, and go to PTA meetings,” the report says. “By failing to portray the Negro as a matter of routine and in the context of the total society, the news media have, we believe, contributed to the black-white schism in this country.”
The commission suggested addressing this issue by increasing coverage of Black communities and hiring more Black journalists in newsrooms. President Johnson ultimately ignored and rejected the report.
53 years later, Black people as well as other communities of color in the U.S. still face the same issues of media representation.
A 2020 report by the Center for Media Engagement says that there’s a disconnect between “how Black Americans felt the media should cover their communities and how they felt the media actually do cover their communities,” which increases distrust in news media.
However, the report says that this distrust is fixable, proposing six strategies for journalists to “bridge divides” with communities of color:
1. Find “Black Joy”
2. Provide a More Complete Story
3. Diversify Blackness
4. Explore Your Own Unconscious Biases
5. Hire Black Reporters
6. Connect with Black Communities
As the U.S. becomes more racially diverse with every new generation, there is an even greater need to implement these strategies. While mainstream media organizations are still working to implement inclusion strategies, some Gen Z media organizations are making these strategies integral parts of their missions to prioritize the stories of people of color.
Diversifying the Narrative with Black Joy
21-year-old Oyinkansola Sofela never saw herself getting into the media industry. She was set on the path to pursue a career in consulting, but when the coronavirus pandemic hit and George Floyd’s death sparked nationwide protests in 2020, Sofela’s path changed.
News cycle after news cycle, all she heard about was the disproportionate amount of Black deaths caused by either police brutality or COVID-19.
“When I went to social media, Instagram, Twitter, or just turned on the news, what I saw was often my trauma and pain as a Black woman being fed back to me,” Sofela says. “I felt like I couldn’t take a breath without hearing about the death of another Black person.”
The constant negative news cycle frustrated Sofela because she couldn’t find any space for celebrating Black joy. The media’s representation of her experiences felt incomplete.
The disconnect between her reality and what was shown in the media is what pushed Sofela to create A Little Louder Project, a content and community-building platform for women of color.
“It’s a crucial part of our story, to be able to celebrate ourselves and celebrate the beauty in our diversity, especially as women of color,” Sofela says. “And when I couldn’t find it, I decided that I was just going to create it.”
Through the platform that A Little Louder Project provides, Sofela hopes that people of color can come together and share both the pain and joy of their stories, diversifying the representation of people of color in media.
Diversifying the Workplace
The issue of racial representation is partially rooted in who’s making the decisions about what stories get told. According to the Pew Research Center, 77% of newsroom employees in the U.S. are white. Even fewer people of color are in leadership roles.
Meredith Clark, a University of Virginia professor who researches race and media, says that predominantly white newsrooms are not only hard for people of color to enter but that the culture can make it even more difficult for people of color to succeed.
“There’s a culture that tells you that you’re just flat out wrong. You’re wrong about your views. You’re wrong about the stories you want to report on,” Clark says.
Negative experiences in predominantly white workplaces are what pushed 17-year-old Aissata, who asked to be referred to by her first name, to start More Color Media, a publication for marginalized creators, in June 2020.
Growing up, Aissata participated in zines as a creative outlet, but most of the zines that she worked at were created by and for white people. Aissata says that this environment limited her content creation and that as one of the few people of color on staff, she often experienced microaggressions.
“You kind of have to whitewash yourself and whitewash your content and not fully, authentically make content that stems from you because you feel like ‘I shouldn’t be too loud or too passionate,’” Aissata says.
Now working with More Color Media’s team, which primarily consists of people of color, Aissata says she feels more comfortable knowing that her team members have been through experiences similar to her own. Without the pressure to assimilate into white work culture, Aissata can prioritize people of color’s stories in More Color Media’s content.
Similarly, A Little Louder Project’s staff members are all women of color. Sofela says that giving people of color control over their own narratives produces more authentic representations in media because they are best-equipped to tell their own stories.
“The only way we’ll see change is when the decision-makers are also representative of the stories they’re trying to tell,” Sofela says.
Going Beyond Content
Another issue identified by the Center for Media Engagement report was that journalists need to build connections with the communities that they report on. Unlike many mainstream media outlets, community-building is at the core of A Little Louder Project’s mission. With its app, the Joy Room, A Little Louder Project provides a space for women of color to build connections.
“To foster that sense of belonging, we have to go beyond that static content,” Sofela says. “We have to create meaningful communities and connections.”
Similarly, Parachute Media, a media start-up with the mission to “empower Gen Z women and nonbinary folks of color to reclaim their narratives,” has its own digital community, the Parachute Club. Members can interact through messaging and events. Founder Ochucko Akpovbovbo says that the Parachute Club removes the wall between the content creators and the audience that often exists in mainstream media.
“A lot of the content we will be creating is deeply personal to people’s identities and experiences,” Akpovbovbo says. “So we wanted to build a place they can come and process that content through conversation and solidarity.”
Part of the community building for A Little Louder Project and Parachute Media has also occurred through social media, reflecting how social media has become a tool for people of color to raise awareness without going through mainstream media outlets.
“What social media does that publishers in the print and broadcast eras couldn’t do in the same way is that it allows people to connect with each other in real-time,” Clark says. “It’s a matter of technology and spaces being novel, but not the concept itself.”
As news consumption via social media increases globally, especially among Gen Z, media organizations with digital communities and social media presences like A Little Louder Project and Parachute Media will gain an even larger share of public attention.
Sofela says that she hopes that A Little Louder Project eventually has a global reach, fundamentally changing how women of color view themselves in media and how they connect with each other.
“I just want women of color to be touched in a significant way by what we do,” Sofela says.
Disclaimer: I work as a section editor at the Parachute Media mentioned in this article.