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I just want to confirm that @farai's experience here is widespread - white editors squash stories about white supremacy.
In 2017 @FiveThirtyEight greenlit a 3000 word feature on voter suppression from me... and then cut it without giving any explanation https://twitter.com/farai/status/1348022232824619008
In 2017 @FiveThirtyEight greenlit a 3000 word feature on voter suppression from me... and then cut it without giving any explanation https://twitter.com/farai/status/1348022232824619008
Here's a link to the full, edited voter suppression piece.
Editor @MicahCohen said to me on the phone (I swear this is verbatim) "are we sure this is about race?" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YGF5nvGR64aa-b-EuEu4WERm182DTkl_0pHNV-2wmkI/edit?usp=sharing
Editor @MicahCohen said to me on the phone (I swear this is verbatim) "are we sure this is about race?" https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YGF5nvGR64aa-b-EuEu4WERm182DTkl_0pHNV-2wmkI/edit?usp=sharing
This despite me citing multiple academic studies showing that, yes, increase in Black & Hispanic voter turnout is the strongest predictor of new voting restrictions.
And despite every historian, social scientist, and int'l election watchdog I interviewed telling me categorically that this is about stopping Black people from voting.
Really grateful that @farai is going public with this and naming names despite the risk. Her 2016 essay "The Call-to-Whiteness" is extremely clarifying and helped me understand what happens when Black journalists try to tell the truth. https://farai.com/the-call-to-whiteness/
I look forward to a data journalism that cares more about reporting the empirical reality of the world we live in, rather than some bizarre ideology of partisan neutrality.
Getting there will require (as @farai says) multi-cultural newsrooms - from the top down.
Getting there will require (as @farai says) multi-cultural newsrooms - from the top down.
Believe and amplify Black women journalists. If this is happening to me (a white data nerd from Harvard) it's definitely happening to them 100x over.
