From around 2014 to 2021, two important, long-needed “reckonings” were happening. The mainstream media was reevaluating its coverage of politics and beginning to recognize that its attempt to cover politics “neutrally” had resulted in downplaying how radical and antidemocratic the modern Republican Party had become. Meanwhile, the entire country, including the media, was looking at whether the United States had done enough to address the deep racial inequality that remained from centuries of discrimination against Native Americans and African Americans in particular. Black journalists were acutely aware of both problems, making them some of the leading voices in this period, perhaps best exemplified by the “1619 Project” helmed by Nikole Hannah-Jones of The New York Times.
But it’s not 2020 anymore. We are seeing a huge retrenchment, particularly in elite institutions, from caring about racial inequality and describing the Republican Party honestly. The latest example came Monday morning, when Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah announced that the paper had fired her for posts Attiah wrote on social media after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Her posts (at least the ones I have seen) were not particularly incendiary. Attiah, while condemning Kirk’s shooting, argued that the U.S. is rife with political violence and that the country seems to accept it. According to Attiah, she was the only full-time Black opinion columnist at the paper.
The paper has not yet commented on Attiah’s departure, and there may be other details I am not privy to here. But her apparent dismissal fits with broader changes happening at the paper.
Owner Jeff Bezos blocked from publication an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris that the Opinion staff wrote last fall. He attended Trump’s inauguration. In February, he announced the paper’s Opinion section would focus on “personal liberties and free markets.” In June, he named a former Wall Street Journal editorial page staffer to run the Post’s Opinion section. Nearly all of the left-leaning writers, myself included, accepted buyouts, as it became clear that the Post would not want our content.
Attiah opted to stay. I was worried that her time at the Post would not be long, and it was not. The Post is far from the only news institution swinging to the right, either because its owners want to curry favor with Trump, because they are aligned with him on some issues, or a bit of both. CBS News is going in a pro-Trump direction even faster, installing conservatives in key roles. Outlets such as CNN and The New York Times are constantly casting Trump’s autocratic actions in muted language, seeming desperate to not be seen as liberally biased.
I wrote enthusiastically a few years ago that the mainstream media was leaning into playing a more pro-democracy role. That’s over now. Covering democracy honestly would entail covering politics in an unbalanced way, because the Republican Party of this era is much more antidemocratic than the Democrats. So major outlets are instead leaning into the “both sides” model that they were reconsidering from 2014 to 2021. So, for example, CNN’s 10 p.m. show, which during Trump 1.0 featured journalists explaining why Trump was a uniquely radical president, is now conservative and liberal pundits getting equal time.
For honest coverage of American politics, you often have to seek out outlets based abroad, such as the Financial Times and The Guardian; smaller organizations like The Bulwark, The Contrarian, and The New Republic; and journalists writing independently, including former Times columnist Paul Krugman.
And while the media changes are more subtle, the racial retrenchment is obvious. Republican appointees on the Supreme Court and lower-level courts and now the Trump administration have essentially outlawed any program that seeks to address racial disparities.
Put these retrenchments together, and you have a very hostile environment for Black journalists. The political right is trying to basically outlaw any discussion of racial inequality—and news organizations are trying to appease the political right. So while the circumstances differ in these cases, Attiah, Jonathan Capehart, Eugene Robinson, and I are all gone from The Washington Post; Joy Reid was stripped of her show on MSNBC; and Charles Blow left The New York Times. Many other Black journalists tell me privately that their roles are diminished from a few years ago, with editors much less willing to publish and promote their work.
I am obviously very personally invested in the plight of Black political journalists. These are my peers and, in some cases, my close friends. But my concerns are much deeper than whether I or my friends lose prestigious jobs. (I quickly landed at TNR after leaving the Post.) The U.S. remains a place where being Black too often means that you are less likely to have a job with good pay and health insurance and more likely to be the victim of racial discrimination. It’s also a place where our commitment to democratic norms and principles increasingly pales in comparison to other nations. Black journalists, like Black activists and politicians, are often the people in their profession most willing to discuss America’s shortcomings forthrightly and urge the country to do better. For example, Attiah and Reid were two of the most prominent voices at their organizations calling for the United States to change its policies toward Israel to prevent the mass deaths of Palestinian civilians.
Our reckonings on racism and journalism didn’t go too far. The opposite is true—they didn’t go far enough. And the diminishment of prominent Black journalists is the latest indication that a period of progress in the U.S. has ended and a period of retrenchment is in full bloom. An America where Black people, journalists, and Black journalists lose political power is one where inequality, racism, authoritarianism and other ills will be rampant. Institutions such as the Post may be done with reckoning with their shortcomings, but the rest of us should carry forward the ideas and ideals of 2014–2021.
