The February 26, 2021, episode of CounterSpin included an archival interview Janine Jackson conducted with Joseph Torres of Free Press about his book News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, originally aired December 23, 2011. This is a lightly edited transcript.
Kansas City Star (12/20/20)
Janine Jackson: The Kansas City Star recently issued a front-page apology for decades in which the paper, by its own admission, denied the Black community “dignity, justice and recognition.” Generations of Black residents were “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned,” editors said, and they got specific about the paper’s support for housing segregation, their disregard for civil rights struggle, and their portrayals of African Americans as criminals.
The Los Angeles Times also published an apology for its decades of reporting “deeply rooted,” in its words, “in white supremacy.” These sorts of steps are welcome, as an opening to an overdue conversation that we’re nevertheless underprepared to have without really understanding the role media play, and have played, in portraying race and shaping race relations in this country.
Verso Books (2011)
Ten years ago, a book stepped into that void. News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media documents both the history of harms done by media to Black and brown and Native and Asian-American people, and those communities’ equally deep history of resistance, and of telling and sharing their own stories.
In December of 2011, CounterSpin spoke with the book’s co-author, Joseph Torres. He’s now senior director of strategy and engagement at the group Free Press.
I started by noting that many people see media as a field that grew up naturally, as it were, and has only lately come under government regulation, but that, in fact, government has always played a role in media, from colonial times, and that has always had meaning for Black and brown people.
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Joseph Torres: That’s right. We talk about in the book that the creation of our newspaper industry in our country really began with the creation of the post office. The US Postal Act of 1792 created a post office, and one of the things they said was that they were going to subsidize the delivery of mail. The cost of delivering letters to folks was very expensive, but that money was used to subsidize, very cheaply, the delivery of newspapers throughout the country. And the other thing they said, too, the Postal Act, was that they were not going to have any surveillance of the mail.
Freedom’s Journal (3/16/1827)
So what this effectively did is, it created a newspaper industry. We went from having a few hundred newspapers to several thousand newspapers in just a matter of 30 or 40 years. What it also did, it allowed people of color to create their own newspapers; despite the slavery and horrific discrimination happening in our country, there were nearly 30 African-American newspapers created before the Civil War: the Freedom’s Journal, the first African-American newspaper, in 1827; first Spanish-language newspaper in 1808; first Native American newspaper, Cherokee Phoenix, in 1828. So the Postal Act created a decentralized system, a media system, that allowed the voices of the many to be heard, and allowed people of color to actually tell their own stories, which is quite remarkable.
JJ: The book comes at the issue a number of ways. One of them is the missing history of the African-American and Native American, and other so-called “ethnic” press, and another is just the relationship between people of color and the press. Some of the tropes and patterns that we see in media coverage today are older than the country. But it goes beyond bias and underrepresentation, doesn’t it, to violence? Can you talk a little about that history?
JT: We have about a dozen, at least, examples, in which newspapers played a critical, central role in the lynching of African Americans, Native Americans, the killing of Chinese immigrants in California, Native Americans being driven from their land.
For instance, all the Southern papers supported Andrew Jackson because he was known as the “great Indian remover.” He was going to remove the Cherokee from their land in Georgia, and the Trail of Tears happened. Newspapers pushed this policy; they pushed the racist policy that allowed for Indian removal, and to help elect Andrew Jackson.
Mob standing in front of the ruins of the Wilmington Daily Record, a Black-owned daily paper destroyed in the Wilmington Massacre on 1898.
The most tragic example is in Wilmington, North Carolina, where this Southern publisher, this historic figure in journalism, a guy named Josephus Daniels, the publisher of the Raleigh News in North Carolina. In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, there was a Fusion government between Republicans and free African Americans, a government where Blacks actually had leadership roles and prominent places in society.
And the Democrats won election of the statehouses, basically took control of the statehouses. And they got rid of, by violence, the African-American leaders in Wilmington, North Carolina. There was a coup of the local government in North Carolina.
The person who led that was Josephus Daniels, the publisher of the Raleigh News. He bragged about it; he instigated, with his newspapers, publishing outlandish stories.
And Josephus Daniels wasn’t just some nut job: he was the secretary of the Navy during World War I, he was the ambassador to Mexico for FDR. Journalism history treats him as a great journalistic figure who stood up against corporate power. But yet they paper over the role he played in the massacre of 60 African Americans.
We give a lot of examples of this in the book, and show the dangers of what happens when you have a white racial narrative, when people of color are unable to control and tell their own stories. When other people tell our stories, they get it wrong and they cause us great harm.
JJ: And then there are also so many great stories of papers and of people that have not become, as you say, part of this general cultural memory bank.
I heard Juan González tell the story of John Rollin Ridge, a Cherokee Indian writer who founded the Sacramento Bee, later sold it to James McClatchy, who worked for him, though if you look on their website today, there’s no mention of John Rollin Ridge, the Cherokee Indian who was the paper’s first editor and publisher.
What’s a story that stands out for you, and what is the impact of not knowing these stories?
JT: Historically, folks have very little knowledge that an ethic press ever existed or exists. Still to this day, people are very unaware of an ethnic press. It’s always been true, throughout history, but yet the ethnic newspapers and ethnic publications have played a critical role in communities of color.
One of my favorite stories, as you mentioned in the intro, was the campaign at the Pittsburgh Courier to try to get Amos ‘n’ Andy off the air. When radio was first regulated in 1927, all the most powerful stations in the country, all the clear channel stations, basically, were turned over to CBS and NBC. And the most popular radio program in the country was Amos ‘n’ Andy, you know, blackface minstrel show, white actors. And half of the nation’s listening audience were listening to Amos ‘n’ Andy every night.
The Pittsburgh Courier, which was one of the most important African-American newspapers at the time, with a huge circulation, decided to run a campaign to try to ask the Federal Radio Commission to get Amos ‘n’ Andy off the air. And literally, over the course of a year, they got 720,000 people to write a petition that was sent to the Federal Radio Commission, demanding the program get removed from the air, because of the racism, and to hold a hearing to determine whether this program serves the public interest. And the Federal Radio Commission never responded. But it was really the first effort by people of color to try to reform the media during the broadcast era.
Joseph Torres: “People of color have always cared about media policy, have always fought for a just media system, and still, too often, their voices are being ignored to this day.”
People of color have always cared about media policy, have always fought for a just media system, and still, too often, their voices are being ignored to this day. People of color only own 3% of all TV stations, 8% of all radio stations—and the federal government is about to introduce new rules to allow for further consolidation, without understanding the impact it can have on ownership of color. So our voice has continued to be marginalized in federal policy to this day.
JJ: And we have talked on the show recently about the so-called “new” digital divide–not that we’ve bridged the old one–but between those who have access to a high-speed internet, and those who only have phone access, who are overwhelmingly poor people and people of color, who have access to a kind of second-tier, restricted internet that the FCC has said is not going to be subject to the same regulations, such as they are, that govern internet connections through broadband. Here’s something where a media policy can have racial impact, even though there’s nothing written in the law about race per se.
JT: Whenever technology comes along, it fundamentally changes the media system. It creates new industries, whether it’s telegraph, radio, cable, now the internet. And the government has a central role: Does it regulate to allow the voice of the many to participate, or does it turn over control to the hands of a few? People of color have always argued that it should be controlled by the hands of many; the media should not be consolidated and controlled by the hands of a few, but the voice of the many should be able to participate. We need an open internet to make sure that we can tell our own stories.
Ida B. Wells
JJ: Finally, are you surprised by the response to a book that is, in some ways, a callout on what’s gone before, saying these are aspects of history, these are people, these are outlets, that have been missed, that have not been engaged? And yet it’s being very well-received; it’s a New York Times bestseller.
JT: I think that there is a hunger for this information because, while most people do not like the media, people of color despise the media, because of the harm it has caused us historically. And I think there’s a hunger to understand how this has happened. And one of the things about the book that I think people walk away with is that there’s always been heroic figures fighting for a just media system, that the fight going on today–that they’re not alone, that there’s been other heroic figures, like Ida B. Wells and Pedro J. González. This is a long arc, and they’re a part of it, and I think they take should great strength from the Frederick Douglasses of the world and the folks who came before them.
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That was Joe Torres, speaking with CounterSpin in 2011 about the book News for All the People. It’s still available from Verso Books.
