Media
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#OscarsSoWhite Creator April Reign Is Launching a Digital Content Studio for People of Color
April Reign, well known as a diversity and inclusion advocate and the creator of #OscarsSoWhite, is partnering with the media platform Overture Global to start Ensemble, a digital content studio “aiming to accelerate opportunities for people of color both in front of and behind the camera,” according to a press release obtained by The Root.…
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'When You Love Someone, You Hold Them Accountable': Sil Lai Abrams Speaks Her Piece on The Breakfast Club
Exactly one week after their interview with Russell Simmons, The Breakfast Club confirmed that Sil Lai Abrams, one of his accusers and participants in HBO’s doc On The Record, would be appearing on the show. On Wednesday, the writer, essayist, cultural commentator and activist sat down with co-host Angela Yee to discuss the documentary, her…
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Exclusive: Issa Rae's Raedio, HBO and Tenderfoot TV to Donate $30K to the Black and Missing Foundation
As we reminisce on the rollercoaster ride that was season 4 of Insecure, we also appreciate the series’ continued tradition of providing a well-produced show-within-a-show. This season was the witty true crime series, Looking For LaToya (in which SZA portrays the titular character). In a satirical look at today’s society, the internal show offered cultural…
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Capitalizing the “B” in Black Is Nice, but Actually Hiring Black People in Your Newsroom Is Nicer
At The Root, we’ve had a long-standing debate over capitalizing the “B” in black. Some of us are adamantly for it, while others (myself included) are grammar freaks who think that if we capitalize “black” we would also have to capitalize “white,” and I, personally, have no interest in that as it would continue to…
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Pittsburgh Paper Removed Police Brutality Stories, Then Republished Them With Pro-Cop Images
Staffers with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette have been publicizing the disastrous, racist decision-making of top management, who last week sidelined two black journalists from reporting on the Black Lives Matter protests that have cropped up around the country. Their coverage ban reportedly expanded as dozens of staffers called out the paper and stood in solidarity with…
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The Breakfast Club Is Food Poisoning
*DJ Envy voice* Morning everybody, it’s three obtusely insensitive radio personalities providing a platform to an alleged rapist while further erasing and silencing the black women survivors on one of the largest black-led media platforms in the nation. Trigger Warning: This article contains details from an interview with a man who has been multiply accused…
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The George Floyd Homicide Video Is Not Cinéma Vérité—WTF Is Wrong With You, Ross Johnson?
I want to Men in Black-out to the time before I saw screenshots from a piece titled, “Why Darnella Frazier Is the Most Influential Filmmaker of the Century.” In a guest blog at The Wrap dated June 4, communications strategist Ross Johnson proceeded to pontificate on Darnella Frazier’s video evidence of the moment George Floyd…
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Bars Black Reporters From Covering Protests, Citing 'Bias'
Black journalists working at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette say they are being cut off from doing their job during one of the most pivotal news-making events in history—the ongoing protests for racial justice—on accusations that they are biased. The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh says a number of black journalists have been barred from doing protest-related stories…
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Black Journalists and Covering the Storm That Never Passes
I knew what I was getting into. I grew up reading the newspaper daily, since about age 11. I started watching the evening news—both the local and the national broadcasts—around the same time. My earliest media memories are of the 1987 Iran-Contra hearings and the Challenger explosion the year prior. Every weekend I watched Tim…
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The Root's Danielle Belton Talks Biden's Gaffe, Trump's COVID-19 Inactions on MSNBC
Saturday during journalist Alicia Menendez’s broadcast on MSNBC, The Root’s Editor-in-Chief Danielle Belton (meeeeee!) made an appearance as a panelist discussing former Vice President Joe Biden’s recent remarks on The Breakfast Club, which the Democratic presidential candidate subsequently apologized for. In this clip, I discuss how Trump isn’t “pro-American” but is simply “pro-Trump” when it…