Paul Niwa on Atlanta Tragedy: GBH Beat the Press

Journalism associate professor Paul Niwa and additional industry professionals joined GBH’s “Beat the Press” program, hosted by Emily Rooney, to discuss recent events in the news and their coverage.

Among the topics are the recent murders in Atlanta and whether they may be hate crimes, the collaboration between the Boston Globe and Boston University to re-launch the abolitionist newspaper The Emancipator, and the Washington Post’s reporting on misquoting former President Trump and Georgia’s presidential election results.

Niwa said that in the Atlanta shootings, we need to listen to the words of the shooter to the police; based on those, it was a racially-based crime and a lynching:

When it’s so clear to me that this is racially motivated, I don’t think journalists have to necessarily be stenographers; they should really tell the truth and tell what it actually is. When we don’t do that, when we try to change the subject like the Boston Globe’s editorial on Wednesday and try to say that this is an issue of gun control, or others have said that this is an issue of sex addiction of an individual; I think we’re missing the point; we’re helping white law enforcement be able to hide behind their anti-Asian racist views. I think the journalists at this moment, like Renee Graham did on Thursday, she called out her own editorial board for failing to make this point; I think journalists on the street need to also be able to say what they see as their truth.