Throughout history, media has played a pivotal role in creating and altering how the masses receive news. While media personnel should gather and report from an unbiased view, they often do the opposite because of higher powers. People in higher positions of power have used the news to sway the public and influence them to adopt certain ideologies that have led to massacres, genocide, slavery, the creation of false stereotypes, and validation for people to be racist and prejudiced against certain groups of people. Dr. Allissa Richardson, a world-renowned author and journalist, has seen how twisted media delivers news and wants media reparations for the Black community for the biased coverage of victims of American propaganda.
“They took the George Floyd murder and played it online like it was sports highlights, and I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Richardson said as she explained what led her to take a more prominent role in being an activist. “I went on MSNBC and wrote articles in the Atlantic telling my peers to stop supporting this nonsense. All I thought about was how his family and daughter were taking everything in, and I knew that an apology wasn’t enough.”
Richardson is an Associate Professor of Journalism at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School. She is the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism”. The prize-winning book explores the lives of 15 mobile journalist-activists who documented the Black Lives Matter movement using only their smartphones and Twitter from 2014 to 2018.
Richardson started the Charlotta Bass lab in 2022 to honor the trailblazing journalist and activist whose work paved the way for equitable media practices that cultivated and influenced the next generation of journalists. “I wanted to create a curriculum to teach students not to make the same mistakes I’m seeing other journalists make,” Richardson said about the curriculum. “I wanted to empower students of all backgrounds to report more responsibly on Black news and hold news organizations accountable for their past reporting on the Black community.”
Charlotta Spears Bass, longtime editor of the African American newspaper The California Eagle (formally known as The Eagle), was a journalist, activist, and politician who fought for the civil rights of African Americans in the early and mid-twentieth century. The first Black woman to run for vice president of the United States (1952), she worked to combat what she called ‘the two-headed monster,’ segregation and discrimination. Bass became the first African American woman to run a newspaper in the U.S. after buying The Eagle in 1912.
Shortly after taking over the paper, Bass renamed it The California Eagle. Bass’s frequent targets for reform were employment discrimination, racial violence, and housing segregation. She used the newspaper to call attention to racist hiring practices in Los Angeles. Bass helped open doors for African Americans with major employers like the Southern Telephone Company, Los Angeles General Hospital, and the Los Angeles Railway.
The Charlotta Bass Lab is a pioneering research and teaching initiative dedicated to preserving the rich legacy of Black media makers while empowering the next generation of imaginative storytellers. The lab covers nearly 175 years of Black history in America that have shaped national and global moments. The lab was created due to the partnership of USC, Richardson, and Media 2070.
Media 2070 played a big part in creating the courses as an initiative by Free Press. This initiative seeks to address and repair the harm caused by systemic racism in the U.S. media industry, working towards a future where media systems actively contribute to racial justice.
Anshantia Oso, Senior Director of Media 2070, said, “We’re excited about this program because we know students will have an opportunity not only to learn but also to practice reparative journalism.”
Richardson’s mission for reparative journalism led to her creating two understudy classes, ‘The Second Draft Project’ and ‘Reporting on Race and Justice,’ where Black history can be remembered and rewritten. “Journalism is described as the first draft of history, and we know for marginalized communities and people that their first draft is at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate,” Richardson said about the importance of the lab and classes. “The Black community deserves a second draft; we deserve our humanity, and these students are the beginning towards our final copy.”
Reporting on Race and Justice (JOUR 580) is a graduate-level course structured to guide students through the intersections of race, justice, and media. Students will explore the historical role of the media in perpetuating racial injustice, especially concerning Black and marginalized communities. Students will learn ways to cover race and justice in ways that elevate underrepresented voices and hold institutions accountable.
The undergraduate course, The Second Draft Project (JOUR 499), enables students to “correct the record” for those misrepresented by the press. Last semester focused on Nipsey Hussle as students produced a podcast highlighting every aspect of Ermias Joseph Asghedom’s (Nipsey Hussle’s real name) life and not solely focused on his gang ties that many news stations hyper-focused on.
“Outside of being a USC student, I am a Black woman who grew up in the same environment as Nipsey Hussle, so I understand the perseverance it takes to survive those conditions.” Janiya Day, a public relations major student, said about covering the Second Draft of Ermias.
Day switched to a journalism major to attend the Nipsey Hussle class to rewrite the first draft that the media released to the public because she understands the danger of a biased narrative.
“I have seen how journalism can be weaponized and how media and news stations reinforce propaganda to perpetuate stereotypes about certain communities. Learning from Dr. Richardson has shown me that these media companies choose to be blatantly ignorant and proves why the Second Draft Project is so important.”
Co-instructor and journalist Jamila Hammond appreciates the work the students put in on the redraft of Nipsey Hussle and the seeds Dr. Richardson is planting into the next generation. “I was a former student of hers in 2022 when I was getting my master’s, and in her Reporting on Race and Justice class, she was talking about using AI technology to do interviews and preserve history,” Hammond said. “It’s amazing seeing how far the lab and project have come in such a short time, and we’re still learning about the tech.”
Richardson and Media 2070 also added AI technology to assist students, as they have invited prominent civil rights figures Ilyasah Shabazz (daughter of Malcolm X), Lora King (daughter of Rodney King), Lee Merritt (a civil rights attorney), and Philonise Floyd (brother of George Floyd) to record themselves using their interface tech, which allows users to have interactive conversations with them.
“This class is a great foundation for the students as journalists and humans. This classroom has become a safe space for all of us, and I’m glad I can contribute to the influence of the next generation.” Hammond said. “The journalism world is changing, and these students, at some point, will show what happens when you encourage the youth not to be afraid to push boundaries and fight for the things they believe in.”
This year the Charlotta Bass fellowship is focused on creating a podcast on the history of Altadena and how the recent wildfires affect the Black communities in the area. To learn more about USC Annenberg, Charlotta Bass Lab, and the Second Draft Program, please visit www.basslab.usc.edu.
Excellent Cover story 🫡