Comparing Coverage of Black Protests in Mainstream Newswires and Black Newspapers

This working paper compares mainstream newswires and Black newspapers in their coverage of Black protest events 1994-2010 with an emphasis on the differences between sources in attention to different kinds of issues. Perceptions of what Black collection is “about” vary by source. There is low overlap between sources. Even though many more events were identified in Black newspapers than newswires and the focus is on Black protest events, 61% of the events identified in the newswires were not mentioned in the Black newspapers. The large majority (70%) of events were reported only once in one news source. Our focus is not on overall comprehensiveness, but on selection and attention: what issues and event types are different sources most interested in. Besides comparing newswires to Black newspapers, we also compare Black newspaper coverage of events in the newspaper’s state to coverage of events elsewhere. All source types gave significant attention to criminal legal issues, especially issues of police violence. All source types give more coverage to larger events, to events that are parts of larger episodes of contention, to events involving more police action, and to events spanning multiple days. Newswires and non-local Black newspaper coverage gives more attention to violent events and to Black history and solidarity events. White-centric newswires give more attention to White-centric issues (affirmative action, Confederate symbols, White supremacist groups) and to inter-group violence involving Black people. Local Black newspaper coverage gives much more attention to issues with a state or local focus and to worker issues. Non-local Black newspaper coverage gives more attention to Black involvement in national issues. We discuss the importance of these differences for the differing collective memories of Black and White Americans and the importance of incorporating the Black gaze into research on Black movements in the US.