ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 News in crisis: Responding to Black Lives Matter: The Black Lives Matter movement was ‘reborn’ in the United States in May 2020 after the very public police killing of Black man George Floyd. Protest demonstrations broke out in many American cities and journalists covering them found themselves in the ‘firing line’, mostly at the hands of local police. One US media freedom group recorded nearly 900 attacks on media covering the protests. Covering the BLM movement also became a mental health issue for journalists. Under the heading ‘Ethics lessons from reporting the BLM movement’, the chapter discusses the unexpected by-products of the rebirth of the movement – issues around how to report race and the major diversity debate triggered in newsrooms across America. Both issues also spread to the United Kingdom and Australia. The chapter asks the question: Can journalism be both impartial and empathetic? The final ‘ethics lesson’ in the chapter looks at the role ‘framing’ plays in the reporting of protests. The case study at the end of the chapter critiques the role of the cartoonist, using examples of three controversial race-related cartoons.
