Nicole Childers, the executive producer of the National Public Radio's News & Notes, came to Drexel University to speak about the responsibility of the "black press" to raise awareness of racism in America, emphasizing the urgent need to re-examine race at both the personal and societal level through public dialogue. Owing to the proliferation of blogs and online forums, the public has a uniquely high-profile avenue for contributing to the discussion. The events surrounding the Jena 6 case, according to Childers, hint at the potential strength of this new-found voice.
Only standing-room was available on October 4th, 2007, as Dr. Kali Gross introduced Childers to an audience of approximately forty students, faculty and visitors. Gross, Director of Africana Studies, presented a brief biography of her guest that included roles such as an internship for Diane Sawyer's staff at ABC news and associate producer for World News Tonight with Peter Jennings. Among other awards, Childers has received two Emmys for journalism and a George Foster Peabody award. She joined News & Notes in 2005.
Childers began her talk by explaining NPR's objective in creating News & Notes, which was to blur the roles of media consumer and contributor with content generated largely through a "circular" dialogue between the show's host, its guests and its audience. The show's mission, Childers said, is to "illuminate the diversity of the African-American experience." The "black show" on NPR has an online following that is invaluable to the show. In addition to joining in conversation, News & Notes listeners and readers identify interesting themes, submit essays, and enrich the subject-matter with personal views and experiences.
Childers praised a posting about the Jena 6 on News & Views, the program's blog, for receiving the "greatest number of responses in NPR history." She then asked, "Who [in the room] has heard of the Jena 6?" Nearly everyone raised a hand.
Though the story began in the late summer of 2006, Childers explained that the controversy in Louisiana was nearly unheard of until very recently. On September 11th, 2007, News & Notes producer, Geoffery Bennet, posted "The Jena 6 in Photos," the record-breaking blog that brought the under-reported story to mind and, for many, to life. Childers, clearly having told the story once or twice, recounted the details of the Jena 6.
The first incident occurred on August 31st, 2006, in Jena, Louisiana. The white students at Jena High School, Childers said, had claimed an area under a large tree—the so-called "white tree"—as their regular hang-out. On that day a black freshman asked the principal of the school if he could sit under the "white tree." He was told, Childers mentioned, that "students could sit wherever they wanted," so he walked over and sat beneath the tree. The next morning nooses were hanging from the tree. The three white students responsible faced expulsion, but the school's Board of Education and superintendent intervened and commuted their punishment. No civil or criminal charges were brought against the students.
The Jena High School's handling of the hate crime, which was at one point dismissed as an "adolescent prank," ignited racial tension between its black and white students. In response, the school invited the La Salle Parish District Attorney, J. Reed Walters, to speak at an impromptu assembly on September 6th, 2006. He warned the students, who had segregated themselves into white and black sections in the auditorium, that he could "take [their] lives away with a stroke of [his] pen." Childers mentioned that, in many reports, witnesses said he was only looking at the black students when he made the comment.
The News & Notes executive listed a number of flagrant incidents of violence against black students, which occurred in the months after the assembly as racial tension between the classmates continued to mount. Walters ignored all of them. Then, on December 6th, 2006, a white student was beaten by six black students at Jena High School. Allegedly, the student was taunting them and called several of them "nigger" just prior to the incident, which left him with a swollen eye and other injuries to his face and hands.
The six black teens, now known as the Jena 6, have been charged with second-degree attempted murder. One of the six, Jesse Ray Beard, who was 14 at the time, was eventually charged as a juvenile. Sixteen-year-old Mychal Bell, however, was charged as an adult, and, in June, was convicted by an all-white jury of aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. The would-be murder weapon, according to the district attorney, was a shoe. His conviction was eventually overturned by the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeal, thanks, in part, to the huge outcry from the black community. Childers credited the public response to the steadily rising (though still disproportionately few, compared to whites) number of black bloggers popping up across the country and abroad.
Coverage of the Jena 6 case by the "Big 3" news giants—CNN, MSNBC, and FOX News—had been negligible. Bennet's photo essay this past September was not News & Notes first piece on the Jena 6. However, these eleven images of the town and the people involved goaded readers to respond in record-breaking numbers on the website, as well as in e-mails that "were flying into [Childers'] inbox." She noted that the reactions were, essentially, of three types: black respondents, she said, avowed that racism continues to be a big issue; some whites chimed in with what Childers called the "bury-them-under-the-jail" response; and others were outraged. She shared several representative (and telling) responses, including the following:
I never thought that something like this could happen in my lifetime… I know that racism still exists… but I had always thought it was more hidden than it used to be, even in Louisiana.
[Jena] is ringing in the past prejudice and bigotry of the south. It is a disgrace that these boys are in jail for a fight. What makes anyone think that this is an injustice?… This is just another case of black people not wanting to take responsibility for their actions… Blacks have it great in this country… You want to be equal; then stop trying to be above everyone else. You haven't done anything to deserve it. There is no doubt that some places, especially in the south, still live in a Jim Crow mentality. The problem is, when something like this happens no one waits for facts, they just see color.
It makes me very afraid for my two young black sons growing up in America to know that, being black, you are going to have to work a little harder… than the average white man… [To be] a black man in America, I guess you have to allow people to walk all over [you] and not feel anger or frustration, and not get fed up. Now I am not saying what those boys did was right and they should be punished, but to take their whole life away! What happened in Jena was a reaction to an action, as wrong as it was, and [it's] the reaction [that is] getting the attention.
On September 20th, 2007, hundreds of supporters gathered in Jena for a civil rights march to demand justice in light of what many believed were egregious and racially-motivated charges. Childers emphasized that the protest was largely organized by bloggers, who became online activists by introducing the case of the Jena 6 to an international audience, rallying support, raising money for mounting legal costs and circulating a petition urging the D.A. to drop the charges. Walters was presented with 43,000 signed petitions. Unfortunately, as Childers pointed out, free speech's nefarious tag-along is hate speech. In the days following the rally, News & Notes reported that a neo-Nazi blogger published the addresses and phone numbers of five of the six defendants, encouraging readers to go to Louisiana and "lynch" them. Childers reported that, in an interview for News & Notes, the Mayor of Jena responded, "I thank you, white nationalists, for your show of support," a statement he later recanted, saying he "didn't know he was being interviewed. [He] thought they were just talking."
It is clear, for Childers, that racism still exists behind the seemingly watchful eye of mass media. The "black press," along with the public's support, must keep the spotlight on racism, especially when no one else is looking.
At the end of the talk, attendees were encouraged to ask questions and to share their reactions to the lecture. Citing the Megan Williams case, a young woman conceded her frustration with the mainstream media's coverage of race-related incidents. Another attendee asked why these stories, like Megan Williams' and that of the Jena 6, are only followed by the "black press."
Childers reminded her audience of the case of Megan Williams, in which a twenty-year-old African-American woman who was tortured and held captive for six days in a West Virginia trailer home. Her kidnappers were six white men and women who beat, raped and stabbed their victim. There was no national news coverage for Williams while she was missing, Childers said, referencing the overwhelming majority of national reports on white missing-persons. The silence continued at the major news networks, the audience learned, when Megan Williams was found.
For Childers, there was a fundamental explanation: African Americans are under-represented in the "Big 3" networks. The history of discrimination in the workplace, and particularly in high-profile jobs, has persisted through the years due, in part, to a cycle of minority under-representation. The networks, Childers said, don't understand African Americans or the intricacies of race-relations from a minority perspective. So it follows that these companies may be less appealing to black journalists seeking employment, who, in general, may tend toward networks that establish more libertarian—and thus more encompassing—contributor guidelines (and the cycle continues). This of course is oversimplified, but the larger trend of ethnic under-representation in all facets of media leads to the maintenance of mainstream broadcasters who, Childers speculates, feel ill-equipped to comment on the racial component in stories like the Jena 6 and that of Megan Williams—so they are avoided.
Childers added, "After war, politics, economy and natural disasters, any air-time left is filled with fluff—something to lighten the mood." Word of the both the Williams and Jena 6 cases were spread by bloggers and various news shows that partner with the community to open the lines of communication on race-related issues. Equal coverage of the racially-charged stories will have profound effects on racism in America, and on cases like the Jena 6, the injustices of which, Childers said, cannot be addressed by legislation that holds on to archaic qualifiers of what constitutes hate crimes. The people's media needs to re-examine the collective psychology of a country haunted by the trauma of its past. "The future," Childers predicted, "is in online activism. Power is in online activism. You've got to pay attention."