Race & Media in the Twin Cities

The event was part of the Where Do We Go From Here webinar series.

As part of its Where Do We Go From Here webinar series, the Hubbard School hosted Race & Media in the Twin Cities. 

New Hubbard School professor of journalism, diversity and equality Danielle Kilgo brought her research on race and media to a conversation with Omar Jimenez of CNN (Jimenez was arrested in Minneapolis during the unrest of summer 2020) and Kyndell Harkness, assistant managing editor of diversity and community at the Star Tribune. Along with Director Elisia Cohen, the group talked about the challenges and experiences of reporting on race and racism in Minneapolis and beyond, and how media organizations can reckon with and build upon lessons from 2020. 

“In the room where we're looking at images and deciding on headlines and picking things out, there were some tough conversations about images we should show. The photographers were talking about making sure that they weren't being stereotypical in the images that they were producing and we were really being fairly conscious about that when we were talking about putting things in print.” - Kyndell Harkness, talking about the George Floyd events.

“What I think has to happen is that, this attention to police violence, this attention to police presence, in certain communities and lack of presence in other communities has to be regularly covered before it becomes an event again.” - Danielle Kilgo 

“Conceptually I think there's this idea of what bias is… Honestly there's, not a single reporter out there that does not have bias, and I think finally coming to terms with that realization is something that I think all of us need to get on the same page with. It's just acknowledging the fact that I come from a certain set of backgrounds, I come from a certain set of circumstances that are going to make me inherently view a story in a different lens than someone else.” - Omar Jimenez 

Discover all the videos from the Where Do We Go From Here series.