FIX EXCLUSIVES
This institute follows trends of ‘making journalists activists,’ according to experts.
A DePaul University journalism institute focused on “racial justice” is drawing scrutiny from media experts who say it contributes to skepticism of the news.
In partnership with former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, DePaul aims to advance racial justice by challenging “inequitable media practices” and promoting “narrative change by employing asset-framing, solutions journalism and other innovative journalism practices towards more inclusive storytelling.”
The “Institute for Journalism and Racial Justice” will also work closely with Lightfoot’s “I.C.E. Accountability Project,” an initiative aimed at recording interactions with law enforcement personnel and the public.
“We aim to preserve evidence, to facilitate transparency and accountability,” Lightfoot said about her project. “We also intend to unmask those agents who have been alleged to have committed crimes or to have engaged in other unlawful conduct.”
The initiative dovetails well with a directive from Lightfoot’s successor, Brandon Johnson, who ordered all police officers to record ICE agents and report them to the Cook County prosecutor for potential criminal charges. However, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen Burke previously said she had not been consulted on the directive.
The new institute is needed because certain groups are affected by biases in media reporting, according to Judith McCray, executive director of the program.
The College Fix attempted to contact McCray by email for comment, as well as Alexandra Murphy, the dean of DePaul’s College of Communication, but neither responded. The Fix reached out via email to both and left a voicemail with DePaul in the past several weeks. Public Narrative, which is assisting with the program, also did not respond to a request for comment.
However, two media experts raised their own bias concerns – about the new journalism program.
“When you call something the Institute for journalism and racial justice, you’re saying a point of journalism is to push a political agenda,” Tim Graham, executive editor of NewsBusters, told The Fix on a phone interview. “I mean, we can all be in favor of justice, but when the liberals start saying racial justice or social justice, they mean liberal victory.”
Graham noted that DePaul’s Institute for Journalism and Racial Justice is only the most recent piece of a decades-long trend which culminates in journalists not pursuing truth, but their own social goals.
“I was in college in the 1980s and they were trying to teach us what they called the Social Responsibility theory of journalism, that it’s supposed to advance social goals,” Graham said. NewsBusters is under the Media Research Center, a conservative group that tracks journalism bias.
In an email conversation, The Fix spoke to Professor Jeff McCall, a professor of media studies at DePauw University.
McCall agreed with Graham that journalism and communications schools have been trending towards a more biased approach to reporting.
“There is a growing trend in college media and journalism programs to engage in promoting progressive causes through advocacy reporting. This, of course, is all protected by the First Amendment,” McCall said. “A problem here, however, is that such journalism activism disrupts many of the professional journalism standards that have tried to define the industry for decades [such as] fairness, balance, covering all perspectives, objectivity.”
McCall also said Lightfoot’s involvement could also raise “credibility” issues.
“The close association of this media initiative to Lori Lightfoot raises concerns,” he said. “The Institute likely wants to raise its profile by getting the support of a prominent politician. But the institute’s credibility will be instantly questioned by such an association.”
At an announcement for the institute’s launch, Lightfoot focused on identity politics and how the center would be used to promote racial minorities.
“You know, we are a majority minority city, and I think this gives us the opportunity to build another bridge between Black and brown communities here in Chicago,” Lightfoot said at the initiative’s launch. “But it’s about empowering people who are being oppressed by an overreaching federal government.”
As mayor, Lightfoot faced a lawsuit after she excluded white journalists from interviewing her in May 2021, on the occasion of her two-anniversary in office. She later dropped the racially exclusionary policy after a Daily Caller reporter, Thomas Catenacci, sued her.
Both Professor McCall and Tim Graham said they expect the center to be heavily focused on activism.
“Public trust in journalism is at an all time low [and] creating journalism institutes as activist sites will do nothing to restore public confidence,” McCall said.
Graham also commented that schools like DePaul, Columbia University, and Northwestern University are “creating journalists to be activists, and… the only way to really resist that is for us to actually do the content analysis that points out the flaws in the and the dramatic tilt of this coverage.”
MORE: Lori Lightfoot to teach public policy at University of Michigan
