Michael Kilian

Cincinnati Enquirer

Among the many ways racial injustice shows up in American society is how people of color are portrayed or perceived in the news media. I’ve heard it said ruefully that African-Americans tend to show up mainly in coverage of entertainment, sports, crime and poverty.

That is a legitimate perception built on generations of hurt and disappointment felt by African-Americans. In so many walks of life, it can seem the myriad accomplishments of proud men and women are ignored or minimized. Much of the journalism lauding those accomplishments tends to occur at predictable times such as around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and in Black History Month. And, too often, we don’t give the proper push and promotion to the positive stories we publish.

I raise all this in the aftermath of a highly unfortunate Page 1 presentation we published Tuesday about Cincinnati City Council candidates owing back taxes. Reasonable people can disagree about the choice to do such stories; that’s a conversation for a different day. Where we failed, clearly, was in choosing to publish the headshots of six Council candidates, all of them African-Americans, as our main images. As one of my African-American colleagues put it succinctly, such a presentation cries out “Guilty.” What he was referring to is the historical tendency of news organizations to play up images of people of color when there was apparent wrong-doing or failure.

In an era when white supremacy is seeing a resurgence and public figures feel comfortable promoting racial division, our design raised doubts about our intentions.

For that, we apologize. We accept the criticism that’s been directed at our actions by the NAACP and others. We recognize we’ve caused pain to many readers.

We are revisiting our internal procedures for vetting online and print content. We have had and will have many conversations, internally and externally, about how we do better in the future. And we will engage with and listen to people who want to be heard.

In the end, responsibility lies with news organizations such as The Enquirer to build stronger connections with the full diversity of residents we serve. When most people in power in government, business and the nonprofit world are white, those tend to be the connections that historically have been strongest. Changing that pattern means revisiting how we as a news provider create meaningful dialogue with the communities we serve and then applying the products of that dialogue to our news coverage.

And we will.

Please email your thoughts and concerns to Interim Editor Michael Kilian at mkilian@enquirer.com.