Free Press is Critical, but its not enough

Date: 10/19/2025
Publication: Richmond Times Dispatch

When we look to the future of Richmond’s media landscape, it can be tempting to focus on preserving the past. After all, it suddenly looks like a “free press” is no longer a guarantee in this country, based on some of the Trump administration’s recent actions.

But while a “free” press is vital for Richmond’s future, it’s not enough. The press needs to be more than free. It needs to be just.

Recall that we’re celebrating the 175th anniversary of the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Do the math and you’ll realize that it was founded in 1850 — when nearly all Black Virginians were still enslaved. And at the time, the RTD thought that was a good thing.

The Times-Dispatch opposed the abolition of slavery, as the newspaper serving the capital of the Confederacy. “Nothing could be more preposterous, nothing more stupid, than the dogma that slavery is a curse to the country,” began a page-one lead story in 1861. A century later during the Civil Rights Movement, The Times-Dispatch was a “relentless” supporter of the organized campaign to block school desegregation after the Supreme Court’s historic order in Brown v. Board of Education.

To its credit, the RTD has apologized for this past coverage, more than once, and its coverage of the racial justice protests of 2020 was award-winning. Nor is the RTD alone in this. Our focus on press freedom over press justice has allowed the free press to serve as an enemy of justice many times. As the media reparations project, Media 2070, summarizes it: “Media organizations were complicit in the slave trade and profited off of chattel slavery … racist journalism has led to countless lynchings; Southern broadcast stations aired vociferous opposition to integration.”

But true racial and social justice goes beyond apologies, and beyond anodyne promises to “ignore race.” Justice means ensuring there are equitable outcomes for all people. That requires taking concrete action to correct for centuries of oppression that have created intergenerational poverty. A just press is one that understands the role it has played in perpetuating those systems and works to fix it.

To envision the media landscape we’d want for Richmond 50 years in the future requires the RTD and our other media institutions to truly reckon with this past — and it requires the building of entirely new institutions as well.

Historically, it was Black-owned publications like Richmond Planet that first published both the stories of local lynchings and hospital grave robberies that sparked local involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, and the movement’s victories, such as Richmond’s historic streetcar boycott. In my own research, I’ve often found that the only records that even exist of Black lives from much of the 20th century are in articles from the Black press of that era. They told our stories when nobody else would.

Telling those stories is one of the most vital roles the press can play in a just society — bearing witness to the inherent dignity of every human being, even when that is an unpopular opinion or against the government’s wishes. Certainly the Confederate government did not want those enslaved portrayed as human in 1850 when the RTD was founded, and it’s chilling to hear similarities in the language today’s federal government is using about non-white residents of our country.

That’s why Richmond’s future needs a strengthened, vibrant, community-owned Black press. As the Media 2070 project and others have suggested in history, that means more than just a single newspaper. It means entire digital platforms, and publishing industries that are minority- and woman-owned, so that many different voices from our community can be heard. As today’s hyper-targeted community, our Latino immigrant neighbors need Spanish-language publications as well.

Our community also needs the skills to drive these industries, which means investments in education and adult training in community journalism, photography, filmmaking, digital media production and all the technical skills needed to power today’s communication industry.

It also means public investment in a wide variety of public media. We need nonprofit and noncommercial news, radio and television networks dedicated to culture, education and public affairs, providing programming for the benefit of Black Richmonders. At the same time, the commercial market needs careful regulation to ensure that Black communities get full access to the internet without discrimination.