On April 8, the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences hosted “Media Reparations in Our Digital Era.” The panel presentation and discussion centered on how the media harms communities and the potential interventions that can drive reparative actions.
The panelists discussed how media institutions commit acts of harm through platform deregulation, exclusion, censorship, false representation, among others, all contributing to distrust and polarization, leaving Americans living in split realities.
Amity Paye, vice president of narrative change at Liberation Ventures, defined reparations as the “process of making amends or fixing a harm.”
Reparations are often limited to the idea of financial compensation for mistreatment, but Paye presents the concept as a multi-step process of reckoning, acknowledgment, accountability and redress.
“All four pieces are really needed for healing,” Paye says.
Reckoning requires an understanding of what happened, who created harm and who was harmed. Acknowledgment necessitates a public admission and apology. Accountability is a commitment to take action, and redress is “rehabilitation” or restoration of what was broken.
“An apology without true reckoning of what happened is hollow,” Paye said, emphasizing the interdependency of each step to create tangible change.
Meredith D. Clark, an associate professor of race and political communication at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, spoke about reparative media work through concrete action. Clark encouraged attendees to consider how the raw materials for reparation, or the skills and abilities each person has, can be used for reparative work.
“The raw materials for reparation are still there,” Clark said. “They are embodied in me and embodied in you and the choice for both of us is to think of how we will use them.”
Clark outlined five steps for doing reparative work. First, she said, one has to find their “guide.” She gave the example of her own guide, Mary Church Turell, who was a Black suffragist, journalist and activist who used her raw materials to advocate for social programs for women of color. Turell’s use of the “power of the pen,” Clark explained, was the raw material that she used to promote justice and freedom.
She talked about the other steps, which included assembling a team of support, gathering tools and resources, knowing one’s own history and one’s opposition’s history and allowing this information to inform one’s future.
Clark also spoke about the term “radical imagination,” or the belief of striving for a fundamentally different and just future.
“Whether it is dangerous or dangerously freeing to us, radical imagination allows us to inform the future we want to see or build,” Clark said.
Nora Benavidez, senior counsel and director of digital justice & civil rights at Free Press, also spoke about the importance of action in media reparations and combating authoritarianism. Benavidez, who has been a movement lawyer for over a decade, considers herself a disrupter, advocating for civil and human rights as democracy is being challenged.
She discussed how the public is becoming increasingly disconnected from reality at a moment when accountability is most needed. Public trust in the media, according to Benavidez, is down. While the belief that public media like PBS and NPR are weapons of manipulation on the rise, along with calls they should be defunded. Benavidez stated this belief is a serious issue for democracy.
Benavidez addressed growing concerns about authoritarianism in the U.S. and how it curtails rights, citing the thousands of executive orders that have impacted the LGBTQIA+ community, people of color, immigrants, scientific funding and universities.
She compared the current administration to the growing number of countries that are criminalizing reporting and dissent. Still, she urged attendees to “reject the tendency to turn away,” saying, “we are now at … the beginning stages of nuclear threat to our speech.”
During the discussion portion of the event, Benavidez encouraged attendees to “know your sphere of influence,” or the actions that an individual can make to create change. This also includes knowing whose beliefs and opinions can be swayed.
Paye built on these ideas, acknowledging that changing minds does not happen overnight and often requires small steps and a willingness to “meet people where they are.” She expressed that it is important not to treat people with opposing or misinformed views as “irrational” or “crazy” because “there’s often truth for people there.”
Clark encouraged “getting to the core of the deep story,” or the foundation their beliefs are grounded in, and giving them the tools to distinguish between which parts of the story are true and which are based on falsehoods.
She reiterated that “nothing we are experiencing in this moment is new,” and much can be learned from looking at how leaders who lived through periods of social unrest and authoritarianism navigated those challenges and how they produced tangible change.
Benavidez emphasized that despite the challenges of fighting for one’s rights in times of extreme uncertainty and political tumult, it is necessary for people to persist through action.
Paye also added that social movements require community building, calling it “the most meaningful thing you can do towards any type of resistance.”
“Dignity is the utmost thing to fight for, the ability to exist, say words, to fight for [one’s] family and livelihood,” Benavidez said.
Grace Chai can be reached at [email protected] and Bella Astrofsky can be reached at [email protected].
