Black Independent Media Is Rising
As a young journalist in New York City, my first paid reporting job was with the Harlem-based Community News Service, a nonprofit organization that covered the city’s Black and Hispanic communities for major newspapers and broadcast outlets whose staffs often had few, if any, connections in those neighborhoods.
Subscribers included the major New York dailies—The New York Times and The Daily News—as well as CBS-TV and WNBC-TV, all of whom received a daily file of articles written by our staff of twelve minority journalists. Our stories often served as leads that their reporters would then pursue.
Not much has changed since.
The legacy media remains largely led by white executives and editors, which helps explain why coverage of complex issues affecting Black communities—such as health care access, criminal justice, gun violence, and income inequality—often remains limited or superficial.
The Trump administration’s rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts within federal agencies has emboldened many corporate media organizations to scale back or eliminate their own DEI initiatives.
In October 2025, CBS disbanded its Race and Culture Unit, which had been staffed largely by journalists of color. Producer Trey Sherman reported that CBS laid off every person of color on his production team, while white staff members were reassigned to other roles.
The Neiman Journalism Lab, reported that two weeks later, “NBC News eliminated its editorial teams for NBC Asian America, NBC BLK, NBC Latino and NBC OUT (LGBTQ+) …”
In February 2025, BET reported that “Across the industry, Black journalists are being pushed out, laid off, and passed over for leadership roles at a time when we need them more than ever … They didn’t lose their talent. They didn’t lose their drive. They lost their seat at the table because too many newsrooms still see Black journalists as expendable. In fact, only 6 percent of journalists are Black.”
Among the high‑profile Black journalists who have been fired or stepped down are Don Lemon (CNN), Joy Ann Reid, Tiffany Cross, Melissa Harris-Perry, and Rashida Jones (MSNBC).
Likewise, President Trump has publicly disparaged several Black women journalists, including April Ryan (CNN/American Urban Radio Networks), Abby Phillip (CNN), Yamiche Alcindor (PBS NewsHour/NBC News), Rachel Scott (ABC News), Kadia Goba (Semafor), and Harris Faulkner (Fox News).
Unintended Consequences: The Rise of Independent Black Media
Historically, Black journalists have often had fraught relationships with white editorial leadership, frequently citing racism, discrimination, and racially hostile newsroom cultures as factors contributing to their departures from major news organizations.
In September 2025, Perry Bacon, former Washinton Post columnist, now staff writer at The New Republic, wrote, “The Washington Post’s Karen Attiah is the latest prominent Black journalist to lose her job. The trend is a sign of retrenchment in both fighting racism and saving democracy …
“(She) announced that the paper had fired her for posts (she) wrote on social media after the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Her posts (at least the ones I have seen) were not particularly incendiary …. while condemning Kirk’s shooting, (she) argued that the U.S. is rife with political violence and that the country seems to accept it ….”
Ironically, many Black journalists who were fired or pushed out have rebounded by building their own platforms on social media, where they continue to report, analyze, and shape public discourse on their own terms.
The Don Lemon Show, which debuted on YouTube in January 2024, has 1.09 million subscribers. The Daily Mail reported that before it ended, Don Lemon Tonight averaged about 413,000 viewers.
Since it debuted on YouTube in January 2025, The Joy Reid Show has garnered close to 400,000 subscribers. The Daily Beast reported that “MSNBC fired Joy Reid despite her ratings being on their way up, figures obtained by the Daily Beast reveal.”
Native Land Pod, hosted by Angela Rye, Andrew Gillum, and Bakari Sellers, who replaced fired MSNBC host Tiffany Cross) currently on iHeart Podcasts and YouTube was created “In the spirit of the last stanza of the Black National Anthem, we rise from the past, rooted deeply in the soil of ancestral struggles, to build a home, to claim our space.”
These shows join other independent media such as Roland Martin’s Black Star Network (founded in 2021) which features Roland Martin Unfiltered and SiriusXM Urban View that features Black hosts such as Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author and professor Karen Hunter, New York Times best-selling author Clay Cane and civil rights and social justice activist, Rev. Al Sharpton.
A Cautionary Tale
Throughout U.S. history, Black journalists have faced backlash—including threats and violence—for exposing social, political, and legal injustices.
In the 1890s, journalist Ida B. Wells's anti-lynching commentaries in the Free Speech criticized the lynchings and imprisonment of Black men suspected of raping White women. Several days later, a white mob ransacked the newspaper office, destroying the building and its contents.
In 2020, Emmy Award-winning CNN correspondent Omar Jimenez was arrested with two other members of his CNN news crew while covering protests in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Most recently, the Trump’s Department of Justice issued an arrest warrant for Don Lemon in connection with a church protest that he was covering in Minneapolis on January 24. Several days later, a federal judge turned down the request.
Although Lemon avoided arrest, SiriusXM host Reecie Colbert commented, “(Don) is good. He's still doing his thing … but it’s unnerving to be a political target of this lawless white nationalist, authoritarian regime ….
“And even though their attempt to charge him has been thwarted, that does not mean that it is not as sinister and as insidious and as much of an assault on our citizenship as it would have been if they were successful....”
In 2021, Elys Kim, editor in chief for The Sentinel wrote, “In 1827, a group of free Black men founded Freedom’s Journal … the first African American owned and operated newspaper published in the U.S. … to counter racist commentary found in mainstream publications ….”
The founders’ motto— “Too long have others spoken for us… We wish to plead our own cause”—still resonates today. Nearly two hundred years later, Black journalists continue to create and speak from their own diverse platforms.
Attempts to threaten or silence Black voices are real and ongoing, but they cannot stop the growing power and reach of Black independent media.
Photo: Mido Makasardi (courtesy pexels.com)
