One after the other, a number of news organizations across Canada and the United States announced in June the same change in their language guidelines: to capitalize the word “Black” when referring to Black people and culture.
The Globe and Mail made its announcement on June 3, followed by the CBC on June 8 and The Canadian Press the next day.
In the U.S., a number of news organizations, including the Los Angeles Times, NBC, The Associated Press and the New York Times, also announced the same change to their style guides.
The announcements by so many news organizations coincided with the massive Black Lives Matter protests across the United States and Canada that have led to widespread reflection about the impact of racism across society, including in policing, the justice system, education, politics and the press.
A Black Lives Matter protester at City Hall Park in New York. Activists and journalists of colour have been calling on news organizations to change the way they write about and report on Black communities for years, but it was the groundswell of protest in the wake of the killing of George Floyd that prompted change. (Yuki Iwamura/The Associated Press)
Journalism style guides are, by nature, rigid and slow to change, purposefully upholding established rules and conventions. But many activists, academics and journalists of colour say the language used by the news media to describe diverse communities is particularly slow to catch up because there’s a lack of diverse voices in news organizations responsible for making such decisions.
Slow change
In 1930, American activist W.E.B. Du Bois was successful in getting the New York Times to start writing the word “Negro” with a capital N.
He had been campaigning for the change since the 1920s. He called the use of a “small letter for the name of 12 million Americans and 200 million human beings a personal insult.”
Many Black people have been writing Black with a capital “B” since the 1960s, inspired by the Black Power movement started by civil rights activist Stokely Carmichael.
There have been calls for publications to follow suit for the past two decades.
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May reinvigorated the Black Lives Matter movement not only in the U.S. but in more than 60 countries worldwide, including here in Canada.
A copy of the 17th edition of The Canadian Press Stylebook. The Canadian Press and a number of other news outlets in Canada and the U.S. recently changed their style and now capitalize the word ‘Black’ when referring to Black people and culture. (Kashmala Fida)
Newsrooms across North America are now taking a hard look at themselves, as journalists of colour, particularly Black journalists, point out the many ways in which news organizations have let them down.
And one of those ways has been through language.
Spelling “Black” with a capital “B” has been a common practice of publications that focus on the Black community, such as Essence and Ebony magazines, for example, for more than a decade. It is also offered as an option by Oxford and Merriam-Webster dictionaries.
Black writers and activists have long petitioned for the change in news copy.
James McCarten, stylebook editor at The Canadian Press, the authoritative guide for Canadian news writing and editing, said although the guide is the standard that news media follow, it does not set the course for changes in language.
“It does not chart the path; it follows the path that the users of the language are blazing,” he said.
The Canadian Press prefers not to rush into making changes to its style guide, he said, “for the simple reason that constantly changing a style essentially means you don’t have a style.”
He said The Canadian Press had to wait and see if “Black” with a capital “B” was consistently used before revising its rule.
“When you make a change, you can’t have to go back on it. You have to be sure that this is where the language is going to go, this is where the usage is going to go.”
At the CBC, the style guide says the lowercased version was based on a longstanding convention of using lowercase letters for “racial, ethnic and nationality labels not directly rooted in proper nouns. (e.g., African, European and Latino, but ‘black,’ ‘white’ and ‘brown’).”
The rationale to make the change was to “respect frequently voiced preferences of Black people” and “reflect increasingly common usage in Canada,” according to standards editor Blair Shewchuk.
The Globe and Mail gave a similar explanation in its public statement.
Lack of representation
Handel Wright, director of the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Culture, Identity and Education in Vancouver, said it helps if newsrooms listen to communities on how they would like to be represented, but it is even more important that members of those communities are actually part of newsrooms.
“Part of what needs to happen is that the media need to be more representative of the group that they’re speaking about. So … who is reporting about different groups makes a difference,” he said.
“I think it is reflective of the fact that maybe the media itself is not diverse enough that the media is always playing the catch-up game.”
The 2016 Canadian census found nearly a quarter of citizens identified as Black, Indigenous or a person of colour (BIPOC).
CBC/Radio-Canada tracks the diversity of its workforce with a voluntary survey. As of 2019, visible minorities made up 16.5 per cent of the workforce in English services and 6.5 per cent of the workforce in French services. Indigenous staff accounted for 3.6 per cent and 1.1 per cent, respectively. Among CBC/Radio-Canada executives, 4.1 per cent were visible minorities, and none were Indigenous.
The Globe and Mail did a voluntary survey in 2018 in which 60 per cent of staff participated. The results showed that 23 per cent of staff identified as visible minorities.
Maclean’s and the Toronto Star both changed their style to “Black” with a capital “B” before other Canadian outlets after columnists of colour in their newsrooms called for the change.
When Maclean’s did so in 2015, it was because of contributing editor Andray Domise.
Andray Domise, a contributing editor and columnist at Maclean’s magazine, is critical of how the news media covered the early protests that followed the police killing of Floyd in Minneapolis. (Andray Domise for Toronto City Council – Ward 2/Facebook)
Although glad to see the change, Domise nonetheless questions why it took Maclean’s so long to make it.
“Why wasn’t it a standard before I got there?” he said.
As for the outlets who made the same change last month, he questions the motives behind it.
“Why not before? What changed? What was the difference between then and now?” he said.
“Personally, I don’t think anything has changed except that we are seeing an uprising happening. To me, it’s almost an esthetic means of placating the masses, rather than engaging in substance of change.”
Anthony Collins, style chief for the Toronto Star, said the newspaper changed its spelling of “Black” in 2017 because Shree Paradkar, the paper’s race and gender columnist, explained why it was necessary.
He acknowledged that a lack of newsroom diversity helps explain why outlets are slow to respond to language changes that communities want to see in the media.
“I think there’s often a lot of uncertainty about what term to use and a lot of nervousness around using the wrong term, which, frankly, I think just comes from having a newsroom that’s not as diverse as it should be,” he said.
“I think the Star, you know, has a broad readership, and we serve a very diverse community. And I think if a community doesn’t see itself reflected in our stories, or misrepresented somehow, I think that’s incredibly injurious to public trust in our journalism.”
Describing communities appropriately
Despite the change to the word “Black” and other style guide adjustments, journalists of colour and activists agree that news organizations and journalists still have a long way to go when it comes to using the appropriate language to describe Indigenous and Black people and people of colour.
Another relatively recent language change at news organizations such as CBC, the Toronto Star and The Canadian Press includes encouraging journalists to specify, if possible, what Indigenous nation a person belongs to instead of just referring to them generically as Indigenous.
Rachel Decoste, a community activist in Ottawa, wants the news media to use the term ‘enslaved Africans’ instead of ‘slaves’ when discussing slavery. (Jean Delisle/CBC)
But Rachel Decoste, a community activist in Ottawa who had been advocating for the CBC to change its guideline on the word “Black” for years, says more changes are needed.
She also wants newsrooms to use the term “enslaved Africans” instead of “slaves” when discussing slavery. The change started in academic circles as a way to describe enslaved individuals as people first, commodities second.
“Now that we are writing ‘Black’ with a capital ‘B,’ perhaps our ancestors could also get the respect that they deserve,” Decoste said.
Beyond style guides
And although style and language guides might change, there are many other factors that go into telling a story.
For example, some of the early coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests in American and Canadian media was criticized for mirroring the language used in reporting on the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s, particularly in the way violence was often attributed to protesters rather than police.
Domise said some of the reporting following the killing of Floyd was quick to describe the protests as “violent” as soon as property damage was involved.
“No, the violence was already pre-existing,” he said of this type of coverage.
“The violence was what precipitated the protest in the first place. A police officer suffocated somebody to death in the middle of the street. You can see the anti-Blackness seeping out of the narrative.
“I was alive in the early 2000s, in the 1990s and 1980s, and nothing has changed in terms of the way the media writes about Black people. So, how far have we come along? We haven’t.”
Montreal Alouettes wide receiver Tyson Philpot has announced he will be out for the rest of the CFL season.
The Delta, B.C., native posted the news on his Instagram page Thursday.
“To Be Continued. Shoutout my team, the fans of the CFL and the whole city of Montreal! I can’t wait to be back healthy and write this next chapter in 2025,” the statement read.
Philpot, 24, injured his foot in a 33-23 win over the Hamilton Tiger-Cats on Aug. 10 and was placed on the six-game injured list the next week.
The six-foot-one, 195-pound receiver had 58 receptions, 779 yards and five touchdowns in nine games for the league-leading Alouettes in his third season.
Philpot scored the game-winning touchdown in Montreal’s Grey Cup win last season to punctuate a six-reception, 63-yard performance.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 12, 2024.
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. (AP) — Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa sustained a concussion for the third time in his NFL career, leaving his team’s game Thursday night against Buffalo after running into defensive back Damar Hamlin and hitting the back of his head against the turf.
Tagovailoa remained down for about two minutes before getting to his feet and walking to the sideline after the play in the third quarter. He made his way to the tunnel not long afterward, looking into the stands before smiling and departing toward the locker room.
The Dolphins needed almost no time before announcing it was a concussion. The team said he had two during the 2022 season, and Tagovailoa was diagnosed with another concussion when he was a college player at Alabama.
Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel said Tagovailoa would get “proper procedural evaluation” and “appropriate care” on Friday.
“The furthest thing from my mind is, ‘What is the timeline?’ We just need to evaluate and just worry about my teammate, like the rest of the guys are,” McDaniel said. “We’ll get more information tomorrow and take it day by day from here.”
Some players saw Tagovailoa in the locker room after the game and said they were encouraged. Tagovailoa spoke with some players and then went home after the game, McDaniel said.
“I have a lot of love for Tua, built a great relationship with him,” said quarterback Skylar Thompson, who replaced Tagovailoa after the injury. “You care about the person more than the player and everybody in the organization would say the same thing. Just really praying for Tua and hopefully everything will come out all right.”
Tagovailoa signed a four-year, $212 million extension before this season — a deal that makes him one of the highest-paid players in the NFL — and was the NFL’s leading passer in Week 1 this season. Tagovailoa left with the Dolphins trailing 31-10, and that was the final score.
“If you know Tua outside of football, you can’t help but feel for him,” Bills quarterback Josh Allen said on Amazon following the game. “He’s a great football player but he’s an even greater human being. He’s one of the best humans on the planet. I’ve got a lot of love for him and I’m just praying for him and his family, hoping everything’s OK. But it’s tough, man. This game of football that we play, it’s got its highs and it’s got its lows — and this is one of the lows.”
Tagovailoa’s college years and first three NFL seasons were marred by injury, though he positioned himself for a big pay bump with an injury-free and productive 2023 as he led the Dolphins into the playoffs. He threw for 29 touchdowns and a league-best 4,624 yards last year.
When, or if, he can come back this season is anyone’s guess. Tagovailoa said in April 2023 that the concussions he had in the 2022 season left him contemplating his playing future. “I think I considered it for a time,” he said then, when asked if he considered stepping away from the game to protect himself.
McDaniel said it’s not his place to say if Tagovailoa should return to football. “He’ll be evaluated and we’ll have conversations and progress as appropriate,” McDaniel said.
Tagovailoa was hurt Thursday on a fourth-down keeper with about 4:30 left in the third. He went straight ahead into Hamlin and did not slide, leading with his right shoulder instead.
Hamlin was the player who suffered a cardiac arrest after making a tackle during a Monday night game in January 2023 at Cincinnati, causing the NFL to suspend a pivotal game that quickly lost significance in the aftermath of a scary scene that unfolded in front of a national television audience.
Tagovailoa wound up on his back, both his hands in the air and Bills players immediately pointed at him as if to suggest there was an injury. Dolphins center Aaron Brewer quickly did the same, waving to the sideline.
Tagovailoa appeared to be making a fist with his right hand as he lay on the ground. It was movement consistent with something that is referred to as the “fencing response,” which can be common after a traumatic brain injury.
Tagovailoa eventually got to his feet. McDaniel grabbed the side of his quarterback’s head and gave him a kiss on the cheek as Tagovailoa departed. Thompson came into the game to take Tagovailoa’s spot.
“I love Tua on and off the football field,” Bills edge Von Miller said. “I’m a huge fan of him. I can empathize and sympathize with him because I’ve been there. I wish him the best.”
Tagovailoa’s history with concussions — and how he has since worked to avoid them — is a huge part of the story of his career, and now comes to the forefront once again.
He had at least two concussions during the 2022 season. He was hurt in a Week 3 game against Buffalo and cleared concussion protocol, though he appeared disoriented on that play but returned to the game.
The NFL later changed its concussion protocol to mandate that if a player shows possible concussion symptoms — including a lack of balance or stability — he must sit out the rest of the game.
Less than a week later, in a Thursday night game at Cincinnati, Tagovailoa was concussed on a scary hit that briefly knocked him unconscious and led to him being taken off the field on a stretcher.
His second known concussion of that season came in a December game against Green Bay, and he didn’t play for the rest of the 2022 season. After that, Tagovailoa began studying ways where he may be able to fall more safely and protect himself against further injury — including studying jiu-jitsu.
“I’m not worried about anything that’s out of my hands,” McDaniel said. “I’m just worried about the human being.”
NEW YORK (AP) — When her husband turns on the television to hear news about the upcoming presidential election, that’s often a signal for Lori Johnson Malveaux to leave the room.
It can get to be too much. Often, she’ll go to a TV in another room to watch a movie on the Hallmark Channel or BET. She craves something comforting and entertaining. And in that, she has company.
While about half of Americans say they are following political news “extremely” or “very” closely, about 6 in 10 say they need to limit how much information they consume about the government and politics to avoid feeling overloaded or fatigued, according to a new survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and USAFacts.
Make no mistake: Malveaux plans to vote. She always does. “I just get to the point where I don’t want to hear the rhetoric,” she said.
The 54-year-old Democrat said she’s most bothered when she hears people on the news telling her that something she saw with her own eyes — like the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — didn’t really happen.
“I feel like I’m being gaslit. That’s the way to put it,” she said.
Sometimes it feels like ‘a bombardment’
Caleb Pack, 23, a Republican from Ardmore, Oklahoma, who works in IT, tries to keep informed through the news feeds on his phone, which is stocked with a variety of sources, including CNN, Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press.
Yet sometimes, Pack says, it seems like a bombardment.
“It’s good to know what’s going on, but both sides are pulling a little bit extreme,” he said. “It just feels like it’s a conversation piece everywhere, and it’s hard to escape it.”
Media fatigue isn’t a new phenomenon. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in late 2019 found roughly two in three Americans felt worn out by the amount of news there is, about the same as in a poll taken in early 2018. During the 2016 presidential campaign, about 6 in 10 people felt overloaded by campaign news.
But it can be particularly acute with news related to politics. The AP-NORC/USAFacts poll found that half of Americans feel a need to limit their consumption of information related to crime or overseas conflicts, while only about 4 in 10 are limiting news about the economy and jobs.
It’s easy to understand, with television outlets like CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC full of political talk and a wide array of political news online, sometimes complicated by disinformation.
“There’s a glut of information,” said Richard Coffin, director of research and advocacy for USAFacts, “and people are having a hard time figuring out what is true or not.”
Women are more likely to feel they need to limit media
In the AP-NORC poll, about 6 in 10 men said they follow news about elections and politics at least “very” closely, compared to about half of women. For all types of news, not just politics, women are more likely than men to report the need to limit their media consumption, the survey found.
White adults are also more likely than Black or Hispanic adults to say they need to limit media consumption on politics, the poll found.
Kaleb Aravzo, 19, a Democrat, gets a baseline of news by listening to National Public Radio in the morning at home in Logan, Utah. Too much politics, particularly when he’s on social media sites like TikTok and Instagram, can trigger anxiety and depression.
“If it pops up on my page when I’m on social media,” he said, “I’ll just scroll past it.”
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Sanders reported from Washington. David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder.
The AP poll of 1,019 adults was conducted July 29-August 8, 2024, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for all respondents is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.
