What to avoid when reporting on marginalized people

The demand for diversity in media representation is increasing among audiences and news organizations. According to a 2020 survey by the Knight Foundation, 69% of Americans believe that representing the diversity of the U.S. population in news coverage is either “very important” or “critical.” 

Although the audience’s interest is clear, many people still think that media organizations aren’t performing as well as they should. The Knight Foundation study explains, “A quarter of Americans (25%) think newsrooms are doing ‘very well’ or ‘well,’ while about four-in-ten (37%) think the media is doing ‘poorly’ or ‘very poorly’ in its diversity efforts.”

As news outlets expand their margins of coverage to include more diverse stories, journalists and editors must find the correct language to use in order to maintain sensitivity, and to create accurate representations. 

With constant developments in language and identity representation, it is imperative for journalists to keep an eye on them by consulting their sources about how they would like to be labeled. When media workers use dated or problematic terminology in their reporting on marginalized people, they can reinforce negative stereotypes and biases that may cause harm to the populations they are trying to include.

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