African Americans and the media from Courtney Dudley on Vimeo.

This is a little video I helped V shoot for her Citizen Journalism class. We talk a lot about the history of African-Americans in the media (remember OJ on the cover of TIME?) in our journalism intro classes. But these issues, like the lack of coverage and the inaccurate representation of the black community, seem to leave the forefront of our minds somewhere between J315 and becoming a "real" writer, reporter, photojournalist, or whatever.

"The responsibility in covering the news is to provide an accurate representation of society and if you are excluding people you are perpetuating stereotypes of people and you are not fulfilling your obligation as a journalist. This isn't about 'this is a nice thing to do,' this is really about good journalism." -Dr. Paula Poindexter

It's something we all need to remember. Sometimes I get really idealistic, inspired and borderline crazy when talking/thinking/pondering about journalism, especially the photo kind. I mean, we have the power to make change... really, we do! We can't make people read the news, we can only go so far as to provide it. So lets be and write and show the change we want to see in the world. Lets give an accurate representation of society so that society has the knowledge and the information that it needs to change and improve.