Alexis Johnson, a Black reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, was “removed” from covering any of the city’s protests over George Floyd‘s police killing in Minneapolis, according to the union representing the newspaper’s journalists.
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh claimed in a letter to its members that “the powers that be” told Johnson that “she showed bias and as such, could no longer cover anything related to the protests of the police murder of George Floyd and the systemic racism that for too long has been a dirty segment of our national fabric.”
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On Tuesday, Post-Gazette Executive Editor Keith C. Burris published an op-ed addressing the controversy in no uncertain terms that Johnson called “dismissive, insensitive, and worst of all — dehumanizing.”
Burris, who is also vice president and editorial director of Block Newspapers, which owns the Post-Gazette, took the unusual step of calling the Guild and Johnson and Santiago liars, denied racism informed the decision to keep them from covering the protests and refused to apologize.
The disagreement with no resolution in sight comes at a time when the parts of the nation are reckoning its past in the face of hundreds of years of systemic racism with structural obstacles designed to prevent people of color — especially Black folks — from achieving any semblance of equality, be it socially or economically.
