News organizations covering the fury over the deaths of more than 200 Black people at the hands of police in 2020 and COVID-19’s brutal toll on people of color faced a reckoning of their own: How well did their newsrooms reflect the nation’s diversity and treat minority groups and women?

Three years ago, the Freedom Forum launched the Power Shift Project to combat the culture that allowed #MeToo scandals to fester in the media world. From our first Power Shift Summit in 2018, we learned that harassment and discrimination are inseparable. As we tackled the cultural change needed to produce equitable workplaces for women, we didn’t focus on their challenges alone.

We took on marginalization, discrimination, harassment and bias affecting all who are underrepresented in journalism. We listened to expert voices, learned from research and bore witness to open wounds.

We developed a curriculum called Workplace Integrity. We then trained leaders from media organizations to deliver it in their newsrooms and classrooms across America, which they did successfully. And then 2020 arrived, bringing new challenges.

NEW TRAINING REFLECTS RECKONING ON INEQUITY

Responding to the nationwide reckoning on racial injustice and the COVID-19 pandemic challenges, this year, we are launching an updated version of the Power Shift Project’s signature Workplace Integrity Training. The curriculum was designed by world-class educator and Freedom Forum Fellow Jill Geisler, who is also the Bill Plante Chair in Leadership & Media Integrity at Loyola University Chicago.

We revised this free, one-of-a-kind interactive training so that trainers can teach the curriculum virtually. The goal of this curriculum is to produce workplaces free of harassment, discrimination and incivility, and filled with opportunity, especially for those who have traditionally been denied it.

The Power Shift Project will lead five Train the Trainers sessions in 2021 for newsroom and journalism classroom leaders who want to learn how to present the curriculum in their organization. Our Train the Trainers program consists of two, 2.5-hour online webinars. And thanks to a CBS Corp. grant, both the training and the Workplace Integrity curriculum kit you receive upon completion are free. REGISTER HERE

So far, more than 250 newsroom and classroom leaders have been trained in the curriculum from major media companies, top university journalism programs and journalism affinity groups.

Here’s what two of our trainers have to say about the impact of Workplace Integrity training:

• “It goes beyond theory to real life,” says Jill Williams, deputy editor of Features and Audience at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “I’ve marveled at how people share deeply personal moments about racism, discrimination, sexism and gender inequality in newsrooms and how that has impacted them. … Their candor opened the eyes of many people who are now challenging themselves to do better and be better.”
• Jean Hodges, senior director of News Culture and Communications at Gannett, says, “As I’ve guided people through the Workplace Integrity training, I’ve seen people challenge their own biases and learn from one another about different approaches to difficult conversations. A healthy workplace is foundational for our staff to do their best work and this training offers practical steps to get us there.”

AWARENESS: A FIRST STEP TO MAKING A CHANGE

The problems of inequity and injustice in U.S. newsrooms and the world aren’t easily resolved. But taking a hard look at our history with an eye to a more equitable future is a start. Fifty-three years ago, the Kerner Commission report on the causes of racial unrest that roiled cities in 1967 faulted racism and the news media, in part, for not adequately representing the lives of Black Americans due to a lack of Black journalists.

In September 2020, editors at the Los Angeles Times produced a powerful rebuke of the newspaper’s past coverage, writing that “While the paper has done groundbreaking and important work highlighting the issues faced by communities of color, it has also often displayed at best a blind spot, at worst an outright hostility, for the city’s nonwhite population, one both rooted and reflected in a shortage of Indigenous, Black, Latino, Asian and other people of color in its newsroom.”

While the Los Angeles Times searches for a new top editor, groundbreaking leadership changes are finally happening in other news organizations across the country:

• At MSNBC, Rashida Jones will be the first Black woman to lead a major news network;
• At the Miami Herald, Monica Richardson will be the first Black female executive editor in the newspaper’s 177-year history;
• At the Dow Jones News Fund journalism mentorship program, Washington Post veteran Shirley Carswell is the new executive director.

Systemic change starts now. Resolve for 2021 that your newsroom will be a place of civility and opportunity for all, especially those who have been denied it in the past.

Consider the Power Shift Project’s Workplace Integrity Curriculum your ally on the path to better, more diverse newsrooms and the improved journalism that will result.

We often use our free speech rights at the top of our lungs and in public spaces to protest loudly, proudly and prominently.

When we do that, the First Amendment protects us from government punishment or censorship for what we say or write, particularly on matters of politics and public affairs — generally. Still, not everything we say or do because of such speech is protected.

Over decades, legal guardrails have been set up that indicate where our free speech rights end and where government may be able to step in to penalize speakers or prevent protests and demonstrations. Those guardrails are deliberately limited.

Let’s start by noting the First Amendment offers no legal shield from criminal prosecution for violent acts, individually or as part of a mob, regardless of the cause we might promote or a political position we take. Violence is a crime.

Our free speech rights also do not protect incitement to imminent violence. The key here is a connection to an immediate threat to public safety. In a 1969 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said there is no First Amendment protection for speech that is “directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to produce such action.”

A speaker who demeans a group of people to a crowd, and then points to someone and shouts “There’s one now, go get ’em!” steps outside of free speech protection. But when the violence takes place sometime later, or elsewhere, or the words are not so direct, prosecutors may find it difficult to establish such a direct link.

That task of linking words to actions will confront those who favor criminal charges for incitement against President Donald J. Trump for his Jan. 6 speech to supporters, who then moved the 16 blocks from his rally near the White House to Capitol Hill, where some then violently invaded the U.S. Capitol.

“After this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you,” Trump said. “We’re going walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators, and congressmen and women. We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”

Before Trump spoke, his attorney, Rudy Giuliani, called for “trial by combat.” The courts also have debated whether criminal charges around incitement can be brought for what is called “instructional speech” — for example, producing written materials advising on plans or offering tips to a group planning violent acts. In deciding not to review a lower court decision in 2002, justices offered differing views on whether such instruction could meet the “imminent lawlessness” requirement.

In November, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered a lower court to again hear a case involving DeRay Mckesson, a Black Lives Matter organizer who was sued by a Baton Rouge, La., police officer injured at a protest Mckesson organized in 2016. The lawsuit ultimately could have dramatic dampening impact on public protest if the courts decide organizers can be held personally liable for violence by anyone at an event, under the theory that organizers should have known it was a likely outcome.

What other legal issues swirl around protests and demonstrations?

Courts ruled during the anti-war protests in the 1960s and later that authorities cannot block or disperse protesters just because authorities have an unspecified concern about potential disorder, or because demonstrators are loud or offensive, or even if they temporarily disrupt traffic.

In 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the right to public protest on matters of public interest in a case involving a family-based Kansas church known for its controversial — many say repugnant — anti-gay protests at military funerals. The Westboro Baptist Church was sued by the parents of a U.S. Marine who died in Iraq, claiming intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that such protest was protected by the First Amendment: “Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain … we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate.”

At times, authorities seek to simply ban all public events. Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has asked the U.S. Interior Department to cancel all permits for “public gatherings” in the city, citing both the Capitol riot and COVID-19 health concerns. In dealing with the pandemic, local and state officials nationwide have placed limits or banned a variety of group events, protests and religious services. Health officials cite a 1905 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the government’s quarantine (and vaccination) powers.

A guiding principle in the nation’s history is that government at any level can only infringe on our First Amendments rights by showing an overriding need, such as an immediate threat to public safety, and then only in ways that are the least possible intrusion for the shortest time required to meet the need.

We need to be alert and demand that authorities balance public safety and First Amendment rights in the upcoming days and weeks. The core freedoms that protect us cannot be left unprotected by us.