Policing the narrative

By Alfred J. Cotton III and Jeffrey Layne Blevins

Abstract: Protests emerged worldwide during the summer of 2020 in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, who was murdered two months after the Louisville Metro Police Department killed Breonna Taylor. The #BlackLivesMatter hashtag has trended on social media and reignited a nation-wide social justice movement, all during a global pandemic. Our study is a critical discourse analysis on how news media quote, source, identify and misidentify members of the Black Lives Matter movement as it took shape on social media during June 2020, as reported in four US newspapers.

Keywords: Black Lives Matter, critical discourse analysis, sourcing

During the summer of 2020, protest emerged worldwide in response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020. Bystander video recorded Chauvin kneeling on Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds before he died while four other officers stood by without intervening. In the video, before he ultimately died, Floyd struggles to tell officers 27 times that he could not breathe.

Prior to Floyd’s murder, on March 13, 2020, plain-clothed police officers in Louisville, Kentucky shot and killed Breonna Taylor, a young Black woman, while serving a no-knock search warrant. Tragically, the officers serving the warrant were at the wrong address that was several miles from where they were supposed to be. On May 15, 2020, just ten days before Floyd would be killed, Taylor’s family filed a wrongful death suit, which brought more media attention to her killing. Although Floyd’s death occurred after Taylor’s, his case appeared to attract more national media attention because of the bystander video.

Nonetheless, the two cases ignited a series of protests across the country that ranged from organized marches to unorganized riots with looting and the burning of buildings. Though most protests involved little violence perpetrated by the protestors, many prominent US news broadcast and cable outlets emphasized the few instances of property damage instead of focusing on the violent behavior of police attempting to silence the protesters (see Chenoweth/Pressman 2020). This inconsistency between events and coverage is significant, as news media operate to define the social reality of a given situation for audiences (Adoni/Mane 1984). Moreover, one of the primary ways that reality is defined is through journalists’ selection and use of sources, and the analysis to be presented here looks to examine the social reality of the protests in the US during the summer of 2020 based on the selection and use of sources.

How social situations are described by journalists through sourcing, language, as well as the selection and arrangement of facts is critical to the broader public discourse and how audiences will interpret, discuss, and understand these kinds of events (see Tracy 2001). Through a critical discourse analysis of news reporting about the political and racial unrest in the US during the summer of 2020 we can contextualize how journalistic sourcing (who they interviewed and quoted) primarily defined the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and related social activities at the time.

Hall et al. (1978) argued, with their theory of primary definition, that elite and official sources (e.g., police, politicians, academics) tend to be the primary sources of information for mainstream journalists. This level of access affords these sources the opportunity to have a say in crafting media narratives around a given issue. As Herman and Chomsky (1988/2002) noted in their propaganda model, mainstream news media are complicit in the maintaining of the status quo insomuch as they benefit from its continuance. By strategically selecting whose voice receives prominence in the larger discourse around an issue, media workers can be strategic about what messages are prominent in the larger discourse, thus defining the social reality for the public. Specific to news coverage of protests and social movements, scholars have found news media tend to avoid speaking to activists and alternative sources (Atton/Wickenden 2005). This allows law enforcement and politicians to become the arbiters of truth for the public and pushes the alternative’s view of the world further into the margins. We explore the sourcing of news reports about the protests from the summer 2020, and question whether journalists in four cities where protests emerged cited activists, voices from social media and other alternative sources during a one-month period from that summer and whether those sources provided support for, or opposition to, the Black Lives Matter movement.

Literature review: Propaganda, new media, and sourcing

How news media portray protests, protesters and others who challenge institutional norms (in this case, policing) can have a significant impact on the sustainability of the causes that protesters and activists are supporting. As Kilgo and Harlow (2019) showed, including anti-Black racism tended to delegitimize those causes through various features of framing and sourcing. Similarly, Umamaheswar (2020) produced somewhat conflicting results: While activists presented their goals positively to the news media, coverage tended to focus on the supposed negative consequences of the movement. Furthermore, as locally based Black Lives Matter activists in Cincinnati described, there is a tendency for »legacy news to inaccurately associate people, activities, and statements« (Blevins/Lee 2022: 41) to members of a particular group. This was despite the local group’s effort to use its social media platforms in a disciplined way to control their own messaging. While Blevins and Lee’s (2022) study referenced a particular group in a single location, we aim here to expand the examination of that kind of phenomenon on a larger scale, including multiple newspapers and cities across the US, while also focusing on a particular part of the propaganda model described by Herman and Chomsky (1988/2002) – namely, sourcing.

The Propaganda Model

Herman and Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent (1988/2002) outlined and discussed the differences between news and propaganda. In highlighting those differences, the authors noted the American communication media ecosystem is sustained and supported by a propaganda model whose intent is to support the status quo, namely the actions of government and private actors (Demuyakor 2021). The claims of the propaganda model are supported using five filters through which big media manufacture the consent of consumers into the democratic process (Broudy/Klaehn 2019). Those filters – media ownership and size, advertising, sourcing, flak (political spin), and anticommunism as ideology – shape the perception for a mostly passive consumer base.

In sum, Herman and Chomsky (1988) made the argument the economic, political and linguistic power afforded large corporate media organizations allows them the ability to filter the ›news fit to print‹ in a way defining the social reality (Adoni/Mane 1984) for their consumers. In this model, those with power can shape the dominant ideologies of public discourse. The implication here is that the so-called free market of American mainstream mass media is in fact a market manipulated by the forces of those powerful entities. All actors in the media system (e.g., journalists and reporters, editors, managers, publishers, advertisers, consumers) described by the propaganda model fit into one of those filters playing a role to perpetuate the status quo further.

Propaganda and new media

Recent scholars have attempted to apply the 1988 model to new media such as the internet and social media. Herman in a retrospective (2000) on Manufacturing Consent, noted the internet was not likely to be the linguistically and politically liberating force for change other scholars predicted.

Fuchs (2019) noted several factors making the propaganda model useful for understanding discourse on social media, while also noting the uniqueness of the context, specifically, »that in computer networks and on networked computers, the production, diffusion and consumption of information converges. Audiences become users and prosumers … different from the broadcast model of communication« (86). Fuchs’ online propaganda model noted the consolidation of ownership in online content, targeted advertising supporting the entire structure, traditional news sources remaining in place as powerful players, flak in bots, politician accounts and hate speech and ideologies of the internet (often in the form of memes) being amplified by algorithms. Fuchs’ (2019) conclusion was that the model is »relevant for the critical study of the internet, social media, and Big Data« (88).

Herman and Chomsky’s (1988/2002) propaganda model had always been concerned with the presence and prevalence of elite voices in the public discourse (Herman 2000). The reliance on these elite information sources is one of the primary driving forces behind the spread of propaganda. They did however make explicit in Manufacturing Consent the role alternative voices can play in mitigating the perpetuation of propaganda:

It is a model of media behavior and performance, not of media effects [emphasis in original]. We explicitly pointed to the existence of alternative media, grassroots information sources and public scepticism [sic] about media truthfulness as important limits on media effectiveness in propaganda service, and we urged the support and more vigorous use of the existing alternatives. (Herman 2000: 103)

That elites are involved in the crafting of narratives involving elites is evident of a »self-protecting system« (Herman 2000: 108) where the owners, funders and sources all come from the same background. Whether focusing the analysis on individual »micro strategies to influence the media« (Herman 2000: 108) or the macro efforts of global conglomerates, their PR agencies and spin rooms, the sources of information as well as the strategies employed by those sources have a profound impact on the continuation of dominant ideologies.

Sourcing alternative communities and on social media

A specific concern of this study is: How did journalistic outlets source their reporting on BLM activities and messaging? Online sourcing practices were supposed to »democratize« (Van Leuven et al. 2018) the news, particularly news involving alternative communities. Empirically, that has not been the case as Deprez and Van Leuven (2018) found that Twitter had been primarily used for maintaining contact with the same elite sources only through a different medium.

Moreover, Hall et al.’s (1978) theory of primary definition argues social hierarchies become the deciding factor in how journalists assign credibility to a source (e.g., police and elites above activists and ordinary citizens). Hall and his colleagues argued the primary definers (both implicitly and explicitly) assign the terms through which counter-definitions and alternative viewpoints are stated in the news.

Research questions

The impact of legacy news reporters relying largely on a limited pool of official and elite sources is those entities are in a privileged position to establish what becomes the primary and hegemonic interpretation of the topic. However, this study questions whether social media platforms helped elevate the narratives of BLM activists through journalistic sourcing. Accordingly, our discourse analysis considers the following research questions:

RQ1: How did newspaper journalists’ reporting on the BLM movement over the summer of 2020 reference social media accounts of official and elite sources, as well as those of BLM activists and supporters?

RQ2: Were there differences in how they referenced official sources vs. activist ones?

RQ3: What was the tone surrounding the use of activist sources?

Critical Discourse Analysis

The questions posed in this study about news reporting on BLM and social media are rooted in the theoretical frameworks of Herman and Chomsky’s (1988/2002) propaganda model and Hall et al.’s (1978) primary definition; and lend themselves well to exploration through a critical discourse analysis. For journalism and mass communication scholars, discourse analysis is a qualitative methodology that is »the study of talk (or text) in context, where research reports use excerpts and their analysis as the central means to make a scholarly argument« (Tracy 2001: 726). Tracy (2001) maintained that context is crucial for interpretive theorists in understanding »communication as a socially situated activity« (727). The context of political and racial unrest in the US in the summer of 2020 provides a backdrop of controversy and texts surrounding that controversy (news reports, the data of this analysis) afforded us the opportunity to answer our research questions. Tracy (2001) argued that discourse analysis allows researchers »to study how people present themselves, manage their relationships, assign responsibility and blame, create organizations, enact culture, persuade others, make sense of social members’ ongoing interactional practices, and so on« (734). Our research questions seek to do precisely this in understanding the contextual meaning of the sources used by journalists in reporting on BLM and related social media activities.

The framework for our analysis comes from Fairclough (2001), who outlined five steps necessary to the critical discourse analysis (CDA): (1) focus on a media case that has a semiotic aspect; (2) identify the narrative ingredients in the story as well as challenges to that story through analysis of: (a) the argumentative practices and semiotic practices located within the story and (b) discuss how these systems of practices are similar or different from practices in other secondary mediated texts; (3) consider what alternative narratives exist to disrupt the initial representation in and of the media case; (4) identify shifts in the discourse over time and possibly ways that this works or happens; and (5) reflect critically on the analysis (adapted from Fairclough 2001: 125). These steps provide a clear path to gaining more meaning of the precarious nature of this specific context using critical discourse analysis.

Critical discourse analysis is a tool for reevaluating texts and the context around which those texts were produced to promote »alternative readings or readings by particular others« (Krippendorff 2012: 65) of those texts. Krippendorff provided a rationale for CDA as the preferred method when seeking to reevaluate the effectiveness of mainstream/status quo readings of texts. By looking specifically at the types of sources used in these news reports from a critical lens, we provide an alternative reading of these texts within the context of the uprisings of summer 2020. Seeking to use CDA as a means to understand »all practices are practices of production« (Fairclough 2001), we can situate these news reports as tools used by mainstream media either to further subjugate alternative voices to the margins or as tools whose purpose is to give voice to the voiceless; a common journalism maxim. What makes CDA a critical technique is the emphasis on »the divergence, the distances, the oppositions, the differences, the relations of its various scientific discourses« (Foucault 1991: 55; as cited in Locke 2004). In other words, the focus of our analysis is on how we can look at the practices of source selection in these media as maintaining the status quo even when the common reading is of these texts as subversive merely for writing about BLM and these protests.

We follow Fairclough’s (2001) framework and furthermore, modeling Dawson’s (2018) ethnographic content analysis of newspaper op-eds, we analyze the discourse of news articles from local papers in cities with notable BLM protest activity during throughout the summer of 2020 to discover how local news reporting was describing BLM activists on social media. How did reporting on BLM and its organizational activities on social media present the activists – as peaceful protesters organizing for social justice or rioting mobs of looters?

Following Dawson’s (2018) procedures for analysis, the paper used a purposive sample of a handful of local newspapers across the US to include city newspapers, as urban areas were most likely to have BLM-related social justice demonstrations over the summer of 2020. This study excluded those cities (i.e., Minneapolis and Louisville) where focusing events (Birkland 1997) (i.e., the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, respectively) had occurred to have an assessment of how local journalism was covering BLM’s organization through social media without being particularly close to any specific set of events. In addition, city newspapers in Minneapolis and Louisville, where local law enforcement was directly involved in the triggering events (i.e., police officers were involved in the killings of Floyd and Taylor), would be more likely to include official government sources in their reporting on BLM activities. Our aim was to focus on what people in cities outside of where the triggering events took place were learning about the movement from local newspapers. We limited our analysis to newspapers since local television news tends to focus on visuals and covering events as they happen, which might limit sources to who is there and what is happening at that moment.

Our purposive sample of US newspapers included the largest daily as identified by Muck Rack for unique visitors per month (UVM) (Mercier 2019) from each of the four geographic regions (Northeast, Midwest, South and West) recognized by the US Census Bureau (n.d.). Those newspapers included the New York Times (Northeast), Los Angeles Times (West), Houston Chronicle (South) and Chicago Tribune (Midwest). ProQuest was used to search the New York Times, Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune newspapers, and the Houston Chronicle’s website for its coverage during the month of June 2020. The key words were »Black Lives Matter,« »social media,« »Facebook,« »Instagram« and »Twitter.« The date range of the search was the month of June 2020, which followed the May 25, 2020, murder of George Floyd. This coincides with nationwide protests and organizations becoming more widespread nationwide, and a week after the killing itself, which was likely to dominate news coverage in the immediate aftermath. The focus was not on the reporting of Floyd’s killing, but coverage of the BLM movement and related social media activities.

In our analysis we counted the number of references to BLM social media activity in the stories, as well as the number of times official/elite sources were referenced compared to activists/organizers. However, modelling Dawson’s (2018) ethnographic content analysis in which the »meaning of the content – rather than the quantity of the data – remains paramount throughout the analysis« (302) we created loosely structured coding schemas to categorize »official/elite« sources vs. »activist/alternative« (see Table 1 below where we describe social and cultural norms as reflected in journalistic sourcing).

Table 1
Social and cultural norms as reflected in journalistic sourcing

Official/Elite Sources	Activist/Alternative
Examples: any government official (mayor, city council member, police officer, business owners, etc.).	Examples: BLM member, other social justice group members, or anyone identified as an organizer, protester, etc.)
Official/elite sources tend to convey or imply traditional social and cultural norms, such as law-and-order, business and economic concerns, public safety, reliance on policing and city government to address social concerns.	Activist/alternative sources tend to convey or imply social and cultural norms, such as the failure of policing and city government to protect marginalized and minority members of its community and stress the importance of social justice over business and economic concerns.

Source: Authors’ own

Sources considered »official« or »elite« included anyone who was identified as government officials, including police, mayor, city council members, business owners, etc. Sources were coded as »activist« or »alternative« if they were identified as a BLM member, member of a social justice group, organizer, protester, etc. Furthermore, we paid close attention to how BLM members were described in the news stories (e.g., as social justice advocates or rioters, looters, etc.).

Policing the narrative: Reporting on BLM during the summer of 2020

Here we present a critical discourse analysis of the narratives from each of the newspapers under examination, beginning in the geographic East and moving West. In the section that follows we will discuss critical themes across the four newspapers and conclude our analysis.

New York

Reporting in the New York Times (NYT) used both elite and alternative sources among its 27 articles. When reporting focused on the protests directly, NYT reporters often spoke directly with activists on the ground. These sources typically were in support of the protests and protesters.

Specific to social media sourcing, NYT reporters used both direct and second-hand social media sources. NYT journalists used Twitter, Instagram and Facebook to gather information both from elites and alternative sources. In the Times, reporters referenced tweets and Instagram posts BLM protesters made critical of elites (Pogrebin 2020a). These activists used social media as a platform for expressing frustration with the status quo as well as with the way these elites portray them and their cause. Reporters in the Times also noted how activists used social media both to recruit (Kim 2020) and fundraise (Goldmacher 2020).

New York Times reporters produced several feature articles on protesters and activists during the month of June 2020. Many focused on girls’ and young women’s involvement in the movement (Bennett 2020; Goldberg 2020). Those reporters used traditional and social media sourcing to speak to these young women.

When writing about elites, NYT writers did something unusual on a couple instances. The reporters used social media as a tool for gathering information and testimony from people typically classified as elites but who were either supportive of the movement or less than antagonistic. One example is an article by Southall and Sandoval (2020) that referenced Facebook posts of Black New York Police Department officers denouncing Derek Chauvin and encouraging »good cops« to speak up. Another from Rubinstein (2020) focused on Jumaane Williams, an New York City public advocate and former city councilmember who emerged as a media darling during these summer protests with references to protest crowds chanting his name:

»You all ready for this?« Linda Sarsour, a prominent activist, said to the crowd of hundreds, shortly before they were to march across the Brooklyn Bridge. »When I say ›mayor,‹ you say ›Jumaane.‹ «
The crowd heartily obliged.
There’s just one catch: Williams was not running for mayor in 2021.

Similarly, the NYT referenced video from Facebook and Twitter of police chiefs marching with protesters (Sandoval/Bogel-Burroughs 2020) and state representatives who are supportive of demilitarizing police forces (Edmondson 2020). Though, it should be noted, the focus of the article referencing the video of police chiefs marching with protesters was actually on a fatal shooting by police of a man pointing a gun at them. The shooting, according to the article (citing police), was not related to demonstrations in the city.

The few instances of negative commentary typically focused on looting and property damage that occurred during some protests. One article that was generally supportive of the protests, made a point to delineate between looters and protesters, arguing the looters’ rationale for property damage and theft were tenuous (MacFarquhar et al. 2020).

The overall reporting in the Times was generally positive regarding portrayals of the protests. New York Times writers struck a healthy balance of utilizing both elite and alternative sources in their reporting. When a politician, business owner or police officer made a disparaging remark about a protester or the movement, NYT reporters often provided context for those statements and responses from alternative sources (Feuer/Sandoval 2020; Pogrebin 2020a, 2020b). The narrative of June 2020 in the New York Times was not monolithic. The Times portrayed protest in New York City that month as necessary from the perspective of protesters, while also making a point to differentiate between those engaged in property damage, violence and looting and other protesters (Hong/Rashbaum 2020). The implication from these data suggests this may have been an active editorial decision for reporters to diversify their sourcing by speaking to alternative sources and making use of social media.

Chicago

The Chicago Tribune used more elite sources than alternative ones in their 24 articles reporting on Chicago protests in June 2020, but the portrayal of the demonstrations was still fairly positive. Typical sources in the Tribune were academics (Yin 2020), officers and local politicians (Hinkel/Sweeney 2020; Pearson 2020; Pratt et al. 2020). The reporting here was not necessarily as positive about the protests and protesters as in The New York Times but was not particularly antagonistic toward them either.

Tribune writers used both elite and alternative social media sources often for reporting on Chicago protests. Chicago artists used Instagram to show off their protest-inspired art painting boarded up storefronts (Borrelli 2020) and to speak out about counter protesters painting over their murals (Rodríguez Presa 2020). Local politicians used social media to complain about protesters and decisions made by opponents (Pearson 2020). Another common refrain from Chicago-area politicians was the perceived hypocrisy over COVID-19-related social distancing mandates not being enforced for protesters (Pearson 2020). Even with those cited complaints, Tribune reporters frequently noted protesters’ use of facemasks (Borrelli 2020; Crepeau 2020b; Pratt et al. 2020; Schmich 2020); some even using masks as political statements like those printed with the phrase »I can’t breathe« (Stevens et al. 2020), as well as their attempts at social distancing (Buckley 2020; Crepeau et al. 2020; Schoenberg 2020) during these demonstrations.

Tribune writers also referenced social media use by protesters who posted about protests they attended as well as those who used social media for recruitment. One use of social media was for people to post how the movement allowed them to speak about race and racism in ways they could not have previously. Chicago restaurant workers posted on Instagram about their experiences dealing with racism in the industry and from owners (Crepeau et al. 2020; Wong 2020). Some social media posts from elites served to perpetuate the very reason the Black Lives Matter movement persists. In one article, police officers took to Facebook to insult and threaten protesters (Crepeau 2020a).

The negative articles typically focused on property damage and looting as the central feature of their BLM coverage. One article mentioned a tweet from another Tribune reporter who observed »looters« (Sullivan 2020) exchanging t-shirts. Another referenced a video from Facebook showing the aftermath of a retired police officer who was apparently killed while trying to intervene during the looting of the storefront of one of his friends (Kass 2020a). Though, the Tribune also reported protesters used Facebook to reach out and find people to help clean up after the looting (Schmich 2020).

Not all elite sources referenced in the Chicago Tribune were against the protests and the movement. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker both were quoted expressing solidarity with protesters. Lightfoot tweeted support for her own police reform initiative as well as criticisms of excessive force by Chicago Police Department officers (Hinkel 2020). The Tribune also noted activists were worried Lightfoot would spend funds from the CARES Act (The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act; the purpose of which is for municipalities to provide relief to segments of their cities negatively affected by the coronavirus pandemic) to support police (Byrne/Pratt 2020). Pritzker admonished Donald Trump for his tweets calling for shooting as a response to looting but, it should be noted, this occurred amidst Pritzker’s call for more police and the deployment of the National Guard in response to the looting in Chicago and across Illinois (Pratt et al. 2020).

The overall reporting was generally positive in the Chicago Tribune. Reporters for the Tribune referenced online and traditional sources and utilized elite and alternative sources. The context of the coronavirus pandemic was also prevalent in the reporting here with numerous articles mentioning social distancing and mask use as well as rising case numbers in Chicago and across Illinois (Pratt et al., 2020; Stevens 2020). Another important piece of context was the frequent mention of force used by police in arresting and attacking protesters. Tribune reporters spoke directly to protesters who claimed they were assaulted by police during demonstrations and many who felt they were unjustly arrested during the protests that summer (Anderson et al. 2020; Crepeau 2020a; Elejalde-Ruiz 2020; Kass 2020b; Marx 2020).

Houston

The Houston Chronicle had only four articles that fit the search criteria for our study, which is noteworthy considering that George Floyd was a native Houstonian and his death and subsequent protest and demonstrations against his killing took place across the nation – and was prominent in national news coverage. Furthermore, local news outlets have a familiar practice of looking for local story angles to national or international news (Buttry 2016).

Among the four articles only in the Houston Chronicle, there was only a single source that was coded as activist/alternative, which was a high school athlete who posted on his Twitter account his decision to take a knee during the national anthem at his high school graduation. The other eight sources in the articles were coded as official/elite.

Perhaps, more notably, none of the articles were direct coverage of BLM marches or social media activity in Houston. This could be because there was little protest activity, but the lack of coverage is still interesting since local news media often try to find a local angle to national stories. Rather, the four stories included the following: a June 5 report about a local restaurant owner who was criticized for a Facebook post he made in which he characterized a BLM march as a »parade;« the June 9 story about a high school athlete taking a knee during the national anthem at his high school graduation ceremony; a June 12 report about three people who were arrested and accused of being part of »antifa«; and a June 24 story about the lack of diversity at CrossFit-affiliated gyms in Houston in the wake of (now former) CrossFit CEO’s insensitive comments on Twitter about BLM.

While none of these stories directly depicted BLM activists and organizers as looters or a radical mob, the voices of BLM activists and organizers were noticeably absent in these reports. For instance, the report of three arrested and accused of being »antifa« members included zero interviews of people affiliated with BLM, who may have likely disaffiliated their movement from the antifa trope frequently presented in right-leaning media outlets, such as Fox News, OAN and Newsmax. Rather, the article included sources from the Texas Department of Public Safety and led with a quote from Texas Senator Ted Cruz during a Fox News broadcast. Later in the story, a criminologist from the University of Maryland and a historian from Rutgers University were quoted and raised concerns about »antifa« labelling, but again, no one representing BLM was represented to voice their own narrative.

Los Angeles

The Los Angeles Times had 11 articles that fit the search terms for this analysis but showed a similar lack of balance between activist/alternative and official/elite sources, especially from social media. Only two sources coded »activist/alternative« had their social media posts referenced (and in a single story) against 18 official/elite sources whose social media content was sourced. There was a greater balance in the overall sourcing between activist/alternative (17 references) and official/elites (23 references), although nine of the activist/alternative sources were in a single story about elderly white people supporting BLM. Moreover, only two of the nine protesters quoted in that story were identified as being »among a handful of Black Americans at the protest.«

The June 17 story described above – »[s]eniors risk virus to march for social justice« – was the only one to directly cover on the street marches from the perspective of activists. Four reports were about the media and entertainment industry, including a June 2 story about Facebook employees who were dissatisfied with their CEO’s tolerance of then President Trump’s incendiary post including the line »when the looting starts, the shooting starts;« another article about popular media brands, such as Amazon, CBS and Netflix aligning with the BLM movement; and a June 5 analysis of how local television news in Los Angeles has been covering the protests.

One story, on June 9, covered the theater community’s response to the BLM movement by focusing on one theater producer’s effort through a Facebook page called »Theater Folks of Color« that tracked which theatre companies were not supporting BLM through a »Not Speaking Out List.«

Five other stories examined area policing and mayoral responses during the protests, including a June 19 story about the resignation of an area mayor after pressure on social media and a June 23 report about criticism facing Los Angeles’ mayor for his handling of the protests. Three of these stories about policing are worthy of closer examination.

Another June 23 story reports the arrest of three people for vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign, which is particularly interesting as one of the suspects was a Ventura County Sheriff’s employee and another was an employee of the county’s District Attorney’s office. The story’s only direct reference to BLM is that the sign’s owner posted surveillance video on their Facebook page of the vandalism, which allowed police to identify the suspected culprits. However, the sign owner, a BLM supporter, was a not source for the article.

A third story on June 23 covers a city council panel recommending a $133 million cut to the Los Angeles’ Police Department (LAPD) budget. Although, the article notes a proposal by »Black Lives Matter-Los Angeles and other grass roots groups« called »The People’s Budget«; the story did not interview or source any person representing the group. Similarly, a June 28 report refers generally to a »proposal pushed by Black Lives Matter« that »would practically eliminate LAPD and shovel that money into housing, mental health services, crime prevention and other things.« However, it does not interview or quote anyone from BLM.

In summary, the Los Angeles Times coverage in the early part of June 2020 seemed more focused on the news and entertainment industry’s response to the BLM movement, rather than the movement itself. In the later part of the month, the focus goes more toward examining official government responses to the protests, but there appears to be a strong tendency to rely more on local government sources, even when those government sources are the target of criticism in the article. Proposals offered by BLM organizers are mentioned generally but are not directly sourced to provide context to their own suggested policies.

Conclusions: Discourse and reality in reporting on BLM

Across all four papers our analysis showed that »sourcing« is still a critical component of the propaganda model, especially as we consider the contextual meaning of sources within the broader narratives provided by news media. The findings were different depending on the city. The New York Times and the Chicago Tribune had a proportionally higher number of alternative sources, which corresponded with more favorable coverage of BLM protesters. In the cases of Houston and Los Angeles, the selection and exclusion of certain types of sources supported the status quo of who are newsmakers, as grassroots organizers on the ground and on social media were virtually ignored by the major newspapers in those cities. In Los Angeles, BLM supporters organized on social media, activated on the ground and proffered specific public policy proposals but their voices did not transcend in the reporting discourse to match the established elites. Rather, the social media messages of government officials, business leaders, celebrities and other elites were the primary definers of the BLM movement in their city – no matter whether those messages were incendiary or supportive.

The findings suggest future scholars could explore, ethnographically, the practices, motivations and newsroom routines that led to the decisions of some journalists to reach out to activists, advocates and allies of the Black Lives Matter Movement and other journalists to make primary the perspective of law enforcement and elites. Asking those questions of newsroom managers and editors, publishers and reporters could help broaden the knowledge on what perpetuates propaganda.

The answer to this study’s question of the tone of journalistic discourse about non-elite BLM activists has less relevance when those voices are essentially ignored in the mainstream news narrative. Even with the democratized social media ecosystem providing an array of alternative sources for journalists, the news media is still a business that appears to be primarily focused on elites. This could explain the divergence between the findings from city to city. A critical conclusion to the findings might suggest reporters and news workers for the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune could have recognized the economic benefit in diversifying their reporting on BLM if these favorable portrayals correlated with better circulation and traffic. What is shown is city newspapers in Houston and Los Angeles provided platforms for elites to signal their social justice virtues, or to be called out for their incendiary, hateful or racist proclivities. What was newsworthy about the BLM movement in June of 2020 was primarily defined through the lens of media, business, celebrities, government officials and other elite white people.

The findings suggest newsroom routines that determine whether journalists use alternative or elite sources when reporting on the Black Lives Matter Movement are consistent with the propaganda model (Herman/Chomsky 1988/2002). We are in a time where newsrooms are shrinking and newspapers are being consolidated into larger corporate umbrellas. Corporations advertise their support for Black Lives Matter and other social justice causes in the pages of these newspapers or remain silent when this is considered to be strategically better. Internet troll farms and disinformation organizations are actively working to disinform the public about BLM, police brutality and systemic racism (O’Sullivan 2008). This study provides evidence that the sources of information in journalism about BLM have an impact on the discourse about BLM, thus defining the reality of what the Black Lives Matter Movement is.

About the Authors

Alfred J. Cotton III, PhD is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Cincinnati where he teaches courses on race and reporting. Contact: cottonaj@ucmail.uc.edu.

Jeffrey Layne Blevins, PhD is a professor in the Department of Journalism and the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Cincinnati. His research focuses on social media, social justice, and politics. Contact: Jeffrey.Blevins@UC.edu.

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Citation

Alfred J. Cotton III; Jeffrey Layne Blevins: Policing the narrative. A critical discourse analysis of reporting on the #BlackLivesMatter social media movement. In: Journalism Research, Vol. 8 (1), 2025, pp. 7-27. DOI: 10.1453/2569-152X-12025-14994-en

ISSN

2569-152X

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1453/2569-152X-12025-14994-en

First published online

April 2025