What advocates and journalists can learn from news narratives about declarations of racism as a public health crisis
by: Lunden Mason and Heather Gehlert
posted on Monday, January 27, 2025
In 2020, amid a global pandemic and a national reckoning with deeply rooted racism and white supremacy, folks increasingly came to acknowledge racism for what it is — an existential threat to public health. In response, more and more communities began to make formal declarations that racism is a public health crisis.
To better understand the narratives that emerged — and implications for people communicating about public health — researchers at BMSG and The Praxis Project analyzed news coverage of the declarations in a first-of-its-kind study, published in the journal Health Equity. The study, “‘We Have to Move Quickly to Cement this Willingness for Change’: News Narratives About Declarations of Racism as a Public Health Crisis, 2019-2021,” examines print media spanning July 2019 to December 2021.
The study found that news coverage that discussed how structural racism harms health did so mostly as a response to Black Lives Matter protests, recent acts of police violence, and COVID-19 — focusing on key issues of the moment, but largely failing to address deeply rooted historical and ongoing inequities.
Further, the study found that, though the declarations were intended to engage community members in combating racism and its impacts on public health, that intention didn’t show up very much in news coverage, and community voices were largely absent.
The study authors offer recommendations to work toward these goals, including sharing best practices for communicating about declarations of racism as a public health crisis, and building capacity for narrative change and media advocacy.
In the future, we hope to see deeper coverage of the declarations that examines not only their contents, but who played a role — or ought to play a role — in forming or implementing them. We hope to see more community voices featured, more historical context uplifted, and more concrete examples of how marginalized communities are impacted by racism.
To learn more about the study and possibilities for future research, we sat down with its lead author, BMSG Media Researcher Hina Mahmood.
Q&A
What inspired this research on news narratives about declarations of racism as a public health crisis?
As we all remember, in the summer of 2020 there was a lot of anger around the murders of people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and more people than ever really started to pay attention to racial injustices and health inequities, sparking the Black Lives Matter movement. One way that showed up was in communities making formal statements about racism as a public health crisis; some communities had been trying to do this for years, and then suddenly in the summer of 2020 we saw this huge surge in policies being passed.
At BMSG one of the things we’re always curious about is understanding how media reflect — and affect! — what’s happening in the world. We were interested in understanding how journalists were suddenly talking about these policies, especially when we found that there was hardly any coverage of racism as a public health crisis in the year before June of 2020. And then we saw this sudden explosion, with over 800 articles mentioning declarations in just that month alone!
We felt that having a better understanding of the media narrative might give a window into understanding how people were talking and thinking about these policies — and what information they were missing. For instance, we wanted to know whether stories about the declarations were in the news because of health inequities highlighted by COVID-19, or whether police violence made this issue so visible. We also knew that many communities had been pushing for these declarations for a long time — and had been instrumental in getting them passed — and we wanted to know if that kind of community organizing and power building was showing up in the news.
The scope of the study was limited to print. Is that representative of the broader media landscape?
That’s a great point, and definitely something we often grapple with in our projects at BMSG. Print media is still a really important window into the narrative because it often sets the agenda for TV news and, as we’ve seen in other studies, print news stories are often what’s being shared and amplified on social media. We also selected a sample that included both local and national outlets from all over the United States; that diversity of news outlets and regions does, I think, give us a really nuanced and multifaceted understanding of the public conversation that was happening at that time.
Did anything surprise you about the findings of this research? What reactions did you have?
I was surprised to see so little coverage discussing concrete actions for implementing declarations. Less than half the articles addressed that. We have to name concrete actions if we want accountability — if we want to make sure that government leaders follow through on the promises they make. It’s one thing to create a policy; it’s another to ensure it happens.
The research found that community voices were underrepresented in coverage of the declarations. What can advocates and journalists do to correct this imbalance?
I’m disappointed but not surprised. We often find that government voices are much more prevalent in the media than community voices. It would be helpful if everyone worked to reframe their thinking on who they view as “experts” on the issue. People who have lived experience and are most impacted by issues like systemic and structural racism should be at the forefront of news coverage, and it was unfortunate that although the terms “systemic and structural racism” showed up often in our coverage, perspectives from people who could speak to that from lived experience were not there. It’s important for advocates and journalists, as well as government, to seek out community voices and perspectives.
You acknowledge that while coverage of systemic racism is progress, it comes only after police violence against Black Americans instead of in response to longstanding racial and health inequities that predate the summer of 2020. How can advocates and journalists work toward sustained coverage of racial and health inequity — not just in the wake of violence?
It’s unfortunate that it takes crises like the COVID-19 pandemic or incidents of violence against marginalized groups to drive coverage that includes racial and health inequity. I think it’s important that all parties, which includes government, advocates, and communities, work to create sustained coverage of racial and health inequity. For example, government could tie racism as a public health crisis into more of their talking points when they speak to the media and make a conscious effort to encourage journalists to seek out community voices. Advocates, in turn, could help community organizations build relationships with journalists so their perspectives are sought out in stories when they write about issues like structural and systemic racism.
What else would you like to see more of in coverage?
I would like to see journalists not only mention structural racism but also expand on it by articulating examples that illustrate how it impacts marginalized populations whenever possible. I would also like to see deeper coverage of the content of the declarations themselves, as well as who should be involved in forming and implementing them. We had an interesting finding that although the aspiration behind many of the declarations was to engage and center community voices in the policy process, in news coverage of the declarations, community voices were rarely included, and articles rarely lifted up examples of jurisdictions implementing their declarations.
For more information on this media research, check out blog coverage from our partners at The Praxis Project or read the study.