A midwest newspaper apologizes for decades of racist coverage

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An editor for one of the Kansas City star, one of the most influential newspapers in the midwest, has apologized for the publication’s decades of racist coverage.

In a series of stories, the Kansas City star examined how it ignored the concerns and achievements of Black residents and helped keep Kansas City segregated stating it has “disenfranchised, ignored and scorned generations of Black Kansas Citians” for the last 140 years.

The newspaper said a intricate examination of its past coverage and that of its longtime sister newspaper, the Kansas City Times, documented how they often wrote about Black residents only as criminals or people living in crime-ridden neighborhoods and ignored segregation in Kansas City, Missouri, and its public schools.

“It is well past time for an apology, acknowledging, as we do so, that the sins of our past still reverberate today,” Star President and Editor Mike Fannin wrote.

The apology and its series of stories, follows a Los Angeles Times editorial in September apologizing for past racially biased coverage. The Montgomery, Alabama, Advertiser in 2018 apologized for “shameful” decades of coverage of lynchings, and National Geographic magazine apologized the same year for its past racist coverage.

Moving forward, the Kansas City Star says it is encouraging other Kansas City businesses to examine their own histories as well, and also announced the formation of The Kansas City Star Advisory Board to help facilitate coverage in the future.