We can’t count all the stories that are living inside of us.
The Philadelphia Safer Journalism Project brings together community members, journalists, therapists, researchers, lawyers and artists to change harmful crime coverage. We develop editorial standards to reduce media harm, promote care practices within journalism, offer reparative histories on newsmaking to address journalism’s coloniality, and foster spaces for community-led coverage on public safety.
What would journalism look like if we embraced the storytelling ways of impacted communities instead of marginalizing them? What would happen if we centered practices from Black and Brown storytellers and media ethicists? Enter the Philadelphia Safer Journalism Project.
We see the need for ethics that reflect the values of our communities, which have historically been excluded from conversations about journalism practices. We do not seek to make a code that’s impractical or perfect; we have created a code of ethics we can be accountable to. This code of ethics grew out of a small cohort of Black and Brown storytellers who aim to foster more community-led news about public safety. Over the course of a year, we aligned values and co-developed practices with community journalists, media ethicists and mutual-aid organizers who joined us as guest contributors.
Media
National Press Foundation
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