Media 2070 pushes reparations for Black-owned media after centuries of harm

Media 2070 is a project that campaigns for media reparations in a society where mainstream media has amplified anti-Black tropes to enrich themselves.I spoke with Media 2070 executive director Anshantia “Tia” Oso about the role media has played historically and presently in harming Black communities. She and her team offer a blueprint for what reparations for Black-owned media would look like today.“What we know is that our mainstream media outlets have historically profited from slavery and anti-Black content, like the crime beat, and promoting racist tropes like welfare queens and thugs and gangsters and sensationalizing news coverage in an anti-black way in order to enrich themselves,” Oso said. “And so they're exploiting and extracting from Black communities by doing this. So, media reparations would create the resources for Black communities to be able to win control of the media system in ways that we can begin to repair that image.”