26 Dec Kansas City Star Newspaper Finally Apologizes For Decades Of Racist Reporting After Black Reporter Puts Them On Blast

It’s crazy to think how long they got away with this…

Source: Isabel Pavia / Getty

The Kansas City Star has published an apology to go along with several articles detailing their own history of racist coverage toward African-Americans. According to a piece in the NYTimes, an education reporter for the Star named Mará Rose Williams began to uncover her employer’s sordid history after she was sent to cover the Black Lives Matter rallies over the summer.

Williams noticed that what she saw actually happening in the streets was a far cry from what the paper had been reporting consistently since the beginning of the national uprising. A large majority of the Star’s reporting was about “looting”, “vandalism”, and protesters physically confronting the police. However, Mará witnessed an overly-aggressive police force that seemed to be inciting more incidents of violence than actually stopping them. After 22 years of employment at the Star, Williams smelled a rat and did some digging, “What I started to find just kind of sickened me.”

Her revelations lead her directly to her embarrassed editors who agreed that enough was enough and that amends needed to be made.

“Before I say more, I feel it to be my moral obligation to express what is in the hearts and minds of the leadership and staff of an organization that is nearly as old as the city it loves and covers: We are sorry,” wrote Mike Fannin, editor of The Star, in the opening essay, “The Truth in Black and White.”