Issac Bailey, a 2014 Nieman Fellow, is a journalist, race relations seminar creator and facilitator, and the author of “Why Didn’t We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland” (Other Press, October 2020). He is also the author of “My Brother Moochie: Regaining Dignity in the Face of Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the American South” (Other Press, 2018). He has contributed to Politico, CNN.com, Time, and The Washington Post. He is a former columnist and senior writer for The Sun News in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and he was a 2011 recipient of a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism for stories about a child protection case. The state subsequently revamped the way it handles such cases.
Journalists, even those whose job it is to set standards, continue to have a hard time determining if the word “racism” applies in a story. Here’s a simple rule of thumb: Treat the word like you treat every other word. Read more
I’m beginning to wonder if journalists have been bending over backward so far to disprove the “liberal media” narrative that they have unwittingly become advocates for conservatives and, more importantly, have been misinforming their audiences at critical junctions of our … Read more
I was born in Charleston, South Carolina, the city where the Civil War began and attended a school system still segregated and underfunded nearly half a century after Brown v. Board of Education, a system that didn’t know quite how … Read more
I recently wrote a short blog post on TheRoot.com. It highlighted reporting by USA Today about the Trump administration’s decision to increase deportations to Mauritania, a country known for black slavery in the 21st century. I alluded … Read more
We are amid another shallow media debate, this time triggered by the New Yorker’s decision to first invite, then disinvite Steve Bannon from The New Yorker Festival. Very Serious and Very Concerned People are up in arms … Read more
I know what it feels like to be in the crosshairs of “the mob,” online and otherwise, black and white. It’s not pleasant. But there’s no reason for a journalist to respond in kind. That tension was at the heart … Read more
I couldn’t get past the pearl bracelet. There is much to chew on about the story of Ali Watkins—whose email and phone records were seized by federal prosecutors investigating James Wolfe, a former senior aide to the … Read more
We helped change the course of history. We likely made the difference in a close presidential election. We helped Russia undermine our democracy. We compounded the self-righteous mistakes by the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We helped make … Read more
I didn’t know it at the time, but my career in journalism began in St. Stephen, South Carolina when I was a 9-year-old boy—the year my hero big brother murdered a man and briefly faced the death … Read more
The story isn’t whether MSNBC’s Joy Ann Reid was homophobic a decade ago, supports the LBGTQ community now and should be commended for that growth. She should. It’s not about whether she’s a likable person who provides a strong, necessary … Read more
