Oligarchic takeovers and consolidation of mainstream media outlets have led to increasing hostility, harassment and political attacks against journalists — it’s dangerous to be a member of the Fourth Estate, according to independent journalist Georgia Fort and opinion writer Karen Attiah.
The pair spoke recently of the twists and turns they have endured at “America @250: A journalism reckoning” — a convening of journalists, funders and civic leaders at Impact House — reflecting on the past, present and future state of a free press in America.
Fort is an Emmy Award-winning, Minnesota-based independent journalist who was one of the two media members granted access to the courtroom when Derek Chauvin was sentenced for the murder of George Floyd. Attiah is the founder of the Resistance Summer School, an independent educational initiative exploring race, media and power. The pair shared their experiences in journalism as Black women, a career that Attiah sees as “a calling” and Fort says is “a public service.”
Fort was thrust into the fight for the First Amendment when federal agents arrested her at her home in connection with a Jan. 18 protest she covered in St. Paul, Minnesota, where a church pastor was rumored to be working as a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. Fort is among several people indicted, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, and charged with violating federal laws protecting places of worship. Fort pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial in Minnesota.
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Fort founded the social enterprise newsroom BLCK Press, and the nonprofit Center for Broadcast Journalism, where she’s mobilizing the next generation to advance representation in media.
The mom of three has been telling community stories and profiles for almost 20 years, but says it’s been challenging to have her journalistic impact reduced to her arrest.
“A journalism reckoning has been happening for a while now,” Fort said.
In addition to the industry’s broken business model, journalists are beleaguered by evolving ethical challenges, Fort said. There’s the erosion of audience trust, ethics in the face of AI and the role journalism has played in perpetuating harm in Black and brown communities. On the business side, there are big media buyouts and how the FCC influences editorial decisions.
“We’re being asked to tell the truth about our history, to acknowledge where we’ve fallen short, to abandon practices that no longer serve the public, to hold power accountable and to rebuild — because after every reckoning comes the possibility of rebirth,” Fort said.
While Fort is fighting the government for her freedom, Attiah is fighting her former employer.
Attiah, a columnist and founding editor of The Washington Post’s Global Opinions section, was fired in 2025 over alleged “gross misconduct” for her social media posts about the death of political firebrand Charlie Kirk. She challenged the firing and is in arbitration awaiting a decision.
The daughter of Ghanaian and Nigerian immigrants, Attiah became a journalist in part because helping people affected by foreign strife and oppression is “literally in her DNA,” she said. “I think through what the women in my family have gone through in losing hope.”
“I don’t see this as just doing news. We’re trying to equip each other to be able to not only navigate this time, but protect one another … to protect our safety and freedom, our dignity, our voices and our creativity in this time,” she said.
“Maybe our whole time has been training precisely so that we can have the discipline, grounding, duty and responsibility to try to help keep each other heard and safe in a perilous time. That’s always how I’ve approached journalism; it has never been a job, it’s been a means of trying to help the people.”
Attiah also made news in July 2024 when she resigned her co-chair position at that year’s National Association of Black Journalists convention in Chicago over the organization’s decision to host President Donald Trump (then-candidate) without consulting her or other leadership members. Attiah was also the editor who hired the late Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi journalist slain in 2018 at the Saudi consulate in Turkey, apparently by agents of the Saudi government.
Fort and Attiah pointed to the longevity of the nonobjective and biased historical coverage of the American press. Several universities got together in 2021 on behalf of the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism to document the power of white-owned newspapers to harm the Black community with the project “Printing Hate.”
Attiah called out the concept of objectivity and neutrality as a cover for intellectual cowardice. She said reactions by governmental agencies to protests in Ferguson, Missouri, poke holes in the myth of America being a safe place for Black journalists.
“I know firsthand that asking questions is a matter of life and death, and it always has been,” Attiah said. “People have fought, sacrificed, died for our voices to be heard.”
She said the writing has always been on the wall for Black and brown journalists working in newsrooms that are predominantly white. She remembers the many times the story pitches that mattered to her community were considered unimportant to mainstream media newsrooms; the prevalent culture that Black journalists’ credibility doesn’t hold the same merit as white counterparts.
“Somewhere along the way, journalism institutions have developed an implicit bias, trusting the word of politicians, corporations, government agencies and law enforcement way more than we trust community,” Fort said. “In recent years, not only have journalism institutions provided more trust to people with power, it’s also been more forgiving. The same agency that lied about George Floyd went on to lie about Amir Locke, who was killed two years later.
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What is the industry standard for how many times a source can lie before they’re no longer considered credible, Fort asked, noting that newsrooms in her hometown still use the Minneapolis Police Department as an information source. “If we choose sources that are not credible, how can we expect our audience to believe we are credible?”
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The best is yet to come for independent journalism, Fort said.
She likens legacy media to the Blockbuster Video store chain, and independent journalism to Netflix, when it was still mailing out DVDs to customers. But just as Netflix eventually transformed the business and culture of movies, independent journalism requires bold investment and technological innovation.
Education also needs to meet the moment to fill in gaps that didn’t exist on the journalistic landscape years ago. Fort said when she asks new and older journalists what they learned in school about covering an authoritarian regime, everyone says they didn’t learn about covering an authoritarian regime.
“The only people who know anything about covering an authoritarian regime are war correspondents who have worked in foreign countries,” she said. “There’s a lot of gaps as society has changed and (journalism) curriculum has to catch up.” Fort is in favor of a more collaborative, community approach to journalism instead of the “get it first” competition newsrooms have historically operated under.
“This is the work that I’ve been doing over the last seven years — steeped in journalism with an innovative lens on our future, with a bold vision of how storytelling can be more equitable for Black and brown communities,” Fort said.
She said a shift in the journalistic status quo would require historic legacy institutions to see the value in a partnership with Black-owned shops like Seattle-based Converge Media because of what it means for communities.
Meanwhile, Attiah’s Resistance Summer School has expanded into the Resistance Studies Series, which features accessible in-person and virtual classes, salons and events that have been banned and canceled throughout the country, like her Columbia University course, which the institution did not renew in 2024. In just a year, Attiah said the class has reached over 1,200 people globally.
“Stories are the oldest vehicle for carrying meaning and purpose,” Attiah said. “This is why there’s so much violence around who gets to tell the story. We need the storytellers to fight to center communities. We also need story fighters to jab at the weaknesses of the stories that we’ve been told.
“Sometimes that means standing against your own industry; sometimes it means standing against your own employers. There’s so much about America’s story that is not only incomplete but is an outright lie. A part of our job is to figure out what America’s story is now, who gets to tell it, and who’s willing to fight to be a part of that story.”