Pittsburgh Post-Gazette removes reporter from covering police brutality protests; she alleges racial discrimination

After Alexis Johnson, a Black reporter for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, tweeted photographs to highlight racial discrimination against George Floyd protesters, the newspaper barred her from covering the demonstrations, saying it feared she would be unable to remain objective while reporting. Fellow journalists, politicians, and her union, among others, signaled their support for Johnson in the following days, tweeting with the hashtag #IStandWithAlexis to condemn the Post-Gazette’s decision. The Post-Gazette repudiated those who called its judgment racially motivated and refused to reverse its ban, choosing instead to forbid other staff members who voiced support for Johnson from covering the demonstrations, too.

Key Players

Alexis Johnson has worked as digital news editor for the Post-Gazette since October 2018. On May 31, 2020, she took to Twitter to express frustration over the double standards applied to protesters demonstrating against police brutality, tweeting four photos of trashed parking lots. The caption to the photos read: “Horrifying scenes and aftermath from selfish LOOTERS who don’t care about this city!!!!! …. oh wait sorry. No, these are pictures from a Kenny Chesney concert tailgate. Whoops.” According to Johnson, the tweets were meant to protest racial discrimination and the false equivalency often made between loss of property and loss of human life.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is the largest daily newspaper serving the Pittsburgh metropolitan area, with a daily circulation of about 175,000. The Gazette drew attention for a previous incident, in June 2018, when it fired a veteran editorial cartoonist after sidelining his work for months, drawing allegations of censorship over ideological differences.

The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, founded in 1934, represents reporters, copy editors, artists, and photographers at the Post-Gazette. On June 5, the Guild tweeted an identical copy of Johnson’s May 31 post with the hashtag #IStandWith Alexis “in a showing of solidarity.”

Keith C. Burris is executive editor of the Post-Gazette and vice president and editorial director of Block Communications, the Post-Gazette’s parent company. On June 10, he published a column that denied any racial motivation for the decision to prevent Johnson from covering anti-racism and police violence protests, calling the suggestion “an outrageous lie — a defamation, in fact.”

Michael Santiago is a Pulitzer Prize-winning Black photojournalist who worked at the Post-Gazette until July 2020, when he left to join Getty Images. Echoing fellow staff members, Santiago began to voice his support for Johnson on social media on June 3.

Further Details

On June 1, 2020, Johnson pitched four stories related to growing anti-racism protests in the Pittsburgh area. Editors told her later that afternoon that she was not allowed to cover the demonstrations because her May 31 tweet showed she could not cover them fairly, according to Johnson. Two days later, representatives of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh met with Post-Gazette leadership to demand Johnson be allowed to cover the demonstrations. When the editors refused to reconsider their position, the Guild filed a grievance against the paper, alleging “they violated our contract by disciplining Alexis without just cause.”

Johnson could not have violated newspaper policy because there were no clear stipulations about social media activity in the contract, according to Guild President Mike Fuoco. “It’s very heavy-handed what they did; it wasn’t thought through,” Fuoco told WESA 90.5. “And to do that to a black reporter — it’s a contractual and racial issue.”

Johnson received a flood of support after news of the ban spread. On June 7, the Guild launched an email-writing campaign to demand that the Post-Gazette remove its ban on Johnson and allow “Black journalists to cover the most monumental civil rights movement in more than 50 years.” More than 5,900 have signed letters to insist the Post-Gazette reverse its decision, including Sen. Bob Casey (D-Penn.) and Pennsylvania Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman (D).  

“I’m overwhelmingly grateful for all the support, but also frustrated that this is happening, that I became the story,” Johnson told Bloomberg CityLab. 

Dozens of staff members at the Post-Gazette, who are also union members, posted copies of Johnson’s original tweet with the hashtag #IStandWithAlexis. The Post-Gazette retaliated against two of these reporters by removing their protest-related stories from the newspaper’s website on June 5, according to the Guild. The pieces were reinstated two days later without bylines, Pittsburgh City Paper reported. In a statement released June 12, the Guild said nearly 100 of Johnson’s co-workers who posted a copy of Johnson’s original tweet were also barred from covering protests.

Santiago was among those journalists. On June 6, he tweeted denouncing the paper’s choice to “silence” Black reporters “during one of the most important civil rights stories that is happening across our country!” On June 10, he chose to accept a buyout from the Post-Gazette, telling Pittsburgh City Paper that he couldn’t “work for a paper that treats their employees like this.” According to Santiago, his decision was influenced by a fraught environment at the Post-Gazette, not just his own circumstances.  

Burris, as the Post-Gazette’s executive editor, rejected criticism over the ban placed on Johnson and Santiago, writing that “no fair person could make the case that our actions were race-based.” He refused to “apologize for upholding professional standards in journalism or attempting to eliminate bias.” 

“Editors at this newspaper did not single out a black reporter and a black photographer and ban them from covering Pittsburgh protests after the killing of George Floyd,” Burris wrote June 10. “When you announce an opinion about a person or story you are reporting on you compromise your reporting. And your editor may take you off the story.”

Outcome 

Advertisers and vendors cancel business with the paper as calls for resignation of Post-Gazette editors emerge

Guild leadership, at a June 8 press conference, called on advertisers “large and small” to criticize the exclusion of Johnson and Santiago from protest coverage. Two advertisers — the Allegheny Conference on Community Development and the Pittsburgh Foundation — announced they were pulling advertisements from the Post-Gazette. In addition, Giant Eagle, the largest grocery store chain in western Pennsylvania, announced on June 10 that it would stop selling the newspaper in its stores.

On June 12, the president of the NewsGuild-CWA, an international union that represents over 24,000 journalists and other media workers, published a letter that insisted both Burris and Post-Gazette Managing Editor Karen Kane “must resign immediately.” The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh “joined in the call” for the resignations, according to a press release on its website. 

Johnson sues the Post-Gazette, alleging civil rights violations

On June 16, Johnson filed a federal lawsuit against the Post-Gazette to demand legal and equitable compensation for “retaliation and race discrimination.” The lawsuit alleges that Johnson was treated differently from white reporters at the newspaper. Johnson’s legal action points out that while she was prohibited from expressing her opinions online, management did not bar reporters from expressing their thoughts on Twitter following a deadly mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. In addition, Joshua Axelrod, a white reporter who called an anti-racism protester accused of vandalism a “scumbag” in a later-deleted tweet, was not initially prevented from covering the demonstrations, according to the lawsuit. Axelrod told The New York Times that after speaking with management about another tweet he posted with a clapping hands emoji to show support for Johnson, he wrote a story about the protests one day later. In his only comment to The New York Times about the issue, Burris said newspaper leaders were not aware that Axelrod had posted the “scumbag” tweet when they spoke with him.