Racial IDs in the News

Gil Cranberg, a retired editorial page editor of the Des Moines Register who later taught journalism at the University of Iowa, keeps plugging away at writing — nowadays for SPJ's Watchdog Blog. And his latest post takes on the question of whether racial identifiers in crime coverage are ever defensible in responsible journalism.

Cranberg's hopping-off point is the mass murder and suicide by an African American male last weekend at a suburban Chicago strip mall. He comes to a conclusion on when racial or ethnic identifiers ought to be used and when they ought not.