Five Years After the Murder of George Floyd, New Public Safety Code of Ethics Is Pushing for Better ‘Crime’ Coverage
- tmanon1
- May 15
- 2 min read
The Standards Upend Centuries of Harmful Practices
By: MMM Editorial Team
PHILADELPHIA — As the nation prepares to mark the five-year anniversary of the death of George Floyd, a coalition of journalists, media advocates and experts has created “Safer Reporting for Safer Communities: A Code of Ethics for Community Reporting in Philadelphia,” a groundbreaking initiative aimed at fundamentally reimagining how newsrooms report on public safety.
The code of ethics emerged from an ongoing years-long effort by the Philadelphia Safer Journalism Project. It provides an in-depth and comprehensive approach to reporting on public safety and crime for all newsrooms, highlighting the need for balanced reporting that is transparent and representative of the communities covered. Some of the tenets put forth include using information, storytelling forms, sources and reporters from the communities covered and recognizing inherent bias, a relatively new concept that replaces the centuries-old approach of so-called journalistic objectivity.
The release of the code of ethics comes at a time when efforts to improve crime coverage focus on incremental reforms — such as removing mugshots — within existing structures. This coalition supports a different approach. These frameworks reject outdated notions of objectivity, binary thinking and “crime beats” shaped by colonial and carceral institutions — offering a reparative, human-centered approach that is rooted in active listening, community care and harm reduction.
“Status-quo journalism standards were never designed with Black and Brown communities in mind," said Cassie Owens, Philadelphia program manager at Free Press. "This recognizes that truth — and moves instead to build new traditions of care, accuracy and accountability for public safety coverage that centers our communities’ realities, voices and futures. We want change to sweep across the industry instead of falling on a handful of editors to shoulder this responsibility. We know that won’t lead to long-lasting change and we want systemic recourse.”
"My hope is that the code of ethics will serve as a real, practical tool for building trust with our communities,” said Gabriela Watson-Burkett, founder of Inti Media and one of the co-authors of these new guidelines. “This code should be something we can truly use in our day-to-day work, not just an ideal we talk about. It’s about creating practices that center community safety and dignity, and making sure we stay grounded in the values we believe in."
Leaders of the project welcome journalists, storytellers, researchers and artists to join in adopting these standards individually or in their newsrooms. Sign up here to join the community of media makers committed to safer journalism.
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About Media 2070: Media 2070 is committed to the radical dismantling of oppressive news structures and media systems. This work is an idea, welcoming critique and feedback. It is liberation work within a lineage of civil-rights activism, racial-justice organizing and calls for reparations.
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