Post-Gazette reporter Alexis Johnson and photographer Michael Santiago gaining nationwide support after being banned from covering local George Floyd protests
by Rob Taylor Jr.
Courier Staff Writer
On a picture-perfect Monday mid-morning, June 8, as it neared noon, Alexis Johnson, with a mask, chatted with fellow Pittsburgh reporters and media members, awaiting a press conference on the North Shore.
Then, when the press conference began, it was Johnson who stood in front of the microphones.
In an unusual twist, the media members had come to hear her story.
“I never expected to be here in front of you guys today. None of you should be here today. We should all be covering one of the biggest moments of our generation, and instead we’re here talking about another issue of racism and diversity and discrimination on another level,” Johnson, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter, said.
What happened to Johnson, she said, was anything but usual.
She took to her private Twitter account Sunday morning, May 31, with an eye-opening revelation—she posted four photos of nothing but trash and destruction left behind in the City of Pittsburgh, though she never identified Pittsburgh by name. Johnson then wrote: “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.”
She had received high praise for the tweet, with more than 162,000 “likes” on her @alexisjreports Twitter page. It showed the accurate notion that the recent George Floyd protests, only a few of which have been destructive, aren’t the only thing that’s caused a mess in Pittsburgh. A mostly-White crowd tailgates for hours and hours before a Kenny Chesney country concert at Heinz Field, leaving a monstrosity of trash and an air of drunkenness. But the annual concert continues, no sign of it stopping.
The next day, Monday, June 1, Johnson, the Pittsburgh-area native, was informed by Karen Kane, managing editor of the Post-Gazette, and other editors that she would not be permitted to cover any “social justice” stories for the foreseeable future, including any George Floyd protests happening in Pittsburgh.
The reason? Apparently, Johnson had shown “bias” with her tweet. And reporters are to remain unbiased when covering and reporting stories.
But was it “bias?” Or was it just, the plain old “truth?”
When word got out that Johnson, 27, had been banned from covering the protests, support for her and condemnation of the Post-Gazette began coming out the wazoo.
The Pittsburgh Black Media Federation said on June 5 that they were “outraged” by the removal of Johnson from covering social justice protests, including the ones for George Floyd.
“To deny the African American reporter the opportunity to cover this news removes an opportunity for the Post-Gazette to present a more fair, nuanced, and informed portrait of what is happening in local communities,” the PBMF statement read. “More so, the Federation is baffled by the management’s justification used for removal. Johnson’s social media communications was from her private Twitter account. It was there that she raised a question and offered a comparison that challenged stereotypes. There was no malicious bias and nothing to suggest her reporting would be compromised or slanted if she continued telling the story of the protests. The Federation is in sharp disagreement with the action taken by the Post-Gazette’s managing editor.”
Brian Cook Sr., president of the Pittsburgh Black Media Federation, added that “it is unfortunate that Ms. Johnson’s voice has been silenced at a time when diversity in the media is needed more than ever. To remove one of very few African American news reporters—in the entire City of Pittsburgh—from a beat where she could make a difference, is not only troubling, it is abhorrent.”
The Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which represents the Post-Gazette newsroom and full-time faculty at Point Park University, wrote in part to its members, in a letter first obtained by the Pittsburgh City Paper on June 4: “With Alexis Johnson’s permission, we are letting you know about an extremely troubling situation. Attached please find a tweet that Alexis posted, which went viral. It came to the attention of the powers that be, who on Monday (June 1) confronted her in a conference call, told her she showed bias and as such, could no longer cover anything related to the protests of the police murder of George Floyd and the systemic racism that for too long has been a dirty segment of our national fabric.
“Forget for a moment that Alexis’ tweet was innocuous and that the Post-Gazette has no social media policy at all, only guidelines that do not include discipline. Or the fact that in disciplining Alexis, the Company violated the contract. The company’s disingenuous position is that the discussion with Alexis was purely ‘educational’ and that by barring her from reporting on one of the most consequential news events in the region’s history, Karen Kane and her deputies are merely exerting managerial prerogative over news coverage.
“We see right through that nonsense. Preventing a reporter, particularly a Black reporter, from covering civil rights issues of national significance because of a benign tweet—a decision made exclusively by White editors, we might add—is clearly punitive.”
The news made its way to Harrisburg, where John Fetterman, Pennsylvania’s Lieutenant Governor and former Braddock mayor, tweeted on June 5: “I stand with the Guild. The PG immediately apologize to (Alexis) + reinstate.”
Dozens of fellow Post-Gazette journalists have tweeted their support of Johnson by retweeting Johnson’s original tweet. Michael Santiago, an African American photographer with the PG, also tweeted on June 5: “I’ve said this plenty of times this past week but I’ll say it again! I will continue to wholeheartedly support” Johnson.
Michael Santiago is the Black photographer who was banned from covering protests for the Post-Gazette. (Photo by J.L. Martello)
That same day, Santiago learned that he would not be covering the protests for the Post-Gazette.
He joined Johnson at the June 8 press conference, dumbfounded at the realization that he, a member of a Pulitzer-prize winning photo team, was banned from covering the local protests.
During the press conference, Michael Fuoco, a longtime PG reporter and president of the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, hinted that PG management had an issue with a social media post that a White reporter made, but that reporter was not taken off covering the protests. Fuoco, Johnson and Santiago declined to give the reporter’s name, but KDKA-TV learned later in the day that the reporter in question wanted to make his name public and support his cohorts, Johnson and Santiago.
“I was initially treated in a much more lenient manner by newsroom management than Alexis Johnson or Michael Santiago were and was only taken off protest coverage retroactively,” said the reporter, Joshua Axelrod, to KDKA-TV, June 8.
KDKA-TV received this statement from Post-Gazette reporter Joshua Axelrod, a few hours after the June 8 press conference.
None of the top management at the Post-Gazette have made a public comment on the matter.
Johnson said she was very “upset and frustrated” when she was informed by PG management that she was taken off protest coverage. She called her tweet “funny,” “clever,” and “food for thought.”
She was told by management that she violated its social media policy, but Johnson said there is no social media policy at the PG, “just a set of guidelines that the Guild never agreed to.”
Johnson added: “I really did take it personal. I argued, I pushed back, I said I felt like my voice was being silenced; I asked how that tweet showed any opinion or bias, and I never really got a clear answer.”
Michael Fuoco, the president of the local Newspaper Guild, said at a June 8 press conference that it is discriminatory for Pittsburgh Post-Gazette management to keep Black journalists Alexis Johnson and Michael Santiago from covering the local George Floyd protests. “Prove me wrong and put them back on this coverage,” he said. (Photos by Courier photographer J.L. Martello)
Fuoco, representing the Guild, demanded at the press conference that PG management apologize to Johnson and Santiago, and reinstate them to local protest coverage. Even Johnson said that while she was never told to take her tweet down, she would gladly take it down if management asked, so that she could cover the local George Floyd protests.
Alexis Johnson is the Black reporter who was banned from covering protests for the Post-Gazette. (Photo by J.L. Martello)
Johnson, who is 27, grew up in Penn Hills, and graduated from Penn Hills High School in 2010, the Courier has learned. She then earned a bachelor’s in Communications Media from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 2014, and a Master of Arts in Media Studies and Production from Temple University in 2017. Johnson was a reporter for WWVA-TV in Bluefield, W. Va., from June 2017 to Feb. 2018.
Later, Johnson attained the position as digital news editor for the Post-Gazette in Oct. 2018 and began having bylines in the Post-Gazette print editions in 2019.
Johnson said at the press conference that as the “daughter of a retired state trooper and retired probation officer, who better to cover the protests than Johnson. “It’s a shame that I wasn’t able to bring all of those experiences and my background to cover this story,” she said.
“Knowing how she posted it (the tweet), she didn’t say anything about any race, she just posted some pictures,” Johnson’s cousin, Ruthie Walker, a Stanton Heights resident, told the Courier, June 5. “It was a general statement that she made, and somebody took offense to it…because it was the truth.”
Ruthie Walker