Listen | Discover | Engage a service of Southern Oregon University
The Jefferson Exchange

The Oregonian issues apology for racist editorials and journalism of the past

Your browser doesn’t support HTML5 audio

It's not just that the editorial page of The Oregonian held onto a white supremacist view of the world for decades. The rest of the paper went down the same rabbit hole, slanting stories to fit the racist views of the paper's owner and editor.

It took a very long time, but the paper recently apologized, with an editorial offering the current management's regrets about past behavior. And the editorial was accompanied by a special section, Publishing Prejudice, which lays out in great detail the many ways in which the journalism of The Oregonian was slanted toward the white side.

Rob Davis, the reporter on the project, gives some detail on practices that are simply not acceptable in a mainstream news organization today.

Stay Connected
The Jefferson Exchange is Jefferson Public Radio's daily news program focused on issues, people and events across Southern Oregon and Northern California. Angela Decker is the program's senior producer, Charlie Zimmermann is the assistant producer, and Geoffrey Riley hosts the show.