Texas Southern University is offering a new class this semester in partnership with award-winning journalist, author, and Howard University professor Nikole Hannah-Jones, and it’s posed to be a game-changer.
Why? Consider these three factoids.
One: The U.S. government’s Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO), designed to surveil, actively undermine, socially discredit, and even assassinate Black leaders and leaders of other progressive movements.
Two: The Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) Tuskegee Syphilis Study, an inhumane crime against humanity that saw 399 Black men with the disease rot away while government medical professionals held back treatment and documented their decline.
Three: The President Ronald Reagan-led initiative to illegally sell arms to Iran and use the money to illegally fund the Contras in Nicaragua in exchange for giving global drug and arms dealers U.S. government protection to flood Black communities with drugs and military-grade weapons (known as the Iran-Contra Affair).
What do these three horrors have in common besides being initiatives that did irreparable harm to Black people? They were each uncovered and brought to the public’s attention because of the work of investigative journalists.
And that’s what this new class, “Investigative Journalism,” is all about, according to Serbino Sandifer-Walker, journalism professor and assistant dean of TSU’s School of Communication.
“The whole reason is, again, to train the next generation of investigative journalists,” said Sandifer-Walker. “We’re going to teach students about transparency regarding governments, corporations, superintendents of schools, and teach students how to hold the powerful accountable.”
The class is the brainchild of Hannan-Jones, creator of “The 1619 Project” and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, MacArthur “Genius” Grant, Knight Award for Public Service, Peabody Award, and more. The class is run through Howard University’s Center for Journalism and Democracy, which exists to bolster the investigative journalism skills of both current journalists and aspiring ones at HBCUs.
This groundbreaking initiative involves eight schools: Howard, the University of the District of Columbia, Savannah State University, North Carolina A&T University, North Carolina Central University, TSU, Florida A&M, and Morehouse College.
Students will meet twice a week, with Hannah Jones conducting a virtual lecture for students at each participating school on Mondays. At TSU, students will meet with Sandifer-Walker and another TSU faculty member on Wednesdays. It’s there that the course magnifies its emphasis on partnering with local Black Press.
“I’m going to bring in people like yourself, who will give students insight into how to report the story, how to write the story, and how to verify the information,” said Sandifer-Walker.
The Center for Journalism and Democracy also granted TSU $29,200 to enhance its student newsroom, pay for costly public records requests, and fund journalism-involved travel.
“We’re going to Uvalde to pick up on telling that story, because that’s an example of a story that needs further and deeper investigation,” shared Sandifer-Walker, who said her students will also focus on “telling the great stories right here in Houston that have not been unearthed.”
“We’re going to seek those under-told stories in underrepresented communities. There are so many of them. Even the story of TSU’s historic underfunding.”
Sandifer-Walker emphasizes the fact that “bloggers are not trained journalists” and that the digital age has allowed misinformation and disinformation to proliferate, greatly eroding public trust in so many institutions, including media.
“What we want to do is to be those truth seekers, uncovering the truth, providing accurate, reliable information to the public.”
