In 1968 sanitation workers in Memphis Tennessee went on strike. They were mostly Black men doing dangerous dirty work for poverty wages with no benefits and no protections. Two workers had been crushed to death by a malfunctioning garbage truck and the city had done nothing.
The strike lasted 65 days. It was one of the most significant labor actions of the civil rights era. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Memphis to support the strikers and was assassinated there.
The news coverage at the time focused heavily on the violence and disruption of the protests. On the National Guard presence. On the property damage. Much less on the actual conditions the workers were striking against or the economic system that had produced those conditions.
The news told one story. History tells a fuller one.
Why News Coverage Is Not the Same as History
News is written in real time with incomplete information. Reporters are working fast, often without full context, trying to describe something that is still unfolding. What they produce is a first draft of history. A useful one. But a draft.
News coverage is shaped by what editors decide is interesting to their audience. Conflict is interesting. Drama is interesting. The slow grinding reality of poverty or injustice or institutional failure is less interesting to cover day by day, even when it is more important.
News coverage is also shaped by access. Reporters cover what they can get to and who will talk to them. Official sources have press offices and spokespeople who know how to get their version of events into the record. Ordinary people and poor communities do not have those resources.
The result is a record that is skewed toward official perspectives, dramatic moments and conflict, and away from context, root causes and the experiences of ordinary people.
How to Read the News as a Historical Document
When you read news coverage of a current event, ask what is not being covered. What is the background to this story that the article does not explain. Who are the people most affected by this and are they being quoted. What would this story look like if it were told from a different perspective.
Save primary sources when you can. Photographs. Documents. Firsthand accounts from people directly involved. These are the materials that historians will rely on when they try to understand this moment fifty years from now.
Write your own account of things you witness. You are a primary source. Your perspective on what is happening around you is exactly what future historians will wish they had more of.
The news gives you the first draft. You can help write a better one.
Robert Lee Beers III is a writer and digital preservation advocate based in North Charleston South Carolina.
