But as he presented his findings to the editors, he didn’t encounter the kind of defensiveness he feared, he said. Instead, they gave his research prominent placement under a headline with no equivocation: “For Decades, Our Coverage Was Racist. To Rise Above Our Past, We Must Acknowledge It.”
Written by Susan Goldberg, the editor in chief, the note acknowledges that “it hurts to share the appalling stories from the magazine’s past.” It includes some of the most blatant examples of racism, including a 1916 story about Australia that included the photo caption: “South Australian Blackfellows: These savages rank lowest in intelligence of all human beings.”
Ms. Goldberg said in an interview on Tuesday that the magazine was proud of its history of opening eyes to new places and cultures, and of the way the publication has grown in recent decades.
But she said the magazine, which won a National Magazine Award on Tuesday for an issue dedicated to gender last year, hoped that coming clean about its mistakes would help gain some credibility.
“It tells people that you’re thinking about these things, you care about these things, and you want to do a better job,” she said.
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The magazine was far from alone in racist coverage at the time, Mr. Mason said, but it was considered a leader in photography. Its effort to directly confront its past was largely well-received. At least two web-based publications, Splinter and The Root, described the decision as a welcome “first step.”
Deborah Willis, the chairwoman of the Department of Photography and Imaging at New York University, said she grew up reading National Geographic, but had long noticed the failure to capture the voices of black subjects. She never heard how they felt about being photographed or the story behind their jewelry; instead, you heard the “voice of the institution,” she said.
“I wanted to become a photographer because of National Geographic,” she said. “I wanted to tell a different story.”
Modern news organizations still lag in minority representation on photography staffs, said Brent Lewis, a senior photo editor at ESPN’s The Undefeated. Mr. Lewis praised National Geographic’s overall effort, but said he was disappointed that the cover — the most recognizable image for an issue dedicated to race — was shot by a white man, Robin Hammond.
Ms. Goldberg said the main feature story featured nine photographers, five of whom were people of color. Of the eight writers, four were people of color.
“We cover a diverse world,” she said. “If we want to do so accurately and with authority, we need a diverse staff to cover it.”
The magazine’s self-reflection was among the most direct admissions of past sins from media organizations, which have occasionally wrestled with their complicity in injustices.
In 2004, The Lexington Herald-Leader in Kentucky published a front-page “clarification” to atone for its civil rights coverage 50 years earlier.
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“It has come to the editor’s attention that The Herald-Leader neglected to cover the civil rights movement,” it read. “We regret the omission.”
In 2016, The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Ky., apologized for continuing to refer to Muhammad Ali, the famed boxer, as Cassius Clay for years after he changed his name in 1964. Its editor, Neil Budde, wrote that it “did little to help race relations in a turbulent time.” (It was one of several newspapers, including The New York Times, to slowly adopt the change.)
The Times has scoured its archives for unpublished photos of black history, and retroactively wrote obituaries for women who were initially overlooked, an effort it pledged to continue.
Correction: March 13, 2018
An earlier version of this article misstated the age of National Geographic magazine. It is 130 years old, not 120.
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Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/business/media/national-geographic-race.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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