Racialized Boundary Work: A Case Study of Online Metajournalistic Discourse Responding to Black Journalists’ Critique of Objectivity

This study examines how American journalism audiences discursively negotiate and contest the scope of journalistic objectivity. Critical journalism and communication scholarship has established objectivity as a racialized professional norm in the United States. However, the intersection of news audiences’ perspectives and the racialized boundary work in journalism remains underexplored. Using metajournalistic discourse theory and reflexive thematic analysis, I analyze audience textual responses (over 37,000 words) to Wesley Lowery’s New York Times opinion piece on Black journalists’ reckoning with objectivity. Situated within the post–George Floyd racial reckoning, when U.S. newsrooms faced unprecedented scrutiny over systemic racism, the analysis reveals how commenters engage in racialized boundary work to distinguish “legitimate journalism” from perceived advocacy. We may celebrate newsroom diversity rhetorically; however, the epistemological production by marginalized communities in the United States remains constrained by the norms of the journalism profession that have not stopped equating legitimacy with depersonalization and detachment. It should not come as a surprise to journalists and academics that news audiences have yet to give up anti-Black journalistic norms that have historically been challenged. I show how audience-led epistemic contests function to delegitimize emerging alternative journalistic practices and reinforce neo-oppressive racialized norms of journalistic professionalism.