Independence Public Media Foundation - IPMF

IPMF helps build power with communities across Greater Philadelphia by investing in community-owned media and community-led media-making. We are pursuing a vision of media and media-making as a force for change and justice, for fostering understanding, bringing people together, and strengthening the fabric of our multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and multi-gender communities.

Our hearts are heavy with the tragic murders of eight people in Atlanta specifically targeting Asian women. Anti-Asian violence and racism is fueled in part by media that, intentionally or not, perpetuates racist and misogynist stereotypes, language and images of our Asian American and Pacific Islander neighbors.

In the wake of the murders, much of the immediate rush to coverage featured authorities centering the murderer’s story and dismissing that his motives were racist or misogynist. Instead, the reporting should have been led by AAPI journalists and community members, centering careful and compassionate stories of the victims, their families, and their communities. The reporting should be helping us gain a deeper understanding of the long history of anti-Asian violence, which is deeply intertwined with the history of violence against women, in this country, and it should be shedding light on systemic solutions for ending the hate.