journalism

The Italian journalist who — for some reason — excluded Ayo Edebiri in a question about Hollywood and the Black Lives Matter and #MeToo movements has spoken out about the now-viral interview.

Federica Polidoro posted a statement Monday on Instagram defending her work, saying that she has been subject to “violent language, personal attacks, and cyberbullying” following the “question that, for some reason, was not well received by some members of the public.”

“Rather than focusing on the thoughtful responses of Ayo Edebiri, Julia Roberts, and Andrew Garfield, the discussion continues solely on how I should have phrased the question,” Polidoro wrote.

The exchange in question occurred at a press event with Edebiri, Roberts and Garfield at the Venice Film Festival, where their film “After the Hunt,” directed by Luca Guadagnino, made its world premiere. In a video that has been shared widely, Polidoro is heard asking Roberts and Garfield what they thought was “lost during the politically correct era” and what people can expect from Hollywood now that “the #MeToo movement and Black Lives Matters are done.”

After Roberts asks the journalist to clarify who the question is directed to, Polidoro reiterates that her question is for Roberts and Garfield. As the actors share a look, Edebiri raises her hand to respond instead.

“I know that that’s not for me and I don’t know if it’s purposeful that it’s not for me — but I am curious — but I don’t think it’s done,” the star of “The Bear” says. “I don’t think it’s done at all.”

“I think maybe hashtags might not be used as much,” she continues, “but I do think that there’s work being done by activists, by people, every day, that’s beautiful, important work that’s not finished. That’s really, really, really active for a reason. Because this world is really charged. And that work isn’t finished at all. Maybe there’s not mainstream coverage in the way that there might have been, daily headlines in the way that it might have been, eight or so years ago, but I don’t think it means that the work is done. That’s what I would say.”

“The movements are still absolutely alive,” Garfield says in agreement. “Just maybe not as labeled or covered or magnified as much in this present moment.”

In her statement, Polidoro pushed back against accusations of racism, saying she has “interviewed people of every background and ethnicity” over the course of her 20-year career.

“My own family is multi-ethnic, matriarchal, and feminist, with a significant history of immigration,” wrote Polidoro, who in her Instagram bio mentions being a Golden Globes voter and awards season analyst. “In my view, the real racists are those who see racism everywhere and seek to muzzle journalism, limiting freedom of analysis, critical thinking, and the plurality of perspectives.”

Polidoro’s statement also said, “Censoring or delegitimizing questions considered ‘uncomfortable’ does not fall within the practice of democracy. … Journalism’s role is to ask questions, even on delicate topics, with respect and responsibility.”

“The Paper,” premiering Thursday on Peacock, is a belated spinoff of “The Office,” much as Peacock is a sort of spinoff of NBC, where the former show aired on Thursdays from 2005 to 2013. In the new series, Dunder Mifflin, the office in “The Office,” has been absorbed into a company called Enervate, which deals in office supplies, janitorial paper and local newspapers, “in order of quality.” The newspaper at hand is the Toledo Truth Teller, sharing space with the toilet paper division.

Created by “Office” developer Greg Daniels with Michael Koman, “The Paper” is shot in the same documentary style, ostensibly by the same fictional crew, and imports “Office” player Oscar Núñez as head accountant Oscar Martinez, not at all happy to be back on camera.

In the first episode, Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), a starry-eyed journalism school graduate turned cardboard salesman turned toilet paper salesman, arrives as the new editor in chief of the Truth Teller, not exactly taking charge of a staff that consists entirely of narcissistic interim managing editor Esmeralda Grand (Sabrina Impacciatore), whose sole prior media experience is as a contestant on a dating reality show called “Married at First Sight”; ad salesman Detrick Moore (Melvin Gregg); subscriptions person Nicole Lee (Ramona Young); compositor Mare Pritti (Chelsea Frei), who wrote for “Stars and Stripes”; accountants Adam Cooper (Alex Edelman) and Adelola Olofin (Gbemisola Ikumelo); and Duane Shepard Sr. as Barry Stokes, the only official reporter, whose beat consists of high school sports and falling asleep. In the sitcom logic of the show, they will all be drafted as volunteer journalists, joined by Travis Bienlien (Eric Rahill), from the toilet paper division.

Times television critic Robert Lloyd and news and culture (and former television) critic Lorraine Ali have worked in many newspaper and magazine offices between them, and come together here to discuss how “The Paper” compares to “The Office,” its journalistic veracity and whether or not it’s funny.

The journalist recruits in “The Paper,” from left: Chelsea Frei as Mare, Ramona Young as Nicole, Melvin Gregg as Detrick, Gbemisola Ikumelo as Adelola, Alex Edelman as Adam, Eric Rahill as Travis and Oscar Núñez as Oscar.

(John P. Fleenor / Peacock)

Ali: I’ll start with my favorite quote about journalism from “The Paper”: “The industry is collapsing like an old smoker’s lung.” Hack, hack, cough, I say from inside the beast. This half-hour comedy offered so many great moments of spot-on commentary about the state of legacy journalism that I wasn’t sure if I should weep or laugh. I chose the latter, most of the time. The first couple episodes are clever, funny and charmingly clumsy — if not too close to the bone for folks like us. I’ll get to the rest of the series in a minute, but how did the satire about a contracting newsroom strike you, Robert?

Lloyd: There are a couple of moments in the pilot episode where it flashes back to an old black-and-white documentary on the Truth Teller in an earlier age when 1,000 people worked for the paper, before the internet destroyed print journalism and the newspaper, which once occupied a whole building, and was eventually reduced to sharing a corner of a floor with the toilet paper division. It gave me a little shock. I feel like I caught the end of that analog era, at the L.A. Weekly, when it was a thin, then a fat alternative paper, and the Herald Examiner, where there were typewriters that must have been sitting there since the ’30s, a sort of piratical “Front Page” energy and tons of talent. (Much of which migrated to The Times when the Herald folded.)

Ali: I felt a tinge of sadness and loss watching those flashback scenes. Then they cut to present day, and the marbled halls of the once-great Truth Teller newspaper are empty. What struck me is how much the fictional paper’s lobby looked like the old Globe Lobby of the L.A. Times’ building downtown. I also got a lump in my throat when they went down into the basement where the old giant presses sat frozen. We had those relics in the old Times building too. For readers who don’t know, the L.A. Times hasn’t been in that landmark building since 2018. We’re now in El Segundo. Sounds like a great setup for a sitcom joke, right?

Lloyd: Most — all? — newspapers have felt the stress of shrinking staffs and resources, of doing more with less. But the Truth Teller starts with almost nothing — that it comes out at all, apparently daily, is something of a joke in itself; at least Ted Baxter was the only knucklehead working at WJM on “Mary Tyler Moore,” but there are more than a few of them here. “The Office” wasn’t about the work, but about surviving the environment. It didn’t really matter what did or didn’t get done. But this is a show about a business — a noble institution, however ignobly served — with deadlines, some of which one would rightly regard as impossible, having met hundreds, if not thousands, in one’s life — even without a skeleton crew that has no idea what it’s doing. But it just sort of wishes them away. Then again, it is a sitcom.

The jokes are well-timed and reliably funny, but like “The Office,” it’s all down to the characters, which are wonderful company. Oscar, of course, we already know and love. But I especially liked Gregg as the soft-edged Detrick, with an awkward crush on the wry Nicole. Ned, whom the Irish Gleeson plays like someone out of a Frank Capra pastiche, can be a little competitive, but he’s no Michael Scott; neither is he exactly Jim to Mare’s Pam, though obviously they occupy a similar position, being relatively normal and attractive. But as the One Who Needs to Be Noticed, Impacciatore’s Esmeralda does have more than a little Michael Scott in her, though turned up to 11, insanely glamorized and in an Italian accent. It’s a hilarious performance. Her delighted scrolling through a thicket of ads on a clickbait article on a tip Brad Pitt left someone is a little comic gem. It’s not unlike the way Janelle James pops out as Ava on “Abbott Elementary.”

Sabrina Impacciatore, left, plays managing editor Esmeralda, who has more than a little Michael Scott in her.

(John P. Fleenor / Peacock)

Ali: It’s impossible not to compare “The Paper” to “The Office.” It’s unfair yet inevitable, and “The Office” wins, though my favorite version of that show was the British version with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. But I do like what Gleeson does in “The Paper” with Ned Sampson, portraying him as an enthusiastic editor in chief born about 50 years too late to experience the Woodward and Bernstein glory days of print journalism. The deflated expression on his face is priceless when he advises his lost “reporters” to rely on the Five Ws of reporting, and one asks, “Is that a gang?” Gleeson has an impressive range. He was haunting as the conflicted foodie/serial killer in psychological thriller “The Patient,” where he co-starred, ironically, with Steve Carell. I also really like Young as Nicole, who I admittedly had an affinity for as a drama club nerd in “Never Have I Ever.”

My issue with “The Paper” isn’t the cast, but the pacing. It starts off strong. The first two episodes are filled with sharp writing and build a strong foundation for what we expect to see: the hilarity of an inexperienced, underdog staff turning a local rag into a real source of news. But the momentum doesn’t quite sustain. I felt myself losing interest in the story as the series progressed because their ensuing assignments, setbacks and interpersonal trajectories weren’t all that compelling.

I do, however, appreciate that “The Paper,” like “Abbott Elementary,” mines the tragic humor of a crumbling American institution while also pointing out that this thing is happening under our noses, and shouldn’t we do something — anything — to save it? Turning that tragedy into a sitcom is one answer.

Taiwo Adebulu got a grip on the story he had always wanted to tell in Kebbi State, North West Nigeria. Based in Lagos, the journalist travelled miles away to chase it, hoping to gather dozens of anecdotes from school girls abducted by terrorists. News of the 112 abducted schoolgirls had spread like wildfire, with major radio and television stations discussing it for weeks. Then, suddenly, everyone moved on as usual, but the parents and relatives of the abductees continued to rage in pain and anguish. 

Passionate about rejuvenating the lost voices of the girls, Adebulu, the Investigations Editor at TheCable, a Nigerian digital newsroom, flew to Yauri in Kebbi to interview the relatives of the abductees, who he found had been forced to marry the terrorists holding them captive. Someone had introduced him to two local fixers who had contacts with the victims’ families in Yauri. They agreed to meet, showing concern for the girls, who seemed forgotten.

He would work with them for three days to track the girls’ relatives. The journalist said it was an exhaustive journey. The fixers had feigned concerns for the girls, claiming to seek ways to secure their freedom. The journalist, who believes the stories of the forgotten girls needed to be told, thought their interests aligned. The situation changed when he was done conducting interviews and visiting the scene of the abduction.

Adebulu had offered the fixers ₦50,000, based on his limited logistics budget as a journalist. They had agreed on that amount before he left Lagos. Now, the fixers felt they deserved more; they wanted to be compensated well for taking the reporter around the community and connecting him to sources. For the journalist, it was a symbiotic relationship: “Help me tell the story of your people so that I can help amplify their lost voices.” The fixers, however, saw it as a transactional relationship — a clear case of sources for money. Tensions escalated when their intentions conflicted, and arguments ensued.

The journalist was then held to ransom, not by terrorists this time, but by the same fixers who had assisted him in telling the stories of the kidnapped girls. They demanded ₦200,000 for his release. “It was a hellish experience that I do not want to have again,” Adebulu tells me. Though he seemed to have moved on from the incident, his jittery voice gave away his anxiety. He bargained with the fixers, reducing the amount to ₦100,000 and pleading with them not to harm him.

Only the fixers knew his whereabouts – no one else. They had discouraged him from lodging in a proper hotel, citing security concerns. Instead, they took him to a nearly empty five-bedroom service apartment for safety. They threatened not to release him if he refused to pay at least ₦100,000. They issued this threat at night when everything was dark. Adebulu felt vulnerable and scared for his life, knowing he had no one to call or anywhere to run.

“We finally negotiated and settled for ₦100,000 that night. I made a ₦50,000 transfer and told them I would pay the remaining ₦50,000 the following day because I had a network issue. They claimed they didn’t receive the ₦50,000 I had sent, but I had already received confirmation that the transaction was successful,” he recalls.

“They then seized my iPhone, saying they would keep it as collateral if anything happened. My iPhone was worth around ₦500,000, significantly more than the ₦100,000 they wanted. So, it was safer for them to keep my phone,” Adebulu explains.

Anxiety and a sense of danger left him unable to sleep that night after his so-called fixers took away his phone. By early morning, he decided to leave the state immediately. After taking a bath, he contacted the fixers to ask if they had received the ₦50,000 he transferred the previous day. They denied it. To expedite his release and departure, the journalist sent an additional ₦100,000 that same morning. Following the second transaction, the fixers returned his mobile phone. They transported him by motorcycle to a nearby motor park, where he boarded a vehicle heading to Kontagora, Niger State in North-central Nigeria.

“When I arrived in Abuja and visited my bank, I was informed that both transactions, the ₦50,000 sent the previous day and the ₦100,000 sent the next morning, had been successfully processed. I immediately contacted the recipients and demanded a refund of the extra ₦50,000. However, they told me it couldn’t be returned; the money was gone for good. At that point, I realised there was nothing I could do. I simply had to accept the loss and move on,” he adds.

Throughout Africa, the number of journalists willing to cover violent conflicts is decreasing, not due to their choice. In Nigeria, these courageous reporters confront harsh realities: threats of murder from terrorists, assaults by government agents, and the emotional toll of witnessing human suffering. From 1992 to 2020, 1,378 journalists lost their lives globally, with many killed while covering domestic strife rather than foreign wars. Nigeria’s history is marked by violence, from the assassination of Suleiman Bisalla in Kaduna to the 2020 assault on Daily Post’s Sikiru Obarayese while covering the #EndSARS protest in Osun State, South West Nigeria. For every incident that receives attention, several more remain unreported. Despite the dangers they face, Nigerian conflict journalists are often deployed without trauma support, insurance, or adequate protection from their institutions. Their challenges don’t conclude at the battlefield; many return home burdened with emotional distress that goes unnoticed beyond the headlines.

For Adebulu, the story was told, but the emotional distress still lives with him. Although the investigative piece was later shortlisted for the Fetisov journalism award, arguably the most prestigious journalism laurel globally, his interest in such adventurous stories diminished due to the potential danger lurking around and the emotional that trailing them. It was an incredibly traumatic experience that he sincerely hopes never to relive. It was his first time facing such a situation: being held to ransom by fixers who seized his phone and left him genuinely fearing for his life.

“I wasn’t there for personal gain; I was trying to help the community by covering the abduction of the girls, shedding light on their harrowing ordeal, and documenting their stories in the hope of drawing much-needed support. Instead, I found myself in a vulnerable position, pressured by individuals who demanded an exorbitant amount of money simply because they had driven me around and arranged access to sources for interviews,” he says. 

The cunning fixer

Adebulu’s experience with deceitful fixers resonated with me, as I had a similar encounter while covering a story. In Niger State, a local fixer, Bago Abdullahi, is notorious for milking journalists, and he does this effortlessly. Swindlers are not only present in Kebbi and Niger states; this problem has become widespread for those striving to tell the stories of ordinary people caught in violence, especially in northern Nigeria.

As a chief investigative reporter at Premium Times in 2022, I travelled to Niger to unravel what I believed would be one of the most important stories of the time. I was determined to document the tragic story of six young girls killed during a Nigerian Air Force (NAF) surveillance strike in the small village of Kurebe.

The NAF had claimed that the operation was successful, targeting terrorists and criminal masterminds thriving in the community. However, I uncovered a different reality when I spoke to on-the-ground sources. The victims were all civilians, and those six girls, aged between three and six, were lost in a moment of sanctioned violence. Their homes were reduced to rubble, and both bombs and denial scarred their village.

Determined to uncover the truth, I travelled to the state to speak with the victims’ families, local eyewitnesses, and anyone who could shed light on what had happened. I knew the story I wanted to tell intimately, but I needed a local fixer to help navigate the complexities of access and trust. I found a man who initially presented himself as a defender of his people, motivated by a desire to see rural terrorism become a thing of the past in the state. He spoke convincingly, expressing his wish to share Kurebe’s story with the world. I believed him; his enthusiasm matched mine, and I thought I had found a genuine ally in the fight against terrorism.

I was wrong, as that facade quickly faded.

He demanded ₦250,000 upfront to transport five sources from Kurebe and neighbouring villages to the relatively safe town of Kuta, where I could interview them without fear of retaliation. I later discovered that the transport cost per person was under ₦3,000. One source mentioned that she received no more than ₦3,000 for the round trip. The fixer had told me each person would receive ₦25, 000. What happened to the rest of the money?  He pocketed it.

He had promised hotel accommodations for the sources but only provided them with a single, cramped room. When I confronted him about this, hoping to restore some dignity for those whose stories I aimed to amplify, he responded with further demands: an additional ₦100,000 this time, without any clear explanation.

I refused.

That’s when his demeanour shifted. The man who once claimed to be my ally became venomous. Insults poured in through text messages. He accused me of being ungrateful and hoarding the money my organisation sent. “You’ll win awards with this story,” he raged. “And yet you don’t want to give us our due!”

What he didn’t know was that I had received only ₦220,000 in total from my media organisation at that time, and I had been using my savings to make the trip happen. I wasn’t seeking glory; I was striving to document the truth.

Despite the insults, I completed the story, and it was published. However, I walked away feeling sickened by how easily noble intentions can be twisted by those who view tragedy as their currency. In the following months, other journalists confided in me that they, too, had been scammed by the same man – colleagues like Yakubu Mohammed, who faced similar deception, and Isah Ismail, a journalist with HumAngle, who had also fallen victim to his manipulative escapade. He was made to cough up ₦80,000 to connect him to sources who he claimed would be travelling from far places to Kuta, only for the journalist to realise that the locals were based there, not coming from elsewhere.

The pain of the Kurebe girls’ story stayed with me, but so did the sense of betrayal. It served as a reminder that even in pursuing justice, not all allies are who they claim to be.

Branded a betrayer

Yaqubu Muhammad, a Premium Times reporter, had even a more horrible experience while trying to document the plight of locals uprooted by war in Niger state. His story is similar to Adebulu’s but more worrisome, as it was a near-death experience. In 2020,  Mohammed was mistaken for a terrorist informant by soldiers surveilling the tense town of the Shiroro area in the state, causing him a life-threatening encounter.

His mission was to visit the hotspot of rural terrorism in Shiroro. He wanted to be in Kokki, Magami, Sarkin Zuma, and Uguwan Magero to tell the stories of victims of armed violence whose livelihood had been stolen by a new front of terrorists. Alongside Bello Kokki, his fixer, the journalist rode on a motorcycle for hours before getting to the hard-to-reach communities. He was initially scared, but despite the risk, Muhammad pressed on, driven by a sense of duty.

It took three hours for the journalist to travel from Lapai to Kuta. His fixer had picked him from there, riding him through farm fields and ghost villages sacked by terrorists. They had travelled through the ungoverned spaces unhindered, documenting the losses and the lives lost to terrorists in the axis. Later, they explored the Kwatai riverbank, speaking to dozens of displaced villagers who had built makeshift shelters. The sight left Mohammed in awe, pondering how people survived in such conditions.

“[…] the storylines were dotted with bloody tales through the teary eyes of sedentary villagers,” he wrote in a reporter’s diary. He returned to the riverbank, staying behind to continue his interviews, but his fixer had to leave due to fear of impending attacks. That night, he slept in a makeshift hut with other displaced people, unaware of the danger lurking around the place.

When the cock crowed the following morning, some soldiers stormed the camp. His face was strange to them; it was the first time they saw someone carrying a camera, wanting to speak to displaced persons. It was a satellite community, and it was hard to reach. “Oga! Let’s shoot him; he’s a bandit’s informant,” one soldier yelled. The soldiers dragged him out, accusing him of espionage. Surrounded by armed men ready to fire, the journalist says he was already imagining his obituary. The more he tried explaining that he was just a journalist trying to tell the story of locals caught up in the armed violence, the more he was looked at with disdain, insults and harassment. “You are a spy. You came to take pictures and send to bandits,” one of them insisted, with his pleas falling on deaf ears.

After a few hours of grilling the journalists, letting out the sweat in him, a senior officer intervened to de-escalate the situation. The officer asked the reporter to present his ID card and phone for verification. “You are lucky,” the officer said after verifying his identity. If not, you would have been gone by now.”

Scared for his life, Mohammed left the camp immediately, with his heart pounding. He believes surviving that moment was a miracle, as scores of journalists had been killed in a similar situation. The experience left a deep scar, knowing that the story could have been told with a bullet-pierced skin. The trauma was compounded by the fact that he had been trying to help, not harm.

Two years later, he shared the behind-the-scenes account through WikkiTimes, hoping to shed light on journalists’ dangers in conflict zones. “It was indeed an examination,” he said, referencing the mental and emotional toll. “I am no longer naive,” he wrote. “But I will not stop telling the stories that matter.”

Damilola Ayeni is another Nigerian journalist who has faced a similar ordeal with security operatives. He travelled to a terrorist-affected zone in the Republic of Benin and ended up behind bars, despite identifying himself. He was tracking the movements of elephants from Nigeria to the conflict zone of the Benin Republic, only to be detained by local authorities. He spent days in detention before finally gaining his freedom following media pressure. 

Numerous cases of Nigerian journalists facing mistreatment by terrorists, military personnel, and civilian groups often remain unreported or receive minimal coverage. According to the Wilson Centre, it is estimated that for every reported incident of journalist assault in Nigeria, there are at least four cases that go unrecorded.

“Appropriate legislation should be adopted to compel media owners to prioritise the general welfare of journalists, particularly those working in dangerous zones. Media advocacy groups and civil society organisations should also consider bringing attention and support to journalists working in dangerous zones,” says Olusola Isola, a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Strategic Studies at the University of Ibadan. “Media owners in Nigeria should consider providing personal protection equipment for journalists on dangerous assignments, as well as medical evacuation services and life insurance policies.”

It has been five years since May 25, 2020, when George Floyd gasped for air beneath the knee of a Minneapolis police officer on the corner of 38th Street and Chicago Avenue. Five years since 17-year-old Darnella Frazier stood on the curb outside Cup Foods, raised her phone, and bore witness to nine minutes and 29 seconds that would galvanize a global movement against racial inequality.

Frazier’s video didn’t just show what happened. It insisted the world stop and see.

Today, that legacy lives on in the hands of a different community, facing different threats but wielding the same tools. Across the United States, Latino organizers are lifting their phones not to go viral but to go on record. They are livestreaming Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids, filming family separations, documenting protests outside detention centers. Their footage is not content. It is evidence. It is warning. It is resistance.

Here in Los Angeles, where I teach journalism, several images have seared themselves into public memory. One viral video shows a shackled father stepping into a white, unmarked van — his daughter sobbing behind the camera, pleading with him not to sign any official documents. He turns, gestures for her to calm down, then blows her a kiss. Across town, LAPD officers on horseback charged at peaceful protesters.

In Spokane, Wash., residents formed a spontaneous human chain around their undocumented neighbors mid-raid, their bodies and cameras forming a barricade of defiance. In San Diego, white allies yelled “Shame!” as they chased a car of uniformed National Guard troops out of their neighborhood.

The impact of smartphone witnessing has been both immediate and unmistakable — visceral at street level, seismic in statehouses. On the ground, the videos have fueled the “No Kings” movement, which organized protests in all 50 states last weekend. Legislators are responding too — with sparks flying in the halls of the Capitol. As President Trump ramps up immigration enforcement, Democratic-led states are digging in, tightening state laws that limit cooperation with federal agents.

Local TV news coverage has incorporated witnesses’ smartphone video, helping it reach a wider audience.

What’s unfolding now is not new — it is newly visible. Latino organizers are drawing from a playbook sharpened in 2020, one rooted in a longer lineage of Black media survival strategies forged during slavery and Jim Crow.

In 2020, I wrote about how Black Americans have used various media formats to fight for racial and economic equality — from slave narratives to smartphones. I argued that Frederick Douglass and Ida B. Wells were doing the same work as Darnella Frazier: using journalism as a tool for witnessing and activism. In 2025, Latinos who are filming the state in moments of overreach — archiving injustice in real time — are adapting, extending and carrying forward Black witnesses’ work.

Moreover, Latinos are using smartphones for digital cartography much as Black people mapped freedom during the eras of slavery and Jim Crow. The People Over Papers map, for example, reflects an older lineage: the resistance tactics of Black Maroons — enslaved Africans who fled to swamps and borderlands, forming secret networks to evade capture and warn others.

These early communities shared intelligence, tracked patrols and mapped out covert paths to safety. People Over Papers channels that same logic — only now the hideouts are ICE-free zones, mutual aid hubs and sanctuary spaces. The map is crowdsourced. The borders are digital. The danger is still very real.

Likewise, the Stop ICE Raids Alerts Network revives a civil-rights-era blueprint. During the 1960s, activists used Wide Area Telephone Service lines and radio to share protest routes, police activity and safety updates. Black DJs often masked dispatches as traffic or weather reports — “congestion on the south side” meant police roadblocks, “storm warnings” signaled incoming violence. Today, that infrastructure lives again through WhatsApp chains, encrypted group texts and story posts. The platforms have changed. The mission has not.

Layered across both systems is the DNA of “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” the guide that once helped Black travelers navigate Jim Crow America by identifying safe towns, gas stations and lodging. People Over Papers and Stop ICE Raids are digital descendants of that legacy: survival through shared knowledge, protection through mapped resistance.

The Latino community’s use of smartphones in this moment is not for spectacle. It’s for self-defense. In cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and El Paso, what begins as a whisper — “ICE is in the neighborhood” — now races through Telegram, WhatsApp and Instagram. A knock becomes a livestream. A raid becomes a receipt. A video becomes a shield.

For undocumented families, the risk is real. To film is to expose oneself. To go live is to become a target. But many do it anyway. Because silence can be fatal. Because invisibility protects no one. Because if the story is not captured, it can be denied.

Five years after Floyd’s final breath, the burden of proof still falls heaviest on the most vulnerable. America demands footage before outrage. Tape before reform. Visual confirmation before compassion. And still, justice is never guaranteed.

But 2020 taught us that smartphones, in the right hands, can fracture the status quo. In 2025, that lesson is echoing again, this time through the lens of Latino mobile journalists. Their footage is unflinching. Urgent. Righteous. It connects the dots: between ICE raids and over-policing, between a border cage and a city jail, between a knee on a neck and a door kicked in at dawn.

These are not isolated events. They are chapters in the same story of government repression.

And because the cameras are still rolling — and people are still recording — those stories are being told anew.

Five years ago, we were forced to see the unbearable. Now, we are being shown the undeniable.

Allissa V. Richardson, an associate professor of journalism and communication at USC, is the author of “Bearing Witness While Black: African Americans, Smartphones, and the New Protest #Journalism.” This article was produced in partnership with the Conversation.