Trymaine Lee On Lack Of News Coverage Of Black Deaths
Trymaine Lee Calls Out The Media’s Lack Of Coverage As Violence Against Black People Rises
This year marked the fifth anniversaries of the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and 280 other Black people who died at the hands of police. Worldwide protests and nationwide promises seemed to signal a shift — if not for real change, at least more awareness around these stories.
But between the Trump administration’s renewed attack on anyone not white and male and fewer Black journalists in consistently shrinking newsrooms, there’s been noticeably less coverage around violence against Black people. And that isn’t due to a decrease in these cases. In fact, since 2020, the number of Black people killed by police has increased. In 2024, that number was 341, according to Mapping Police Violence.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Trymaine Lee said in an interview that this speaks to “the precarity of our existence.”
“What’s insane is that from George Floyd’s very public murder, we saw an organized movement worldwide that we’ve never seen before in the name of Black life,” Lee said. “The number has continued to rise, but the coverage has been diminished. We are still at the whims of the media powers, right? So we’re being there more people and more Black people being killed by police, but the coverage is lower, because they’ve decided that that’s not the story that matters, right? That’s not the one that matters. They’ve tired of it. They’re fatigued of it, and now with this administration in particular, they don’t have to.”
This speaks directly to Lee’s debut book, A Thousand Ways To Die, which was released Sept 9. In it, he breaks down the generational cost gun violence has had on Black people in America.
The foundation of the book was inspired by Kevin Johnson, who was shot and paralyzed at 19 during a robbery attempt for his Allen Iverson Jersey. Lee was an intern covering the case for the Philadelphia Daily News back then. For more than 20 years, Lee has spent his career covering stories of gun violence against Black people, including Trayvon Martin. The cost of his work came to a head after he suffered from a serious heart attack that made him face his own mortality.
“It forced me to consider my own mortality, but also to widen the aperture on what violence actually is and the broad ripples of violence, and how we’re all touched by them in different ways,” Lee said.
As much as this is a book about gun violence, Lee said this is also a book about journalism. The author used old newspaper articles and Census data to give context of what societal conditions were when his grandfather, Horace, was gunned down. Throughout history, Black journalists and activists have been pivotal in ensuring stories of racist acts are brought to the forefront. That can be a heavy burden to bear, Lee said.
“We already have these pressures of this capitalist society that’s built to exploit us and exploit the labor, and what happens when that exploitation of labor comes when we’re telling our stories,” he asked. “It’s about Black journalists and how we approach the craft and how we satisfy delivering the stories for an audience, while also grappling with the pain that our people experience and that we experience, and then having to engage with the white gatekeepers who are in control of telling these stories through the media and helping define us?”
So far in 2025, 205 Black people have been killed by police in the United States. Within the past year, there have been several cases of suspected lynchings, with Delta State University student Trey Reed’s death being the latest. Through A Thousand Ways To Die, Lee said he wants readers to understand how we got here instead of blaming the Black community on the violence it experiences.
“Let’s point to it and name the source of it, because without naming the source, society will have us thinking that we’re the problem, that there’s something innately wrong or violent about us, and so we’ll own in a way that isn’t healthy or true or honest,” Lee said. “Ain’t nothing wrong with us. Let’s look at the machinery built around us.”
Taryn Finley is an award-winning journalist, host, and producer based in Brooklyn, specializing in storytelling that intersects race, culture, and identity. Originally from Dayton, Ohio, Taryn’s career spans over a decade of impactful work, writing for HuffPost, Refinery29, Essence, and The New York Times. She also hosted HuffPost’s podcast I Know That’s Right and co-hosted MadameNoire’s digital series Listen to Black Women.
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