A week after NBC News announced it was capitalizing the ‘B’ when referring to Black people, CNN announced it would also capitalize the ‘B’ in reference to Black people and capitalize the ‘W’ for whites.
CNN announced its decision after viewers called them out for referring to Black people with a lower case ‘b’ on their website.
“When referring to the racial categories of Black and White, CNN style is changing to capitalizing both words,” wrote Tim Langmaid, vice president and senior editorial director, in an evening email to staffers.
“Both words denote a racial or ethnic identity and therefore should be upper case when referring to a person, community, culture, etc., in the same way CNN capitalizes other descriptors of race, ethnicity and shared identity, including African American, Native American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian, Asian American, African, and other terms,” he explained.
Blogs such as Sandrarose.com have always capitalized the ‘B’, but mainstream news outlets began adjusting their reporting style amid racial tensions following the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Breonna Taylor in Louisville, and Rayshard Brooks in Atlanta, at the hands of police.
