The Girlfriends S4/Bonus Ep 6: How to Put a Spotlight on Your Story

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Girlfriends S4/Bonus Ep 6 - "How to Put a Spotlight on Your Story"

Podcast: The Girlfriends: Untouchable
Host: Khadijah Hardaway
Guest: Tamara Cherry (Crime Reporter, Author of The Trauma Beat)
Production: Novel for iHeartPodcasts
Release Date: February 2, 2026

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Overview

This bonus episode delves into the power of media—both its failures and potential—when it comes to advocating for justice for marginalized women, especially Black women who have been victims of violence and abuse. Host Khadijah Hardaway is joined by crime journalist and author Tamara Cherry to discuss how survivors and communities can use the media to shed light on their stories, challenge systemic bias, and drive real change.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Media’s Failure—and Its Potential Power (02:40 – 04:40)

• Khadijah sets the context: while law enforcement failed the women of Wyandotte County, the media also failed to report adequately or act as a watchdog for the community.
• She stresses the underreporting and misrepresentation of Black victims, citing that Black women are murdered at triple the rate of white women yet rarely receive equivalent coverage.

Quote:
"Black people make up 40% of the missing person's population and only get 7% of the media coverage. That is less than one fifth of the coverage they should be getting."
—Khadijah Hardaway (04:40)

2. Tamara Cherry’s Experience as a Crime Reporter (07:38 – 10:13)

• Tamara reflects on a decade in Canadian media, the disconnect between seeking positive change and newsroom practices, and lack of attention to trauma for victims and communities.
• She describes being rewarded for exploiting grief—getting the "grieving mother on TV"—despite recognizing it might not have been in the subject’s best interest.

Quote:
"Nobody ever talked about trauma and how to work with victims and survivors of traumatic events...I was celebrated when I got that “scoop” where I got the grieving mother on TV. Even though it might not have been in her best interest, my bosses were celebrating me for it."
—Tamara Cherry (08:47)

3. Systemic Racism & Institutional Bias in Media (10:13 – 14:31)

• Tamara: Media racism is both blatant and deeply systemic, often unnoticed by white journalists or editors.
• She cites the story of Latasha Stewart, whose son was murdered in East St. Louis, as an example of how Black families must "scream from the rooftops" for coverage.
• The narrative is often skewed by use of terms like "runaway" for Black girls, diminishing urgency compared to missing white girls. Journalists rely heavily on police narratives and lack training on community sensitivities.

Quote:
"Marginalized people in general are treated differently...The police narrative is always the primary narrative. The journalists are not getting proper training on communities."
—Tamara Cherry (13:06)

4. Why Some Stories Get Covered and Others Don’t (14:31 – 15:00)

• Media favors the "uncommon" story—like the affluent white murder victim—because of its shock value, further perpetuating silence around violence in marginalized communities.

Quote:
"The media doesn't report on planes that land...they are much more likely, for example, to report on a white affluent person who is murdered because it doesn't happen statistically as often as a black impoverished person who is murdered."
—Tamara Cherry (14:31)

5. The Crisis of Representation & Media Sensationalism (20:07 – 23:32)

• As of 2022, Black people were only 6% of journalists compared to their 14.4% population percentage in the US.
• Both discuss how media organizations want the "rawest" version of victims, potentially re-traumatizing them for dramatic impact.
• Newsrooms often lack the resources to investigate or follow up on nuanced stories, forcing journalists to mainly regurgitate police press releases.

Quote:
"A lot of journalists, they're going into newsrooms that are mostly white and they don't reflect the communities that they are reporting on."
—Tamara Cherry (22:00)

6. Creating Trauma-Informed Journalism (23:32 – 24:24)

• Tamara works on educating journalists about trauma-informed storytelling and sees gradual change, but it's still the exception.
• There is potential for survivors to have healing experiences with the media—but only with the right reporters, advocates, and newsroom managers involved.

Quote:
"Trauma informed practice still remains the exception rather than the expectation, but it is happening. And if you can find that good journalist...you can actually have an experience with the media that is healing instead of harmful."
—Tamara Cherry (23:32)

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Survivor Empowerment: How to Amplify Your Story

1. Humanizing the Victim (28:40 – 32:00)

• When a loved one goes missing, personalizing the story is crucial—share details, videos, affiliations, anything to move it beyond a statistic.
• Black families have to work harder to combat narratives that dehumanize or criminalize victims, especially young Black men.

Quote:
"Your number one mission is to humanize your missing loved one. It's not something that you should have to do. But the unfortunate reality is if it's not getting media attention, it's because they're being treated as just another statistic."
—Tamara Cherry (29:26)

2. Survivor Agency When Engaging Media (32:00 – 33:45)

• Survivors (or families) should define clear boundaries: What are you comfortable sharing? Who will support you—an advocate, lawyer, or organization?
• Don’t overshare; be strategic. Control the message; don’t feel pressured to relive traumatic details for public consumption.

Quote:
"Decide what you are comfortable sharing. What message do you want to get out there? Think about the trauma that you endured...Have a clear understanding of what you are comfortable talking about."
—Tamara Cherry (32:46)

3. Social Media as a Tool (33:45 – 35:03)

• Social media campaigns—done well—can force traditional media to pay attention, especially when tagging journalists and outlets.
• Vertical videos engage social audiences, horizontal ones can be provided to newsrooms for broadcast.
• Caution: Survivors must be aware of trolling and potential online abuse.

Quote:
"That's why I'm saying you make that social media campaign with your vertical videos, but you also produce those videos horizontally for mainstream media to use. So you're fighting it from both sides."
—Tamara Cherry (35:03)

4. Building Multiple Pathways and Partnerships (35:34 – 39:10)

• Combine social buzz with strategic mainstream pitching. Offer media outlets ready-to-run stories and editorial content like opinion pieces.
• If local media is unresponsive or biased, pitch to outlets in other markets, then use that coverage to pressure local outlets.
• Build relationships with trauma-informed journalists, activists, and organizations.

Quotes:
"Write an op ed...That is a great way because you can control that message and it doesn't need to be tied to specific work you are doing."
—Tamara Cherry (37:38)

"If you are working in a market where they're not gonna talk to you because you're black, go to a different media market...and then we can bring that story back to social media and share it locally and say, why isn't the media talking about this?"
—Tamara Cherry (39:10)

5. Resilience and Hope for Change (39:33 – 40:57)

• Khadijah: Even when ignored locally, persistence—using new allies and platforms—can draw national attention.
• Tamara: Find the good journalists; positive attention will follow and drive systemic change.

Quote:
"What you did, it was brilliant."
—Tamara Cherry (40:08)

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Memorable Quotes

• "There is racism at the heart of many of America's institutions. The media is no exception. But we have to challenge it and speak out for our communities."
  —Khadijah Hardaway (41:11)

• "Change is happening. Trauma informed practice...is happening. And if you can find that good journalist...you can actually have an experience with the media that is healing instead of harmful."
  —Tamara Cherry (23:32)

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Key Timestamps

• [02:40] Content warning, episode theme introduction
• [04:40] Start of Khadijah and Tamara's main conversation
• [07:38] Tamara’s backstory: becoming a crime reporter
• [13:06] Systemic racism in media narratives
• [20:07] Black journalist underrepresentation
• [23:32] Trauma-informed journalism
• [28:40] Survivor strategies to engage media
• [32:46] Setting boundaries with the media
• [35:03] Using social media and main media together
• [39:10] Partnering with national outlets & resilience
• [40:57] Episode wrap-up, call to action

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Conclusion / Call to Action

Khadijah and Tamara agree: fighting for media attention—and justice—is hard, especially for Black women and the marginalized. But by being strategic, collaborative, and persistent, survivors and advocates can rewrite narratives and claim space in the media landscape. The key: humanize victims, be intentional about your message, use all available platforms, build supportive networks, and never give up on the power of your story.

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Resources:

• RAINN.org (US resources for Violence and Sexual Assault)
• No More Directory (International resources for Violence and Sexual Assault)
• 988lifeline.org (US Suicide & Crisis Helpline)
• OpenCounseling Suicide Hotlines (International crisis hotlines)

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For more:

• Pick up Tamara Cherry’s book The Trauma Beat: A Case for Rethinking the Business of Bad News for further insight on trauma-informed journalism.
• Listen to more episodes or visit Novel.audio to follow stories of women advocating for justice.

Transcript

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[Khadijah Hardaway]

In this episode, we're going to explore how to use the media to take control of your story and draw attention to the causes that matter the most to you. But I just wanted to give you a heads up that in the process of doing that, we'll discuss domestic abuse, sexual assault, violence and murder. If you or someone you love has been affected by any of the themes that have come up in this episode, we've left some links in the description that offer resources and support. Take care of yourself. In this season of the Girlfriends, we've been discovering some difficult truths about the city we love. Malicious prosecution, extortion, sexual violence from police officers. It seems like the wheels really came off in Wyandotte County. But in my opinion, it's not just law enforcement that failed us, it's the media, too. They failed to report adequately on what was happening in our community. They failed to be a check on the police department as it went rogue. And a lot of our media still misrepresents and underrepresents the very people who who need it the most. Throughout my work with Justice Awyandot, if there's one thing I've learned, is that if you want answers and accountability, if you're trying to find a missing person or discover why a loved one was murdered, or if you're a survivor yourself looking for justice, the media may not always feel like your friend, but it can work for you. And if you really want your voice to be heard, understanding how the media works, whether it's news media, social media, or podcasts like this one, getting wise is essential. I got you. I got you.

[Tamara Cherry]

I got you.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

I'm Khadijah Hardaway from the teams at Novel and I Heart Podcast. This is the girlfriend's Untouchable. Bonus. Episode 6 How to Put a spotlight on your story. When Stacey Quinn, Rhonda Tribue, and Monique Allen, among many other women in our county, were murdered, there was little media outrage, certainly not enough to make people take any real notice or stop crimes like these from happening again and again. We know that there is a nationwide problem with black people being underreported as victims, and black women are murdered at nearly triple the rate of white women. Black people make up 40% of the missing person's population and only get 7% of the media coverage. That is less than one fifth of the coverage they should be getting. I have busted a gut throughout my life to try and get attention and accountability for black women. And it hasn't been easy. So how can you get the media to work for you and with you to chew over this difficult subject? I'm talking to Tamera Cherry, a celebrated crime reporter and journalist. She's the author of the Trauma A Case for Rethinking the Business of Bad News, which looks at the way news media handles victims and their trauma, challenging the industry to re examine the way it does business. I started out by giving Tamara a little insight into my own experience of the media. I have a love for journalism. When I was a little girl, my dad nicknamed me KDJ because I used to act like I was the radio station in every aspect of the radio. The weatherman, the disc jockey, the news reporter. I do have a love for media. When I took on the advocacy of women in Wyandotte county, even though I'm a black woman and I've sat in spaces of media feel like I very much have been put on. It just didn't feel like that way for us collectively. I found myself in some very hard spaces losing friends in media because I just wouldn't back down from the ideal that exposure of the bad characters needed to happen. But we do find in the media hear a lot of hurdles when it comes to just being black and female at the same time. We're both females. Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?

[Tamara Cherry]

Thank you for sharing that. First, I've met many people with similar situations where they're in advocate roles and have personal histories that are connected to some of their work. But they've felt that same sting in the way that stories are reported and the way that things are portrayed in the news. It's just another nail in the coffin, like they don't care about us collectively. So I hear you on that. So in terms of my background, I was born and raised in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada, which is where I am right now. I go into journalism and I fell in love with news and I fell in love with telling stories that could make people care. And I really wanted to be able to affect change through the craft of journalism. I ended up working in television news for a decade as the crime reporter for this big newscast. And I was very celebrated for the work that I did.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

While Tamara won accolades for her work, the culture she was working in did not serve the goals she was setting of effecting Positive change.

[Tamara Cherry]

Nobody ever talked about trauma and how to work with victims and survivors of traumatic events and how to report on things in a way that was actually causing good things to happen instead of bad things to happen. The community is telling you, like, what you're doing is harmful, or we don't want you here right now, or that sort of thing. But then everything else is signaling that you're doing the right thing. You're getting nominated for awards. And I was celebrated when I got that quote, unquote scoop where I got the grieving mother on tv. And even though it might not have been in her best interest, my bosses were celebrating me for it. You know, if there was a homicide in an apartment building, I would be searching through every phone number listed in that apartment building looking for witnesses and ran into really unfortunate situations. It's too soon. They don't have the proper supports in place, all that. That's a whole different part of this conversation.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

And, you know, you say talking about, you know, knocking on somebody's door in that vulnerable space, did you feel like the media companies you were working for were exploiting stories?

[Tamara Cherry]

There's absolutely exploitation that happens, but I don't think it's happening consciously for the most part.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Can you tell me a little bit about how you see media is portrayed when it comes to individuals like myself?

[Tamara Cherry]

When we're talking about actual systemic racism that exists, sometimes it is blatant, and sometimes it is so, like, deep into the bones of media institutions, reporters don't realize it. In my book, I talk about this case, actually throughout the book, where there was a young man who was murdered in East St. Louis, and his mother, Latasha Stewart, was screaming from the rooftops to get the media to pay attention to her son's murder. She had created a Facebook page like she created, like, a group. She got herself on Twitter, and she contacted the Montel Williams show, for crying out loud. Like she was doing everything and nobody was paying attention. It was not easy. She screamed from the rooftops for so long, but she got the media coverage. She was incredible. And it shouldn't have had to be that much of a struggle. That was wrong. That was the system working against her, just as it has worked against her people of color for generations.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Pretty much everything I'm going to ask you is something that I have experienced, and just kind of tying it together with someone who has experienced this in the media, where I found myself, is that at some point I realized this is trauma, and their trauma is beginning to impact me and become trauma on Me, when, when did you have that moment where you felt like you had that aha, like, this is not what I'm reporting. This is actually something else and something needs to be done about it.

[Tamara Cherry]

My specialty in my crime reporting beat was the domestic sex trafficking of women and girls in Canada. And when I first was introduced to the term human trafficking, I, like so many other people, thought, oh, somebody's been brought over in a boxcar from Russia or whatever. You know, I was reporting on all these international cases. A woman from Russia who had answered an ad to work as a model in Canada and has turned out as an escort, you know, and then I got an email from a vice investigator who said, why don't you come out and talk to us? They opened my eyes to all the other human trafficking cases. They are impoverished quite often. They come from group homes quite often. There was sexual abuse when they were younger. And it's. A lot of them follow the same pattern, but none of them was what I had in my mind as human trafficking. Some of them are white, some of them are black, some of them are indigenous, but marginalized in some way. That's when I started noticing in the police news releases that would come out a runaway or somebody who's gone missing. She's gone missing before. And as a result, for years I dedicated a big portion of my career to exposing that and to writing about these stories that otherwise weren't being written about.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

One thing that became clear to Tamera is that who you are determines how the media reports your story.

[Tamara Cherry]

Marginalized people in general are treated differently. How a young marginalized woman from poverty and has gone missing many times before might be referred to as somebody who has gone missing several times before, even though she's a 15 year old girl and very vulnerable. And so she's immediately labeled as well, a habitual runaway who will just come back. Whereas if a more affluent white girl were to go missing, there would be more immediate alarm bells. Right? The police narrative is always the primary narrative. The journalists are not getting proper training on communities, and in general they're never given the proper training to understand communities. There is the systemic racism. I had mentioned the homicide of Gregory Stewart in East St. Louis. And what was interesting when I was working on my book was going back into the history of East St. Louis and the segregation and the role that the media played in that and in inciting violence. Like going back to like the 1930s and seeing the actual, like, racist roots that exist in the media. Even though journalists today there might not.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Realize it, something Tamera said that I relate to is that bias comes from a number of issues. Yes, there are racist roots to the media, but there are other kinds of bias that combine to stack the deck against us.

[Tamara Cherry]

One of the things I talk about in my book is the fact that the media doesn't report on planes that land. They see the news as uncommon things that are happening. So they are much more likely, for example, to report on a white affluent person who is murdered because it doesn't happen statistically as often as a black impoverished person who is murdered.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

You just said something unique to me and that's that they report on the white victim if he's affluent, rich, right? But they don't report on the black. What they report on the black is the criminal. They don't even report on the victim. Here in Kansas City, Missouri and Wyandotte county, the media doesn't portray us in a good light. It doesn't want to tell our feel good stories. We know that these problems of underreporting and misrepresentation are happening on a mass scale. I want to hear more what we're doing about it. After the break, we're going to talk about ways the media can do better.

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[Teddi Mellencamp]

This is Teddi Mellencamp and Tamara Judge from Two T's and a Pod.

[Tamara Judge]

All right, lovers and dreamers, buckle up because there's a new season of 90 Day the Single Life. And it's hotter than ever.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

If you've never seen 90 day before, this is the one that will get you hooked. Their marriages crumbled. Now eight singles are taking the leap and stepping back out to the scariest place of all, the dating world.

[Tamara Judge]

There will be exciting first dates, steamy hookups, big letdowns and potential love waiting in the most unexpected places.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

After Sophie's recent divorce, she's moving on to save. If there's potential with a Dominican hottie, some of you may know Pedro Gino.

[Tamara Judge]

Has a full inbox of DMs and is trying for a second chance with one that got away. And after Courtney's unexpected romance with Colt, find out if his history of cheating will come back to bite the relationship for good.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

Get ready for this season's hottest romance series full of surprises, sparks and connections.

[Tamara Judge]

Don't miss a new season of 90 Day the Single Life, next Monday at 8 on TLC.

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[Khadijah Hardaway]

Journalism is a major tool for addressing injustice in our community. But an issue we face so often is the people reporting our problems are not us and don't know us. As of 2022, Black people made up 6% of the journalists, which is a lot less than the 14.4% of the population which black people make up in the US Given the history of our community, it's even more important for those in the media, especially white journalists, to think carefully about how they report on us when we're at our most vulnerable. We find that most journalists will want the victim in the rawest form, which I think puts him in a very vulnerable place.

[Tamara Cherry]

Oh, and I've seen it play out with sexual violence survivors here in Canada, where they go to the media first, they share their story, and then I go and I'm sitting in the trial for the alleged perpetrator and oh, you're saying this now, but you said it differently when you spoke to this newspaper reporter a year ago. That's something I advise sexual violence survivors in particular about as well. When we're talking about journalists, you know that they want them in the more vulnerable position. And I was the you want that raw emotion. You don't want them reading from a.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Prepared statement, you say, knocking on somebody's door in that vulnerable space. Did you feel like the media companies you were working for were exploiting stories for capital gain?

[Tamara Cherry]

Most news managers who are telling us to go cover these stories, their intentions are overwhelmingly good. They want this violence to stop. They want people to care. I don't think that there's a conscious will to exploit.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

There may not be a conscious will to exploit by all media organizations and editors, but it is often a result of prioritizing the most shocking stories to sell newspapers and get more clicks and subscribers.

[Tamara Cherry]

You want it, Rob, because it makes for a more compelling story. What I teach journalists now, though, because I do a lot of, like, trauma informed storytelling training, is about the impact the trauma has on the brain and, and recognizing that if you bring that survivor into that unsafe zone, activating their trauma responses, then you might not actually be getting an accurate story. A lot of journalists, they're Going into newsrooms that are mostly white and they don't reflect the communities that they are reporting on.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Along with the crisis of representation, there's also a crisis within the press industry. In the age of the Internet, local reporting and investigating reporting has struggled to find resources to do as Tamara found in one of her jobs.

[Tamara Cherry]

We were so short staffed that I would come into the office some days and be like, hey, I've got a really great scoop on this case. I need time to work on it. And they'd say, that's great, but you're one of two reporters working today, so we need you to write half the paper. So you're just gonna rewrite eight press releases instead. So in that way, I'm regurgitating whatever's coming out from police, by and large. And I don't have the time or the resources to actually dig into anything. Cause it's just like, I gotta get this stuff filed and then get out the door.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Ultimately, we need more black journalists and editors calling the shots. And I can only hope that as awareness spreads about the harm done by sensationalizing stories, there will be more urgency to change things.

[Tamara Cherry]

There are journalists out there who are becoming trauma informed. And when I tell them that actually a lot of what you're doing is harmful, they're surprised. And they ask me, how can I do better? And then I teach them, or they read my book or they listen to my podcast and then they reach out to me and they say, tamara, I've been doing this job for 33 years and I just wanted you to know I just did this interview differently because of what this survivor said was harmful for her in the past. So change is happening. Trauma informed practice still remains the exception rather than the expectation, but it is happening. And if you can find that good journalist or newsroom manager or advocate who has those connections, you can actually have an experience with the media that is healing instead of harmful and can help you reach your goals.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

I have to be honest, I am still skeptical about the role the media has played and continues to play in our communities. The news media is still, by and large a for profit business driven by what sells. But what Tamara has described seems like a route forward and maybe calls for optimism. I hope Tamara is right that we are moving to a more compassionate and thoughtful culture of journalism. After the break, we're going to talk about survivor empowerment and what advocates and survivors can do to amplify their voices within the media.

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[Teddi Mellencamp]

This is Teddy Mellencamp and Tamara Judge from Two T's and a Pod.

[Tamara Judge]

All right, lovers and dreamers, buckle up because there's a new season of 90 Day the stage single life and it's hotter than ever.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

If you've never seen 90 day before, this is the one that will get you hooked. Their marriages crumbled. Now eight singles are taking the leap and stepping back out to the scariest place of all, the dating world.

[Tamara Judge]

There will be exciting first dates, steamy hookups, big letdowns and potential love waiting in the most unexpected places.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

After Sophie's recent divorce, she's moving on to see if there's potential with a Dominican hottie. Some of you may know Pedro Gino.

[Tamara Judge]

Has a full inbox of DMs and is trying for a second chance with one that got away. And after Courtney's unexpected romance with Colt, find out if his history of cheating will come back to bite the relationship for good.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

Get ready for this season's hottest romance series full of surprises, sparks and connections.

[Tamara Judge]

Don't miss a new season of 90 Day the Single Life, next Monday at 8 on TLC.

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[Khadijah Hardaway]

I.

[Tamara Cherry]

Got you, I got you, I got you.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

When it comes to the media and getting your voice out there, there is a lot stacked up against women, especially marginalized and black women. We saw what that looked like for so many of the women of Wyandotte county who got caught up in Gillusfie's web of abuse and were ignored. But I know from my own experience the media can work for us. We'll be talking through some of those tips and tools to help navigate the media while dealing with trauma, and one of the most traumatic things we'll deal with is when a loved one goes missing. Getting the media's attention can be the difference between life or death. The chances of being found after the first 48 hours go down sharply. So every moment counts if you're wanting.

[Tamara Cherry]

To utilize the media after a loved one goes missing. When you go to the media, if a news Release goes out 48 hours later saying a runaway quote unquote is gone, your number one mission is to humanize your missing loved one. It's not something that you should have to do. But the unfortunate reality is if it's not getting media attention, it's because they're being treated as just another statistic, another runaway.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

You know, I have dealt with many people who said their loved one was missing. What I usually do is I challenge the individual that is looking for their missing loved one to let me know what organizations they belong to. Are they disabled? Are they a veteran descriptions about them that connect them to other people? If you can find the people that associate with that individual, you can find the best Help. It has helped rescue at least five people that I know in my community. Another situation where you might need to get your voice heard by the media is if a loved one or a community member is murdered. And if you're black, newsflash. You're going to have a harder time getting your story heard. According to a study by Stanford University, in majority white neighborhoods, murder victims are around twice as likely to be covered as a complex and rounded person than those in majority black neighborhoods. And that goes to a whole new level when you're speaking out for young black men. You know how it goes. They must have been in a gang. So breaking through prejudice takes some hard work.

[Tamara Cherry]

So how can you humanize them? I think back to a campaign that I did about a teenage boy who was murdered several years ago, and on the surface, this homicide would have gotten not the most compassionate care from the media. I had conversations with the family, and we put out this video of him, and it really showed how young he was. It really tugged at the heartstrings. And just by, like, putting out that video, we got media attention that we would not have otherwise gotten. And we got the story covered because it humanized. It was no longer just this teenage boy was murdered in this neighborhood, and it was this human being with loved ones who care about him, who is now missing from our collective lives. His family is hurting, and this is how you can help them.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

We like to call that empowerment. We do believe that the more a person knows, the more experience and influence they have with their own situation, walking through it, the better they can help the next person. You may find yourself in a position of being a survivor of a crime, navigating the media after a terrible experience. So what is the best way for you to fight for your own justice? I do believe that there are so many ways to use the media. One, don't overshare your story. But two, make sure that when you tell it, it's powerful, it's impactful, and you're telling it to the right people who can help you. Most people don't know how to tell their story, and they think instantly something should happen.

[Tamara Cherry]

As a journalist and somebody who has worked with trauma survivors, my message is, first decide what you are comfortable sharing. What message do you want to get out there? Think about the trauma that you endured. Are you actually comfortable talking about the event, or do you just want to talk about the impact that event had on you and your family? Your loved ones? Identify as a survivor, but talk about something else that you're seeing in the news, because journalists will always try to get to that personal story. But if you don't know going into that interview very clearly what you want to talk about, you can end up going down a very slippery road that can cause you more harm. You need to have a clear understanding of what are you comfortable talking about to everybody surrounding that survivor. That survivor needs to be wrapped in support when dealing with the media. They should never be doing it alone, whether it is with a lawyer or an organization or like a nonprofit or whatever.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

A part of the process of telling your story is about making compelling, strategic campaigns that punch through the lack of care and get your story heard. One way to go about that is to focus on social media campaigning. It's free and anyone can do it. And if you have a community behind you, it can really make a splash. I don't know if you agree with this, but sometimes when we don't get the coverage, we will share the story on several social media outlets tagging those news outlets. Would that like that story, comment on that story, or how viral that story goes? It sometimes get picked up that way.

[Tamara Cherry]

Social media can be a very powerful tool. One caution I would give about social media is it can be a very dark, awful place full of trolls. There needs to be somebody there, ideally with some media literacy and who's trauma informed and is looking out for the best interest of that survivor.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

I tell people there's a big difference between social media influencers and one that's the credibility that is going to go behind something that's published from a licensed journalist, as if an article that said it came from the Washington Post.

[Tamara Cherry]

That's why I'm saying you make that social media campaign with your vertical videos, but you also produce those videos horizontally for mainstream media to use. And so you're fighting it from both sides. I work with a lot of organizations that have very small social media followings. And so it's like we create this whole social media campaign. It's really not gonna be seen by a lot of people because they've only got, you know, a few dozen followers. But we take that to mainstream media and they amplify it in that way, and it also drives followers then to their social media.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Today, social media plays a bigger role than ever in getting the word out. But traditional media platforms continue to be important to build momentum around your story. You need to be smart and have multiple approaches to campaigning. Oftentimes when we think of media, I would say justice for Wyandotte not necessarily has fared well. We need to be More impactful. And so how do we do that?

[Tamara Cherry]

You are not expected to be an expert in the media. Surround yourself with people who already have that media literacy, learn about the media, create those relationships and magic can happen. Back in November, which in Canada is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, one of my clients is an organization that provides wraparound services for victims and survivors of intimate partner violence. And they wanted to do an entire campaign around strangulation. So we created a campaign called Taking youg Breath Away. And it was a social media campaign that included something like 18 or 19 videos. Here's a survivor who is part of the campaign and she doesn't want to do media interviews. But here are video clips that we've created with her protecting her identity, where she shares her story. Here are the these experts from San Diego who are experts in strangulation that are a part of it. Here's the executive director of the organization that we created a whole mainstream media campaign around this where we had a news conference, then with a campaign launch video. We create a whole media frenzy around this. Whereas if somebody were to just call a news station and say why don't you ever talk about strangulation? Well, that's a lot of work and I don't have time to do that because I'm filing for six or I'm doing this. But if I hand you the story on a platter, then you're golden.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Once you start speaking the experts language, they're going to want to talk about and dissect it and look at it from a and in some cases give you strategies that you would not have thought about before. And we refer to that as being empowered.

[Tamara Cherry]

For sure. Another way to control the message is depending on what is happening in the news. Write an op ed like write an opinion piece that you can then submit to the local newspaper. That is a great way because you can control that message and it doesn't need to be tied to specific work you are doing. But it's presenting yourself as the thought leader because you have done X, Y and Z. And newspapers love to run a piece that presents a different point of view to what has already been reported.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

I've been working with the press for years and despite the wins we've had, just being heard continues to be hard. I don't think it would ever be easy working with survivors whose stories are definitely newsworthy. We can struggle to get the media's attention. That can be for a number of reasons is the victim from the wrong neighborhood, the wrong race, in the wrong line of work. Are they too poor. Sometimes I feel like I'm being ignored, not because of what I am saying, but because my face just doesn't fit. In the beginning, I felt like the Princess of Wyandotte because everyone wanted to hear what I had to say. And I was tied to a white organization at that time. When we broke free of the white organization, then we noticed that they would put the white organization before our movement.

[Tamara Cherry]

If you are working in a market where they're not gonna talk to you because you're black, go to a different media market where you can talk about this issue with a local news hook. With like, okay, let's find a news hook in Detroit, for example, where there is a more friendly reporter perhaps who will do this story. And then we can bring that story back to social media and share it locally and say, why isn't the media talking about this?

[Khadijah Hardaway]

Here in Kansas, it wasn't until we decided that we would not deal with our media, I would gravitate toward activists outside of Kansas City who had a media platform who could post and share the things. And when they did that, that's when we began to see the New York Times, the Washington Post, and news outlets that put us on a national platform. From where I'm standing, no one can stop you if you are set on your goal. If you hit what feels like a wall, don't give up. Find another way.

[Tamara Cherry]

Find the good reporters, get the good stories done, and then all the rest of the media will start to pay attention. What you did, it was brilliant.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

I just want to say thank you again for sharing with me. It was great speaking with you. Journalism, I know, is not an easy job. You need it in a lot of communities. And I appreciate the ideal of having trauma response reporters. I would love to see trauma informed journalists here in Kansas City.

[Tamara Cherry]

Thank you so much for having me. It's been so wonderful to learn about the work that you're doing, and I look forward to following your journey.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

That was Tamara Cherry, writer, journalist, and reformer. Pick up her truly amazing book, the Trauma Beat, which is calling for reform and showing the way to a better media landscape, which would be more victim centered. I got a lot of hope listening to Tamara, seeing that we can shape the media narrative and that change is happening in journalism. There is racism at the heart of many of America's institutions. The media is no exception. But we have to challenge it and speak out for our communities. It's possible, I know, because at justice for Wyandotte, we have been able to make a splash. You can make change too. You just have to find the right partners and use the right tactics. We need a mass movement to meet this challenge. Let's do this together.

[Nikki Etor]

Hi, this is Nikki again. Nico. Khadijah and I have been on a long, hard journey to fight for the women of Kansas City. And while this is the final episode of the series, our story isn't over. We're still fighting for police reform and doing what we can to make sure the people most affected by this story feel seen and heard. And we're not alone. There are thousands of people across the world fighting to improve the places they live, doing the often slow but necessary work needed to hold the authorities to account. But as we've learned, while the path to progress is long and winding, it's worth the ride. Because if we keep fighting back and refusing to accept the status quo, we can work together to create a future where nobody, even people in positions of authority, can ever get to the point where they think they're untouchable. Next time, Anna Sinfield will be back with another season of the Girlfriends Spotlight and more untold stories of women winning. Until then, thanks for listening and hold your girlfriends tight.

[Khadijah Hardaway]

The Girlfriends Untouchable is produced by novel for iHeart podcast. For more from Novel, visit Novel Audio. This episode was hosted by me, Khadijah Hardaway. It was written and produced by Muhammad Ahmed. The editor is Joe Wheeler. The researcher is Zayana Youssef. Production management from Cherie Houston and Joe Savage. The fact checker is Findo Fulton. Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kempson with additional engineering by Nicholas Alexander. Music supervision by Ruffara Mazaroora, Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler. Original music by Amanda Jones. The series artwork was designed by Christina Lemku, Novel's director of development and Selena Mehta. Willard Foxton is Novel's creative director of development. Max o' Brien and Craig Strachton are executive producers for Novel. Katrina Novo and Nikki Etor are the executive producers for iHeart podcast and the marketing lead is Alison Cantor. Tour and a special thanks to Karlie Frankel and the whole team at wme.

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[Teddi Mellencamp]

This is Teddi Mellencamp and Tamara Judge from Two T's and a Pod. There's a new season of 90 Day the Single Life, and it's hotter than ever. If you've never seen 90 day before, this is the one that will get you hooked.

[Tamara Judge]

Their marriage is crumbled. Now eight singles are taking the leap and stepping back out to the scariest place of all, the dating world.

[Teddi Mellencamp]

There will be exciting first dates, steamy hookups, big letdowns and potential love waiting in the most unexpected places.

[Tamara Judge]

Don't miss a new season of 90 Day the Single Life next Monday at 8 on TLC.

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[Nikki Etor]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.