This story was updated on May 27, 2025, with the correct spelling of Tyré Nichols name.
Nobody’s perfect.
We say that all the time; it’s something we can all agree on. It’s our communal excuse when we handle things the wrong way.
Yet there are times when we seem to expect perfection or we use imperfection against people. I’m thinking of Tyré Nichols.
You may have read or heard in local media about a filing — now pulled from the court docket — made by the City of Memphis attorneys about the source of money the mother of Nichols’ son — Morgan Jackson — received and about incidents in Jackson and Nichols’ relationship. (I’m intentionally not repeating the details here.)
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Every time we write stories, journalists are deciding what is newsworthy and what is journalism’s purpose. I think most journalists would say that our goal primarily is to inform people and to lend understanding. Yet there can be varying views among journalists of what that looks like in practice.
Journalists know that the City of Memphis has a communications team, one that will let you know that something is coming that they want you to see. A court filing, for instance, can be routine, or it can be a “news” event.
So journalists need to be careful. For some in the media, care might look like quoting the Wells family’s statement that the information revealed has no bearing on the Memphis Police Department’s liability in the beating of Nichols to death. That’s called “objectivity” and “balance,” they say.
But once the story is framed in a way that makes the revelations in the filing THE NEWS, the bell is rung. Because the story could be framed differently, it could be framed as a look at the ways the city is using its power to try to paint a different picture of Nichols, one that makes his life of less value in an effort to not pay a steep price for what its representatives — the five officers — did to him. Journalists can also explain whether this kind of information is relevant in court and whether those kinds of payments are unusual or typical. In other words, there’s a duty to explain why this information is newsworthy.
Nichols wasn’t perfect. We already knew that. The many ways that he wasn’t doesn’t matter. His family knew who he was and loved him anyway.
The media isn’t perfect either. But when we report in a way that interrogates power rather than feeding into sensationalism, we get closer to the truths we want to tell.
Adrienne Johnson Martin is co-executive director of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Contact her at adrienne.martin@mlk50.com
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