News directors for Pittsburgh’s top three local TV news outlets are considering signing a pact on coverage policies for the city’s black community, part of an effort to offset crime coverage with positive messages, reports the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

"If the only information about black people is what’s in the news, there’s a reason why the unemployment rate is astronomic and why we have all these negative issues–because the imaging of black people is extremely negative," said Black Political Empowerment Project President Tim Stevens.

The idea was put forward by NBC affiliate WPXI-TV news director Mike Goldrick at the BPEP’s summit on media portrayal of violence, the story says. Many conference attendees complained that the main coverage of black Pittsburghers involved courthouses or murder scenes, the article notes.