No, You Tell It
We can redefine journalism by getting the hell out of the way
Skepticism of tech utopians is something that I have so far rigorously practiced at CUNY J-School. Technology’s potential to radically alter power relations is huge, yet it remains handcuffed by the same problems of ownership and access we see all the time.
So it was with much skepticism that I watched Fareed Zakaria get all TED Talk-y in a video about how we journalists will reach “the next billion” — those in the developing world now or soon gaining access to internet, smartphones, and new methods of information distribution. Zakaria is a liberal centrist who has published in 99% of all publications that have ever existed, and who has taken a place as an expert on how the developing world’s economics will shift the planet’s balance of power. He pushes a kind-and-gentle globalization, contending that we need more organizations like the WTO and more economic “inclusion” of developing nations into a crumbling and exploitative global economy (my words).
It got me thinking about something I’ve written about before: how news distribution, platforms, and information more generally fit into globalization. News distribution is being reborn thanks to the internet, and this rebirth asks questions about how we want it to grow up. Whose stories are we telling? Through which lens? Most vital of all, how much do we empower people to tell their own stories?
Since people have a right to their story, we have to radically rethink whose narratives we seek out and why. We have to ask when journalists need to tell stories, and when we instead lend a set of skills to providing context, verification, and impact to amplify someone telling their own story. So, which are we designing the future for?
As I’ve worked with the formerly incarcerated and communities suffering from the effects of high rates of incarceration, my stereotypes of “journalism” keep popping up — publish an article! See a panel! And sure, those things might help. They could get those stories out to audiences that aren’t familiar with them. But, I am also trying to relinquish any sense of control. What if they took their own pictures? What if the poem she wrote makes the point instead of me? And while these seem simple, I am further pushing myself to discover, understand, or create ways to let them tell it.
I don’t think this is revolutionary or even particularly worthy of praise. My success is slow and miniscule. It’s just got me thinking about all the layers between a story and what actually gets told: producers deciding on “newsworthiness”, reporter blindspots and biases, our fear of not being “objective”. And remember, we don’t just carry around our assumptions about the thing we’re reporting on; we also carry our assumptions about what journalists are supposed to do. Our class just read an article by the terrific Zeynep Tufekci about the failure of U.S. mainstream media to properly investigate and attribute #BringBackOurGirls. How often does that happen?
A lot.
Newspapers plaster front pages with photos of “gang raid” arrestees with no regard for the life of the people in those photos or evidence outside of a police press conference. People are labeled “felons” like that’s they’re worth and “illegal immigrants” like that’s a real thing. They call people killed by the government terrorists before we know their names. As our professor Thomas McBee pointed out, they publish transphobic nonsense with exactly zero input from the already brutally underrepresented trans community.
That’s punching down. A hard rule of comedy is you don’t punch down, and I think it should be the same in journalism. Is East New York violent? Sure. So how do we cover it? To me, it is a resource-starved area where people do desperate things they’d rather not to put food in their stomachs when no other option seems possible. Most local news (and politicians) would have you believe that this is a neighborhood where the American Dream of sweet little kiddies is crushed by genetically predisposed criminals who know nothing but violence and who must be isolated (and tortured). Thanks. Who won?
As we open up new distribution channels to possibly billions around the world, the reality is that those people are mostly poor and they are mostly non-white. Are we going to push on them the same old narratives for the same old interests? Or will we use this as an opportunity to assist in the people taking control? And if we say yes to the latter, how much are we willing to fight and scrap and push against companies that want to “monetize” and “include” without relinquishing one iota of control of who is telling which story how? Are we willing to question our economic system? Our class, racial, and gender hierarchies?
Will we, as we interview our subjects, also interrogate ourselves to better understand how we learned what we presume to know?
If I had to guess, I’d say no. The fight will spread — as always — when things already appear to have gone too far. But the good news is this doesn’t require a few rogue journalists to fight alone. The goal is actually to build with how communities are already thinking and feeling. We are not “solving their problems”. We are lending our skillset to battles already being waged.
In that process, we need to learn how to serve those communities better, and the best way to do that (in tandem with listening) is a rigorous self-interrogation of our blindspots. When I say “self” I don’t only mean each journalist, but the entirety of professional journalism. And when I say “rigorous”, I mean we need to understand who taught us those things and what they stood to gain from winning our belief in them.
As we end one semester, I’m forced to personally reflect. About how at the beginning, I thought the key to success was being published. At the end, I find myself obsessively excavating my motivations and habits in order to whittle my presence to the smallest it can be for maximum effect. I love writing and I will do it in my work this year, but ideally where it is of genuine service.
I’ve learned through my own life experiences, yes, but also through listening to others, the power of a story. I’m also learning that, as I shed my assumptions and blindspots, I become a better listener.
So, Fareed: you do you. Enjoy the “free market” as it sells something-or-other to the data piles we call “human beings”. Ignore the political realities of information channel control. Omit, in your speeches, the danger of feeding the dominant corporate narratives to a billion underserved and resource-starved people so that the white, wealthy tech dudes in the room can keep conflating platform design with philanthropy. Join the chorus of neoliberals who think we can fundamentally reshape human existence by shipping a deteriorating system to new places.
Lots of people have been chosen by advertisers and producers to go on TV and speak. I can’t say it’s an invitation I would turn down — this isn’t a holier-than-thou rant. But we need to fight for a place where the people most affected by an issue will be afforded the same (or more) space to speak for themselves. If we really want that to happen, that will require a radical rethinking not just of how we do our job as journalists, but what that job is. How? Well, listen closely, and the people who need it might just tell you.
