Journalism: Half Activism and Half Anthropology
“The Internet is in the first- or second-person, newspapers are still writing in the third,” according to S. Mitra Kalita, Los Angeles Times managing editor for editorial strategy. In third-person narratives, the narrator is uninvolved — an observer — and is not a character in any way, shape, or form in the story. They are telling story objectively, the holy grail of 20th century journalism’s principles. Let me tell you something about objectivity.
Nacirema culture is taught to first-year anthropology students as a lesson in objectivity.
The Nacirema are described as a “North American group living in the territory between the Canadian Creel, the Yaqui, and Tarahumare of Mexico and the Carib and Arawak of the Antilles. Little is known of their origin, although tradition states that they came from the east….”
Horace Mitchell Miner, the anthropologist who documented this group in 1956, goes on to describe several noteworthy characteristics of the Nacirema including the existence of “holy-mouth-men”:
In the hierarchy of magical practitioners, and below the medicine men in prestige, are specialists whose designation is best translated “holy-mouth-men.” The Nacirema have an almost pathological horror of and fascination with the mouth, the condition of which is believed to have a supernatural influence on all social relationships. Were it not for the rituals of the mouth, they believe that their teeth would fall out, their gums bleed, their jaws shrink, their friends desert them, and their lovers reject them.
In 1972, anthropologist Neil B. Thompson sought to document the Nacirema culture further, describing how this group divided the environment up for what seemed like the reinforcement of a caste system:
On a more limited territorial basis, the Nacirema spent great time and energy constructing narrow ribbons, called steerts, across the landscape. Some steerts were arranged in connected patterns, and in regions with a great concentration of people, the patterns, when viewed from the air, increased in size and became more elaborate. Other ribbons did not follow any particular pattern but aimlessly pushed from one population center to another. In general, their primary function seems to have been to geometricize the landscape into units that could be manipulated by a few men. The steerts also served as environmental dividers; persons of a lower caste lived within the boundaries of defined areas while those of the upper caste were free to live where they chose. Exploratory digs have shown that the quality of life in the different areas varied from very luxurious to poverty stricken. The various areas were generically referred to as ottehgs.
Some students catch on but many do not. What’s there to catch on to?
“Nacemira” is American backwards. “Holy-mouth-men” are dentists. “Steerts” on streets. “Ottehgs” are ghettos. Miner’s and Thompson’s whole texts are actually an objective description of American culture.
The moral of the story is self-distancing, or, in other words, experiencing events as an observer rather than a participant.
And that, my friends, is bullshit. There is no such thing as a human being who’s existence does not influence the existence of any other human being on Earth. In the 21st century, everyone is a participant and the sooner we can come to terms with that, the better off we’ll be.
There is no such thing as objectivity, there is a only a spectrum of subjectivity.
The objectivity of the Nacirema texts are activist in nature. They exist to teach a lesson. That means they are intended to change your perspective. That’s roughly the definition of “activism”.
And if anthropology cannot be objective, journalism certainly cannot be. But where anthropology’s mission is academic, journalism’s assignment is activist. How so? Because journalists set agendas.
When a journalist meditates on the mantra that they should speak truth to power, they hold a belief that the powerful need a check on their power
Even more activist is the mantra of giving power to the truth. That premise requires the belief that the status quo suppresses the voices of the underserved, the downtrodden, and the struggling.
There is absolutely nothing fucking wrong with that.
In a world where there is no objectivity — where its impossible to be an observer, each action you take has an agenda behind it, whether you’re conscious or not. Don’t believe me? Do you eat seafood?
From the Associated Press in 2015:
The Burmese slaves sat on the floor and stared through the rusty bars of their locked cage, hidden on a tiny tropical island thousands of miles from home.
Just a few yards away, other workers loaded cargo ships with slave-caught seafood that clouds the supply networks of major supermarkets, restaurants and even pet stores in the United States.
Did you contribute to modern day slavery in the last month? In the last year?
You might not have been conscious that you should be concerned about where your seafood comes from. Your being uninformed is the fault of a system that does not want you to care about the rights of laborers around the world. But now that you know, you can act against the status quo. You can set an agenda for yourself so that your actions have a different impact.
Every action you take has an impact. You can control how negative it is. When someone tells you to be objective, consider what the agenda behind that objectivity is.
If you quote climate change deniers and climate change scientists as though their perspectives are equal, then you’re serving the agenda of energy companies that have known about global warming for decades but have done everything in their power to keep the public uninformed about it.
In a world where the complexity of our relationships is global, every story you decide to write has an agenda behind it. The agenda of anthropology may be the expansion of human knowledge. The agenda of public relations may be to shape narratives to the financier’s benefit. The agenda of journalism has to be giving power to the truth.
The Internet is in the first- or second-person. Life is in the first- or second-person. There is no third-person narrative to life. There is no objectivity. We all live through personal experiences. There is always an agenda. We are all activists simply by acting. We should at least be conscious of what we advocate for.
