Bringing Real Human Connection Back to Journalism

Delivering the Gospel of Dialogue Journalism at TED Talks

This is the text of Eve Pearlman’s talk at the TED World Theater in New York, NY, on January 16, part of the TED Salon: Up for Debate, a session of talks hosted by TED and presented in partnership with Doha Debates. The video is available here.

In the run-up to the 2016 election, I was, like most of us, watching the rise in discord, vitriol and nastiness in our public spaces. This crazy uptick in polarization. It was both disheartening and distressing.

So I started thinking with a journalist friend, Jeremy Hay, about how we might practice our craft differently. How we might go to the heart of divides, to places of conflict ― as journalists always have ― but, once there, do something different.

We knew we wanted to take the core tools of our craft: careful vetting of information, diligent research, curiosity, a commitment to serving the public good, to serving our democracy ― and do something new.

So we mapped out this process ― what we call Dialogue Journalism ― for going to the heart of social and political fractures and building journalism-supported conversations between regular people about the issues of deep consequence to all us.

But how do we actually do this when we live in a world that’s so sharply divided? When cousins and aunts and old college roommates have “unfriended” one another.

How do we do this when we very often live in separate and distinct news ecosystems? And when we reflexively and habitually judge, dismiss and malign those with whom we disagree?

But we wanted to try! So right after the 2016 election, in that intense moment between the election and the inauguration, we partnered with the Alabama Media Group to do something new. We brought 25 women from Alabama who supported Trump and 25 Clinton voters from California. And we brought these women into a closed, moderated, fact-supported Facebook group that we kept open for a month.

• What we wanted to do was give them a place to engage with genuine curiosity and openness.
• We wanted to support them in building relationships not just with each other, but with us as journalists.
• We wanted to supply facts and information — facts and information that they could actually receive and trust — that would serve to undergird their conversations.

As a prelude to this conversation — the first step of dialogue journalism — we asked the Trump supporters from Alabama what they thought those in the California thought about them. This is some of what they said:

They think that we are religious bible thumpers. That we’re backwards and hickish and stupid

They think that we all have confederate flags in our yards. That we’re racist and sexist and uneducated.

They think we are all barefoot, pregnant, with dirt driveways

They think that we’re all prissy butts and that we’re walking around in hoop skirts with cotton fields in the background.

And then we asked the same question of the Californians: what do you think Alabamians think about you — there was this:

That we’re crazy, liberal Californians. That we’re not patriotic.

We’re snobby and elitist. We’re Godless and permissive with our children.

We’re focused only on our careers not our families

That we’re elitists, pie-in-the-sky intellectuals; rich people, Whole Food-eating, very out of touch.

So by asking questions like this at the start of each project and by identifying and sharing stereotypes, we find that people — people on all sides — begin to see the simplistic and often mean-spirited caricatures they carry, and then with that, we begin the process of moving into real conversation.

In the two years since that California-Alabama launch project, we have gone on to host dialogues in partnership with media organizations across the country. And they have been about some of most divisive issues in our nation: guns, immigration, race, education.

We have found — remarkably! — that real dialogue is in fact possible. That when given a chance to do it and a structure in which to do it, many — not all, but many — of our fellow citizens are eager to engage “the other.”

Too often journalists have sharpened divides in the name of drama or readership or in service to our own views.

And as journalists we have gone to each “side,” quoting a partisan voice on the one hand and a partisan one on the other. And then we file “he said/she said” stories — with a telling anecdotal lede and pithy final quote (all of which readers are keen to mine for bias).

But our dialogue-based practice has a slower pace and a different center.

And our work is guided by the principle that dialogue across difference is essential to a functioning democracy and that journalism and journalists have a multi-faceted role to play in supporting these kind of engagements.

How do we work? Here are some key elements:

• We are as transparent as possible about our methods and motives as we can be. At every stage of our process, we take the time to answer people’s questions, to address their concerns.
• We explain our purpose: a real, curiosity-driven conversation.
• We explain that the project is not a trap: no one is there to tell you that you are stupid. To tell your experience doesn’t matter.
• We also ask for a very different sort of behavior, a repatterning away from the reflexive name-calling and dismissiveness so entrenched in our discourse that most of us, on all sides, often don’t even notice it in ourselves.

Often people join a conversation and start a bit angrily: How could you possibly believe x? Isn’t it outrageous that y? How could you read that publication!?

But generally, in a miracle that delights us every time, people begin to introduce themselves, to explain who they are and where they come from, and begin to ask questions of one another.

And slowly, over time, people circle back again and again to difficult topics — mass shootings, school safety, #MeToo — each time with a little more consideration, a little more empathy, a little more nuance.

Our journalist-moderators work hard to support this. This is not a debate. Not a battle. Not a Sunday morning talk show. Not the flinging of talking points. Not the stacking of memes and GIFs or articles with headlines that “prove” a point. It’s not about scoring political victories with question traps.

We have learned that our state of discord is bad for everyone — it is a deeply unhappy state of being.

People tell us this again and again. And they say they appreciate the chance to engage respectfully, with curiosity, openness. They are glad and relieved for a chance to put down their arms.

So we do our work in direct challenge to the political climate in our country now.

We do this work knowing this is difficult, challenging work to hold and support people from opposing backgrounds in genuine conversation.

We do this work believing that our democracy depends on the ability of people to work together to address our shared problems.

We do this work by putting community at the heart of our journalistic practice; by putting our egos to the side to listen first, to listen deeply, to listen through and around our own biases, our own habits of thought, and to support others in doing the same.

We do this work knowing that journalism as an institution is struggling, and believing that journalism has a role to play—has always had a role to play — in supporting the exchange of ideas and views.

For many of the participants and reporters who are involved in our conversations there are lasting reverberations. Many people have become Facebook friends — and in-real-life friends, too — across political lines.

After we closed the first Trump/Clinton project, about two-thirds of the participants went on to form their own Facebook group, choosing a moderator from each state. They continued to talk about sexual harassment, Confederate statues, and Supreme Court Justices.

Every day on Facebook I see respectful conversations from veterans of our groups — people carefully, patiently sharing their beliefs, their ideas.

People tell us they are grateful for the opportunity to be a part of this work. Grateful to know that people on the other side aren’t crazy. Grateful that they have a chance to connect with people they wouldn’t have talked to otherwise.

A lot of what we’ve learned and seen—despite the fact that the organization we built to do this work is called Spaceship Media—is not at all rocket science:

If you call people names, label them, insult them, they are not inclined to listen to you.

Shame doesn’t help.
Snark doesn’t help.
Condescension doesn’t help.

Genuine communication takes practice and effort and restraint and self awareness. There isn’t an algorithm to solve where we are. Real human connection is in fact real human connection. So lead with curiosity.

Emphasize discussion, not debate.

Get out of your silo.

Real connection across difference: this is a salve our democracy sorely needs.