The first and only woman of color featured in The Fourth Estate, Showtime’s four-part documentary about The New York Times, appears halfway through the series. The episode opens with footage from last fall’s Nazi violence in Charlottesville, then cuts between D*nald Tr*mp’s infamous “both sides” speech and the reactions of shocked reporters in the Times’ Washington bureau. One (white, male) reporter cups his face in his hands; another (white, male) reporter squints with skepticism. When the camera gets to Yamiche Alcindor — a black correspondent, and the only person of color shown in the Washington bureau — she looks visibly deflated.
“The president has real issues with race,” she says in a voiceover during the next scene. “And as one of the only African-American reporters at The New York Times I feel an extra need to like, explain to people what’s happening.”
Alcindor’s observation isn’t news; in fact, it’s often in the news: “Only two of the 20-plus reporters who covered the presidential campaign for The New York Times were black,” began a 2016 editorial by former Times public editor Liz Spayd (the paper has since eliminated the public editor position). “None were Latino or Asian,” she continued. “That’s less diversity than you’ll find in Donald Trump’s cabinet thus far.”
In the average newsroom, white reporters are overrepresented by 25 points relative to their audience’s demographic makeup, and women of color comprise just 7.95 percent of American newsrooms overall. And while The Fourth Estate manages to create at least the appearance of transparency, Alcindor’s observation is more revealing than perhaps was intended. It begs the question: Why is she one of the only black reporters at the Times? And doesn’t anyone else feel the need to “explain” the very real implications the Tr*mp presidency has on people of color in the United States?
Spanning the first year of the Tr*mp presidency, The Fourth Estate has too much to cover to answer these questions. Instead we get a brisk workplace drama featuring the people who, through exhaustive (and exhausting) journalism, are shaping the meaning of this moment. Reporters chase leads while editors agonize over word choice in an effort to present unimpeachable narratives; they’re accused of bias anyway. They’re also ghosted by sources, shouted down by rabid Tr*mp supporters, and scooped by The Washington Post. And occasionally, they eat dinner and kiss their children goodnight. Journalists are people too, the subtext seems to be.
But there’s something about that subtext that feels incomplete, if not a bit disingenuous. Yes, journalists are indeed people, but the press is meant to be an institution powerful enough to challenge the government. Therein lies the central conflict of The Fourth Estate as a documentary and The Fourth Estate as an institution. As Megan Garber of The Atlantic (our employer) wrote:
“[The Fourth Estate is] a show about what happens when it becomes unavoidably clear that the institutions that were once easily romanticized — among them The New York Times, the White House, America — are in fact built upon the softest of foundations: humans, messy and complicated and structurally unsound.”
Trusting these institutions was easier to do when their messy inner workings were abstracted by opaque processes and exclusive platforms. But with the internet’s ubiquity came the realization that the news — and its social, cultural, and historical context — is generated by a very select few people. And since the 2016 election, it’s become apparent that prominent editors-in-chief across the political spectrum probably have more in common with each other than they do with a single parent in rural America or with, say, a woman of color.
It’s no wonder that average citizens retreat to their personal networks in search of truth: How can you trust institutions that barely acknowledge — or at worst, trivialize or negate — your existence? Without diverse newsrooms — and perhaps more importantly, without diverse editorial gatekeepers — news outlets are bound to tell the same stories about the same people and to continue sowing distrust among their audiences by failing to represent them.
If nothing else, The Fourth Estate demonstrates that seeking truth is a noble, thankless, cause; it also reveals that “truth” and “newsworthiness” is largely determined by the messy, flawed, and often homogenous humans who do the seeking. Even the best reporters can’t tell a story they don’t know exists, and it takes extraordinary humility and self-awareness to recognize the significance of a story when it isn’t integral to your experience. It’s why Yamiche Alcindor felt an “extra need” to report on the intersection of race and politics at the Times; it’s why it might not have gotten much coverage without her. In fact, you can see for yourself whether that’s the case: Alcindor left the Times earlier this year to become a White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, where she continues to write about race.
In this week’s issue of (a very belated) Token, we’re sharing women of color who are in the business of telling the truth.
—Ari, who also feels like, an *extra need* to write about race
NIKOLE HANNAH-JONES
Nikole Hannah-Jones is a genius. Well, she was awarded one of last year’s MacArthur “Genius Grants” after years of reporting on institutional racial segregation. As a black journalist, Nikole has said that “[editors] assume that Black writers who want to write about racial inequality are biased or that those stories are not of value. Or they try to make sure that once you write a story about Black people you can’t write another one of those stories for a while.” That hasn’t stopped Nikole — she’s currently writing a book based on her reporting on school segregation called The Problem We All Live With.
ALEX WAGNER
Whether or not you know Alex Wagner by name, you’ve probably read (or seen, or heard) her work. As the co-host of Showtime’s The Circus, a contributing editor for The Atlantic, and a contributor to CBS News, she radiates a vitality that is rare among her peers. Her first book Futurefacedelves into her Burmese and European ancestry and explores what it means to find community as a multi-ethnic American child of immigrants. She also explores the difference between — and the mythology of — the “White Immigrant Experience” versus the experiences of non-white immigrants.
AZMAT KHAN
In a recent talk, Azmat Khan spoke to an audience about her path to investigative journalism. “As young as I can remember,” she said, “I had this inability to let unfair things go.” Her career as a war journalist reflects just that. Last November, she and Anand Gopal published “The Uncounted,” a piece for The New York Times Magazine that chronicled Iraqi civilians’ quest for justice after members of their families were killed by American drone strikes. She’s currently pursuing her investigative work as a New America Future of War fellow, and she stil contributes to NYT Magazine.
Token is a project by Ari Curtis and Natalie Chang that celebrates the work and worth of women of color. Subscribe here to get the latest issues in your inbox.
