Accountability Journalism in the 21st Century

Chris Graves Author

05/13/2021 Added

16 Plays

Description

A two-hour workshop on May 12, 2021, from 1-3 p.m. via Zoom that provides us with practical guidance about approaches we can take in and out of the classroom, while we challenge our own biases and approaches to storytelling and expand our opportunities for richer, deeper journalism practices.

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[00:00:19.533]It's been a year and I still do it, so,
[00:00:22.033]it's probably never gonna stop, FYI.
[00:00:24.784]Me too.
[00:00:25.617]And Laura, I don't know you as well
[00:00:27.830]as the others on the call,
[00:00:29.130]so if you want to introduce yourself,
[00:00:30.810]just so we know sort of who's here,
[00:00:32.561]and what everybody's background is,
[00:00:35.398]before Elissa and Alexa jump in.
[00:00:38.700]Does that work?
[00:00:42.079]♪ Laura ♪
[00:00:44.970]I can see her.
[00:00:45.803]I can see her on the list, but I can't see her in the room.
[00:00:50.990]The room where it happens.
[00:00:52.863]Her name is, she goes by Madeline.
[00:00:55.050]Yeah, she goes by Madeline.
[00:00:56.050]Oh Madeline, well hi Madeline, then there you go.
[00:00:58.157]Probably 'cause we weren't calling her
[00:01:00.220]by her right name, why would she even answer us?
[00:01:02.840]Right oops, sorry.
[00:01:04.126]Who would?
[00:01:05.410]Maybe she'll show up later.
[00:01:06.790]Oh well, she'll join us, Madeline.
[00:01:09.610]Hello?
[00:01:10.443]No, anyway.
[00:01:11.636]So, and Andrea is here,
[00:01:16.570]one of our advisors, student advisors.
[00:01:19.410]Hey Andrea.
[00:01:20.243]We were just introducing ourselves,
[00:01:22.760]if you want to jump in and tell Elissa
[00:01:25.320]and Alexis sort of your role here and all of that.
[00:01:30.660]Yeah, no problem.
[00:01:31.560]I just wanted to hop in and listen,
[00:01:32.943]while I did some other work,
[00:01:34.340]because I don't have a background in journalism,
[00:01:36.850]but I advise students and I thought this would
[00:01:38.981]be helpful just to kind of listen in on.
[00:01:42.224]Wonderful.
[00:01:43.440]Well, when we do our audience participation,
[00:01:46.080]we may like ask you to come back on,
[00:01:50.480]but we won't hold you to like only single tasking.
[00:01:54.600]You can still multitask.
[00:01:57.451]And Maddie says she's having some tech issues,
[00:02:00.070]but she's here and she hopes that's okay.
[00:02:02.370]Yeah, well, we'll just, hopefully
[00:02:04.823]we can hear her voice at one point too,
[00:02:06.860]'cause we will be asking folks to weigh in on some things.
[00:02:12.181](sings) The thing that everybody hates.
[00:02:14.470]All the teachers or the students
[00:02:16.440]who hate that kind of stuff, so trust me, I feel you.
[00:02:20.030]I feel you already.
[00:02:21.690]All right.
[00:02:22.523]And Elissa's background is, you guys just,
[00:02:24.740]I mean, as opposed to me yammer on-
[00:02:27.190]Yeah, we can do it.
[00:02:28.023]We can take it. If you just wanna
[00:02:28.856]introduce yourselves and talk about your roles,
[00:02:31.480]and then just launch right into it,
[00:02:33.030]'cause I know that a couple of people
[00:02:34.890]have to leave early, and I think Elissa,
[00:02:38.960]you need to leave at about maybe 15 minutes to three,
[00:02:43.880]our time, for you.
[00:02:44.727]Giving out a scholarship this afternoon, very exciting.
[00:02:48.214]That's exciting.
[00:02:49.261]Yeah, and I think we'll take as long as we need.
[00:02:52.590]I don't want to rush us, but I also note that
[00:02:55.440]two hours is a luxury, so we'll be mindful
[00:02:58.150]of that as we go through.
[00:02:59.590]And Alexis and I have a set, a deck to share with you,
[00:03:03.460]and some have audio and video clips,
[00:03:06.660]so if you aren't on video, if you can at least see it
[00:03:09.470]or potentially hear it, it probably will still work,
[00:03:12.300]but there might be some points where video would be helpful.
[00:03:15.190]But yeah, so we can just take it,
[00:03:17.450]and Alexis, you want to drive the first part?
[00:03:20.010]So Alexis is going to drive and share her screen
[00:03:22.610]for the first two.
[00:03:24.320]We have a mini break.
[00:03:25.480]We'll have like a five minute,
[00:03:26.680]two five minute breaks, because we love breaks.
[00:03:30.011]Who doesn't love breaks?
[00:03:31.889]All in favor of breaks.
[00:03:33.920]Yes, okay.
[00:03:36.460]Yeah, and we can just, if it's all right
[00:03:38.650]with everyone, we'll just go ahead and get started.
[00:03:42.590]And I'm just going to interrupt and say,
[00:03:44.080]we are recording now.
[00:03:45.280]I meant to say that earlier-
[00:03:46.690]We're recording. Just so everybody
[00:03:47.620]knows we're recording.
[00:03:49.450]Wonderful.
[00:03:50.650]We're all journalists, we let people know those things.
[00:03:53.140]That's what we do.
[00:03:54.680]So first of all, thanks to everyone for being here today.
[00:03:59.450]I know that your semester is just over,
[00:04:02.210]and your time is precious.
[00:04:04.380]And we just really appreciate that
[00:04:06.880]you're interested in this,
[00:04:08.150]and understand the value of taking
[00:04:12.530]just some time after or whenever to think
[00:04:15.370]about what we do, why we do it and how we do it,
[00:04:18.340]when we're teaching young journalists,
[00:04:19.750]or teaching journalists of any age.
[00:04:21.530]So Alexis, you want to move it to our agenda?
[00:04:25.540]So these are the things we're just gonna outline,
[00:04:27.900]and we try to practice what we preach,
[00:04:29.590]and sort of be role models for the kinds
[00:04:32.290]of processes that we're promoting.
[00:04:36.570]So the agenda is really straight forward.
[00:04:38.610]We'll do welcome and agreements,
[00:04:40.140]review our learning outcomes.
[00:04:41.730]We have a great exercise called wise person,
[00:04:44.200]that I stole, borrowed,
[00:04:45.930]honored from a consultancy in Boston
[00:04:50.010]that I'll tell you a little bit more about.
[00:04:51.610]And then we'll talk about the three A's
[00:04:54.480]of accountability journalism,
[00:04:56.470]and then Alexis will kick in to really
[00:04:58.700]talk about where you fit in,
[00:05:00.160]and then we've developed some customized next steps,
[00:05:03.080]and ways to, conversation starters
[00:05:05.070]for you all moving forward.
[00:05:10.000]So we start with and are very intentional
[00:05:12.432]about agreements, and that's seems often strange
[00:05:16.298]in the journalism world.
[00:05:18.100]And also, I encourage everyone,
[00:05:20.960]you don't have to mute, you can just chime in
[00:05:23.890]if you have questions.
[00:05:24.900]I can't see everybody, but I'm trying
[00:05:27.250]to look on the side.
[00:05:28.430]So if you have any thoughts
[00:05:30.080]or just like, wow, that seems weird,
[00:05:31.963]feel free to just go, hey, stop me,
[00:05:34.720]and maybe Chris, you can keep a look out
[00:05:36.530]to see if folks have anything they want to add.
[00:05:41.220]But basically, the agreements that we promote,
[00:05:45.050]and oftentimes we do this in a group
[00:05:46.810]before doing it live and in person,
[00:05:48.400]is that we talk about honoring confidentiality,
[00:05:51.160]and making sure that people have expressed
[00:05:53.870]permission to share whatever is shared
[00:05:55.810]outside of this meeting.
[00:05:57.553]That we ask everyone to avoid attempts to persuade,
[00:06:01.160]always hard for me, that we speak for ourselves
[00:06:03.429]using I statements, and when we share air time,
[00:06:07.970]respect time boundaries.
[00:06:09.350]There's one exercise that we'll do that does
[00:06:10.970]have specific time limits.
[00:06:13.000]That we turn our attention to this time together,
[00:06:16.100]so either turn off their cell phones,
[00:06:17.730]or have them on vibrate.
[00:06:19.140]Listen openly, respectfully,
[00:06:20.850]and with authentic curiosity.
[00:06:22.850]Welcome new perspectives, especially perspectives
[00:06:25.570]of our black and brown community members,
[00:06:27.360]without expecting them to teach us.
[00:06:30.300]Recognize and identify triggers and explore them carefully.
[00:06:33.340]That's something we can talk a little bit about more.
[00:06:35.520]I think it's especially important
[00:06:38.700]in the classrooms when we are dealing
[00:06:40.900]with a lot of unknowns in our student populations.
[00:06:44.300]And then my three favorite at the end.
[00:06:46.560]There are no bystanders in active learning.
[00:06:48.840]We give grace to one another and to ourselves,
[00:06:51.260]and realize that this is a joyful journey
[00:06:53.590]we're on together, even though it may not
[00:06:55.170]always be comfortable.
[00:06:56.740]So we start off with those agreements,
[00:06:58.730]and just sort of get a quick thumbs up from everyone,
[00:07:01.310]if you feel like those seem in line
[00:07:03.640]with where you are today, thank you.
[00:07:07.230]We can move on.
[00:07:09.520]And then to review very quickly
[00:07:11.537]the things we promised we would leave you with today,
[00:07:14.507]is that you'll be able to talk about
[00:07:17.470]what we have framed as the three A's
[00:07:19.410]of responsible journalism.
[00:07:21.140]Explain the impact of white supremacy
[00:07:23.120]on traditional journalism practices,
[00:07:25.110]and on community members.
[00:07:27.350]Talk about the difference between
[00:07:29.010]being authentically inclusive,
[00:07:30.700]versus a white savior approach to journalism.
[00:07:34.090]And really begin to think about
[00:07:36.227]how we approach accountability,
[00:07:38.730]as a, what's it called?
[00:07:41.683]Boy, I'm gonna have one of those days.
[00:07:43.350]A continuous improvement cycle,
[00:07:45.980]where we are always learning.
[00:07:47.380]We're always open to new things.
[00:07:49.790]It's like being in science, right?
[00:07:51.100]We always need more research.
[00:07:52.430]We always need more information,
[00:07:53.820]and it's always evolving.
[00:07:57.850]So that said, who are we to talk
[00:08:01.780]about these things, right?
[00:08:02.910]So I'll introduce myself first.
[00:08:05.240]So my name's Elissa.
[00:08:07.747]I taught journalism at the University of Cincinnati
[00:08:11.880]for 10 years, before becoming a consultant,
[00:08:15.260]and worked for Poynter for a couple of years,
[00:08:17.470]developed the college media project there.
[00:08:19.714]I also now do a lot of work in education
[00:08:23.740]with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation,
[00:08:25.650]and have founded a nonprofit audio storytelling
[00:08:31.450]nonprofit called A Picture's Worth,
[00:08:33.280]which I could tell you more about later.
[00:08:34.740]But a lot of it grew out of this work
[00:08:37.080]about being responsible, being accountable
[00:08:39.398]and thinking about restorative media,
[00:08:42.389]as a definitive approach to what we do.
[00:08:47.910]And really recognizing that the questions
[00:08:49.950]that we ask have consequences,
[00:08:51.900]not just to the powerful, but also
[00:08:54.100]to the community members who we talk to,
[00:08:56.870]as well as the audience who reads
[00:08:59.400]and sees and hears our work.
[00:09:02.680]Alexis.
[00:09:04.230]Yes.
[00:09:05.063]Hi all.
[00:09:05.896]Super excited to be here.
[00:09:07.570]Great intro, Elissa.
[00:09:09.070]Yes, my name is Alexis Wray,
[00:09:11.040]and I guess what gives me a little bit
[00:09:13.520]of credibility to be here today is I am a graduate
[00:09:17.660]of North Carolina A&T State University,
[00:09:19.570]which is a historically black university,
[00:09:21.500]located here in North Carolina.
[00:09:25.712]I met Elissa on this really great journey
[00:09:28.600]of trying to better understand accountability journalism,
[00:09:31.690]and how that should definitely apply
[00:09:33.300]to our practices, and the work that we do,
[00:09:36.930]and how we talk to people, how we interview people,
[00:09:39.050]how we write stories.
[00:09:40.690]That has really propelled me into a career
[00:09:43.420]of counter storytelling, telling narratives
[00:09:45.863]and telling stories of folks
[00:09:47.590]who have their stories, mistold, untold, distorted.
[00:09:54.320]And that has just really opened up a lot of gateways,
[00:09:57.665]and now I am a fellow with Reckon,
[00:10:01.405]which is a branch of Advance Local Media,
[00:10:04.350]and I'm also a graduate student of Syracuse University.
[00:10:08.560]So I'm super excited to be here
[00:10:09.760]with you all today and share a little bit of perspective.
[00:10:13.010]So I'm just going to say,
[00:10:14.320]Alexis was selected out of many, many applicants
[00:10:17.390]to be the only fellow who has a free,
[00:10:19.550]full ride at Syracuse's graduate school,
[00:10:21.560]thanks to Reckon, with her work at Reckon.
[00:10:24.070]So she's the real deal.
[00:10:29.290]Can you tell I'm proud?
[00:10:30.400]What can I tell you?
[00:10:31.233]Thank you.
[00:10:32.066](both laughing)
[00:10:32.899]I was so lucky to get to work with her.
[00:10:34.720]All right, so now this is, I know some of you
[00:10:38.440]have to jump off, so hopefully we have everybody
[00:10:40.594]through at least this exercise.
[00:10:43.100]So this exercise will take two minutes per person,
[00:10:46.660]but this is an approach that I learned
[00:10:51.780]from Bob Stains who is a member of, or a founder
[00:10:55.440]of a group called Essential Partners based out of Boston.
[00:10:58.570]They do a lot of work in communities around,
[00:11:01.988]not negotiation, but just facilitating conversations
[00:11:05.240]across difference and across divides.
[00:11:07.430]So they'll go in and they'll have a conversation
[00:11:09.870]with multiple members of communities about abortion,
[00:11:12.880]or about gun rights, or about these really sticky,
[00:11:16.554]very complicated topics that people have
[00:11:19.380]very deep rooted feelings about.
[00:11:21.720]So I think journalists can learn a lot
[00:11:25.340]from people who know how to have
[00:11:26.629]those kinds of conversations,
[00:11:28.410]and not have them devolve into arguments,
[00:11:30.600]but also really listening openly,
[00:11:33.400]and trying to get to root causes of certain thinking,
[00:11:38.290]ways of thinking, ways of believing, ways of acting.
[00:11:41.201]And so this exercise really allows everybody
[00:11:44.010]to just take a moment and realize that,
[00:11:47.100]you know, even though we're in a virtual room together,
[00:11:49.730]somehow all of us from our disparate backgrounds
[00:11:52.950]have ended up in this one virtual space.
[00:11:55.370]So if we can take just two minutes each,
[00:11:58.820]and I'll, maybe Chris, I'm going to ask you to do this too.
[00:12:02.060]Can you take a, and I'll time you.
[00:12:04.170]I'll start by tossing it to the Chris,
[00:12:06.220]that you have exactly two minutes,
[00:12:08.460]and you don't have to take up the full two minutes,
[00:12:10.244]to think about, tell us a little bit
[00:12:12.830]about a wise person in your life
[00:12:14.610]who had a positive impact on the values
[00:12:16.680]that led you to this space.
[00:12:18.900]So that could be whether you're an administrator,
[00:12:21.256]a faculty member, an active journalist,
[00:12:24.150]or whatever you are like,
[00:12:25.780]what person's value system kind of brought you,
[00:12:29.720]influenced you to bring you where you are today?
[00:12:32.770]So we have how many people in the room?
[00:12:36.500]10 people in the room.
[00:12:37.580]So I think it would be great
[00:12:39.510]if we just, let's start with Chris,
[00:12:41.760]and I'll time her, and then she can popcorn it
[00:12:44.340]to somebody else, so we'll just keep it moving right along.
[00:12:46.970]Sure.
[00:12:48.858]And Chris, I'm gonna set my timer.
[00:12:54.470]Boop.
[00:12:55.520]Set my stopwatch.
[00:12:56.880]Are you ready?
[00:12:58.319]And actually, we can take off,
[00:12:59.812]if you want to stop sharing,
[00:13:01.750]we can stop sharing so we can see each other,
[00:13:03.620]that's probably better.
[00:13:04.970]Awesome.
[00:13:05.803]All right, Chris, hit it.
[00:13:08.300]Sure.
[00:13:09.133]So my wise person is my mom, who is no longer here,
[00:13:14.903]but she's my wise person.
[00:13:17.430]She was not a highly educated person,
[00:13:21.350]but for me, education does not necessarily
[00:13:24.650]equate to being wise.
[00:13:28.010]She was barely a high school graduate,
[00:13:30.900]but was among the most curious human beings I know,
[00:13:34.539]who also empowered and instilled in me curiosity.
[00:13:39.840]She read the newspaper every day, watched TV.
[00:13:42.520]Always said, "Christine listen to this.
[00:13:44.640]Can you believe this?"
[00:13:47.147]She also, interestingly, as it relates
[00:13:49.820]to this conversation, was among the most
[00:13:52.900]racist people I know.
[00:13:55.880]And somehow out of that, growing up and out
[00:14:01.159]of that experience came my need, want,
[00:14:07.050]curiosity around why we treat people differently, I think,
[00:14:11.670]and so that's probably counter-intuitive.
[00:14:15.448]She also was the only person,
[00:14:18.420]and until the day she died, the sole person
[00:14:21.730]who really said I could do and be anything
[00:14:25.208]I wanted to be, and I believed her, so here I am.
[00:14:29.490]Probably one of the few people
[00:14:31.110]on a college campus without an advanced degree,
[00:14:33.430]and a first-generation college student
[00:14:35.010]and all that sort of stuff.
[00:14:36.160]So she's my wife's person.
[00:14:38.810]Nicole, who's yours?
[00:14:42.856]I was not prepared for that.
[00:14:45.530]I don't, I don't know, because this was not
[00:14:49.948]my ever original path.
[00:14:52.010]So it was just like go to school,
[00:14:56.760]do a thing, and took a different path.
[00:15:01.883]It was insurance for 12 years,
[00:15:03.750]so this was just that path out
[00:15:06.200]of being stuck in the same place,
[00:15:08.550]and look for something that wasn't insurance.
[00:15:11.488]So that's kind of how I landed here, but I don't know.
[00:15:16.939]I guess I just, my whole family kind of,
[00:15:19.550]we just grew up to like learn
[00:15:21.190]how to figure out how things to do,
[00:15:23.680]and you learn how to do it, to get it done,
[00:15:26.770]and you use that information to do other things.
[00:15:31.780]And that's kind of what we've taught
[00:15:33.540]our kids too, like figure it out and learn how to do it,
[00:15:36.770]and you can do lots of things.
[00:15:41.490]That's great.
[00:15:42.323]Thank you.
[00:15:43.156]Who are you going to kick it off, Nicole?
[00:15:44.760]Oh gosh.
[00:15:47.436]Andrea looks like she's ready.
[00:15:49.340]She's smiling at me, so.
[00:15:51.137](Elissa laughing)
[00:15:51.970]Don't make the mistake of smiling.
[00:15:53.210]Never make eye contact, haven't you learned that?
[00:15:56.330]I was, I guess I was making eye contact
[00:15:58.630]through Zoom, which is kind of hard but okay.
[00:16:06.351]I had to think about this,
[00:16:07.184]'cause I haven't really thought about this.
[00:16:09.070]Somebody who had a influence on my career direction
[00:16:11.720]was the study abroad advisor
[00:16:13.730]at my undergrad institution, UNO.
[00:16:16.980]I got heavily involved in working
[00:16:19.892]in the International Students Office,
[00:16:22.360]working with international students, traveling,
[00:16:25.890]and so that really opened my eyes to the world.
[00:16:29.080]And you know, I'm from a small town here in Nebraska,
[00:16:31.730]so, you know, never really exposed to a lot,
[00:16:35.210]until I got involved in that office,
[00:16:37.020]and then fell in love with culture,
[00:16:40.119]and language, and things like that.
[00:16:43.800]And so she's the reason why I got
[00:16:45.240]into higher education to help students,
[00:16:49.560]and that's why I'm here now, I guess.
[00:16:53.860]That's awesome.
[00:16:55.010]Who you want to kick it to, Andrea?
[00:16:57.750]Jessica.
[00:17:03.380]I'm really bad at picking like one thing.
[00:17:06.270]My kids are like, what's your favorite movie, mom?
[00:17:08.347]I'm like, I don't know, I like 10 different
[00:17:10.081]movies are my favorites.
[00:17:11.790]I feel like with this question,
[00:17:13.010]it's kind of hard to pick one person.
[00:17:17.350]And like I've also had, I did not,
[00:17:19.269]would not have predicted this path for me,
[00:17:22.260]up until the last couple of years,
[00:17:25.120]as I was mostly a newspaper reporter,
[00:17:27.070]and then a stay at home mom.
[00:17:28.960]But I mean, I would say that,
[00:17:33.140]weirdly, I didn't do journalism in high school,
[00:17:35.560]but my high school English teacher,
[00:17:38.050]she was really one of the first people
[00:17:39.600]I think who recognized that I had
[00:17:41.775]a talent for writing and she really
[00:17:45.330]nurtured me and encouraged me to enter a contest.
[00:17:50.280]I think it was like a poetry contest
[00:17:52.080]or some kind of like writing contest,
[00:17:53.527]when I was in high school,
[00:17:54.930]and I was like, oh, I am pretty good at this.
[00:17:57.120]And so it was really just like, you know,
[00:17:59.370]like that kind of little bit of support
[00:18:01.470]from that teacher who I also really
[00:18:04.060]just kind of related to and liked,
[00:18:05.550]like really kind of helped me recognize what,
[00:18:10.100]kind of helped me realize that like I had strengths
[00:18:12.410]that other people didn't have, you know.
[00:18:14.720]But I also had really amazing journalism professors
[00:18:18.190]in this college, and my mom supported me
[00:18:21.697]throughout everything.
[00:18:24.285]I wouldn't really be anywhere without my mom.
[00:18:26.571]And then, so yeah, so I mean, just like lots of people
[00:18:30.810]who like little, just meeting people along the way
[00:18:36.500]in my journey, who have just kind of believed in me
[00:18:39.920]has really been how I ended up here, you know?
[00:18:43.440]So it's really kind of like a combination
[00:18:47.837]of a lot of people.
[00:18:51.210]Awesome.
[00:18:52.043]Thank you.
[00:18:52.876]Who do you want to pass it off to?
[00:18:57.940]I'll pass it off to Michelle. (laughs)
[00:19:03.000]Okay, well, I'm kind of like Jessica.
[00:19:04.870]It's always hard to pick one person,
[00:19:07.100]but I would have to say my grandfather.
[00:19:11.450]He was a real truth seeker.
[00:19:17.840]He was, by training, a scientist.
[00:19:21.000]He was a chemist, but he was curious about everything too.
[00:19:28.550]He sought truth.
[00:19:29.990]He actually wrote several books.
[00:19:33.630]He was very curious about everything,
[00:19:37.000]and it just kind of this infectious curiosity.
[00:19:39.590]When he'd come to visit,
[00:19:40.926]he'd always want to know what was the latest slang,
[00:19:44.700]and he was very into not only popular culture, but history.
[00:19:54.480]I mean, he was just really curious and a truth seeker.
[00:19:57.200]So those kinds of values really stuck with me
[00:20:01.000]when I pursued journalism.
[00:20:05.200]He was a voracious reader.
[00:20:08.550]He really encouraged us to read,
[00:20:10.840]as did other people in my family.
[00:20:12.880]But I think all of those values guided me to journalism.
[00:20:23.420]That's awesome.
[00:20:24.480]I will kick it off to Joe Weber.
[00:20:27.590]Ah, you're going to torture me.
[00:20:29.920]Thank you, Michelle.
[00:20:31.430]Well, like many of the speakers,
[00:20:34.210]I can point to a series of mentors.
[00:20:37.267]I think that many of us have had
[00:20:39.720]a series of mentors who have influenced us.
[00:20:41.960]Perhaps the most influential for me
[00:20:43.390]in journalism was a college journalism professor,
[00:20:46.920]a guy by the name of Jim Gallagher,
[00:20:48.800]who went on to become a Chicago correspondent,
[00:20:52.414]Chicago Tribune correspondent in Moscow.
[00:20:55.850]And he was the advisor to the student newspaper,
[00:20:58.947]made me the editor of it, at our college,
[00:21:02.710]and he basically taught journalism
[00:21:08.357]in what I would call the old verities
[00:21:11.050]of objective, fair, balanced,
[00:21:13.160]even handed, impartial journalism,
[00:21:15.830]at a time post-Vietnam when that was out of fashion,
[00:21:19.770]and alternative news was rising everywhere.
[00:21:23.130]And he basically put this imprint on us that,
[00:21:27.700]you tell it straight, you avoid the bullshit.
[00:21:30.060]You avoid the political cant,
[00:21:32.350]and you tell the news as it is,
[00:21:34.620]and that has stuck with me for years.
[00:21:38.930]And who do I need to kick it off to?
[00:21:40.830]Who else is left here?
[00:21:43.070]Shoun, our newest faculty member.
[00:21:48.430]We wanna see your face, Shoun.
[00:21:50.502]Oh.
[00:21:51.510]Oh.
[00:21:53.600]I guess everybody said their mother,
[00:21:55.850]so I guess I would go in a different direction
[00:21:59.620]but I'm not, because my mother
[00:22:01.300]read the paper like every day.
[00:22:03.530]Every evening we bring it in and she would read it,
[00:22:06.930]and then that got me to doing it.
[00:22:09.690]And you know, that started me reading the post
[00:22:13.380]and The Sun every Sunday and every weekend,
[00:22:17.310]and it was something I wanted to be a part of.
[00:22:20.007]And like I'd mentioned to you guys when I interviewed,
[00:22:22.730]I thought I was going to be a reporter,
[00:22:24.080]and not a photographer.
[00:22:25.560]So here I am, and I guess, what,
[00:22:28.970]two or three months I start teaching,
[00:22:31.600]and that's a little intimidating for me,
[00:22:34.210]but it's something that I'm looking forward
[00:22:37.080]to and want to do, so.
[00:22:40.383]I'm done, who's next?
[00:22:42.510]That's awesome.
[00:22:43.420]Who else is there?
[00:22:44.510]I can take Maddie.
[00:22:45.580]I don't think that she.
[00:22:47.630]She sent me a message, and I don't think she's,
[00:22:50.160]I think she's still having technical stuff,
[00:22:51.720]so pretend I'm Maddie.
[00:22:53.890]You don't really see Chris.
[00:22:56.760]So she says her dad, he always had NPR on or PBS.
[00:23:02.480]He is a hard worker.
[00:23:04.330]He always has a project going.
[00:23:06.160]He cares about history and the papers.
[00:23:09.260]He always taught me to focus on
[00:23:11.050]what's important, education,
[00:23:13.088]teaching, writing, exploring the world.
[00:23:16.930]Did I get that right, Maddie?
[00:23:18.390]I see a heart.
[00:23:19.560]Okay.
[00:23:20.397]Aw!
[00:23:21.520]That's awesome.
[00:23:22.850]I want to know who Alexis' wise person is.
[00:23:26.040]Yes, I was gonna say, we can go to Alexis next.
[00:23:29.210]Oh, yikes.
[00:23:30.369](Elissa laughing)
[00:23:31.750]You've done this before.
[00:23:33.090]I know.
[00:23:34.120]It changes.
[00:23:34.970]It doesn't change, but I just feel like
[00:23:36.160]I add more people to the journey, you know.
[00:23:39.520]I'll say definitely it started with my parents
[00:23:41.630]just really believing in me.
[00:23:43.250]I grew up in rural Appalachia,
[00:23:44.920]so there wasn't a lot of representation,
[00:23:47.592]as far as anyone in the journalism profession
[00:23:53.071]that looked like me.
[00:23:54.702]So our parents were just always pushing me
[00:23:58.270]to be whatever and do whatever I wanted,
[00:24:00.550]and they still do to this day.
[00:24:01.670]They always show up to anything I have going on.
[00:24:04.090]I told them about this today,
[00:24:05.410]and they were like, "Can we join?"
[00:24:06.810]And I was like, "No, no, you can't join." (laughs)
[00:24:11.960]And then, you know, that journey just continued
[00:24:13.940]when I went to undergrad, and had some
[00:24:19.020]really great journalism professors there.
[00:24:21.410]And my journey through journalism
[00:24:23.945]has always been difficult,
[00:24:25.210]and I've always wavered a little bit,
[00:24:26.550]like do I really want to be a traditional
[00:24:28.570]journalist and tell stories?
[00:24:30.973]I don't know.
[00:24:32.177]I feel like there's so much wrong with journalism,
[00:24:34.540]and so many things need to be changed,
[00:24:36.610]and fixed, and updated.
[00:24:38.510]And it feels like every time I start
[00:24:40.730]to steer away from that journey,
[00:24:42.281]I get a little nudge from Elissa.
[00:24:45.320]For some reason, she always pops back up.
[00:24:48.150]Oh, you know, here's this opportunity,
[00:24:50.920]or here's this story that I think
[00:24:52.750]that you should read more about,
[00:24:54.520]or you're doing so great,
[00:24:55.620]I love this article that you wrote.
[00:24:57.180]So it's always great to have that mentorship,
[00:25:00.480]that journalism mentorship in your life
[00:25:01.920]that always pops back up and reminds you
[00:25:03.800]that the work that you're doing is important.
[00:25:06.000]Don't just leave it behind and keep moving on.
[00:25:08.769]So it's really great to have a mentor like her
[00:25:12.210]to keep pushing me to do this really important work.
[00:25:17.518]Elissa.
[00:25:19.600]Oh now I have to do it.
[00:25:20.570]Okay.
[00:25:22.240]I usually say my mom, because she definitely
[00:25:24.750]was a wise person as well, but I would,
[00:25:28.484]I'm gonna switch this wise person
[00:25:31.160]to be a woman I wrote a story about.
[00:25:33.940]Her name's LaMonica Sherman.
[00:25:35.140]I wrote a series of stories about her,
[00:25:37.180]as part of a fellowship I got, about restorative media,
[00:25:41.040]and I followed her story for a year.
[00:25:43.490]I was a journalist from the time I was five,
[00:25:46.070]probably, like totally curious,
[00:25:47.910]totally nosy about everybody else's business.
[00:25:50.499]Did magazine journalism, did online journalism,
[00:25:53.490]did newspapers briefly, 'cause I'm long-winded.
[00:25:56.960]But LaMonica taught me, through the course of the year,
[00:26:00.500]that honestly, what I had been doing
[00:26:03.494]as a journalist, as much as I prided myself
[00:26:06.450]on being a really good interviewer,
[00:26:08.570]a really thoughtful context seeker,
[00:26:11.520]and this was after I had been a teacher for a decade.
[00:26:14.550]What she taught me was that our sources
[00:26:18.170]are more than just objects
[00:26:20.050]and subjects of our stories.
[00:26:21.840]They're whole, like what we do
[00:26:25.090]in telling their stories changes their lives.
[00:26:27.920]Whether that story is a one-off story,
[00:26:30.500]where we include a quote from them,
[00:26:32.500]or whether it's a year-long series where, you know,
[00:26:35.480]we go with them when their daughter moves away
[00:26:37.270]to college, and becomes the first person
[00:26:39.020]in any generation of that family
[00:26:41.210]to start a college program,
[00:26:42.820]and now LaMonica has a master's degree, right?
[00:26:45.460]So all of the things that I saw,
[00:26:48.650]and saw how I framed her story,
[00:26:51.810]and the questions I asked her,
[00:26:53.660]really, and she shaped how I thought
[00:26:56.827]about what I was asking and what I was doing.
[00:26:59.230]And to me, it was this amazing flipping
[00:27:02.110]of the script that I've carried with me.
[00:27:05.360]So yeah, very wise.
[00:27:09.900]All right, thank you all.
[00:27:12.650]Is that everybody that is around?
[00:27:18.240]So typically after that exercise,
[00:27:20.548]it's important to just take a moment to breathe.
[00:27:25.162]If you ever do this or are interested
[00:27:27.440]in doing it with your students, I highly recommend it.
[00:27:29.780]You get to know things about them,
[00:27:31.610]that otherwise you don't get to know.
[00:27:35.100]But yeah, let's go ahead and move forward,
[00:27:38.150]as we think about things we share,
[00:27:41.320]and things that we have that are completely different,
[00:27:44.420]even though we're all here together with a shared purpose.
[00:27:51.920]Move us on.
[00:27:54.030]There we are.
[00:27:54.863]Okay, so the three A's of this responsible journalism
[00:28:00.716]approach is approach, awareness and accountability.
[00:28:03.990]So just to briefly go over them,
[00:28:07.290]that our approach, as journalists,
[00:28:08.770]needs to be intentional, and that we need
[00:28:13.010]to be aware of both ourselves
[00:28:14.650]and the context in which we exist,
[00:28:17.740]and in which we are sharing other people's stories,
[00:28:20.523]and that we take a holistic view.
[00:28:23.080]Like I was saying, I used to think, oh, you know,
[00:28:25.170]well the code of ethics as what we hold
[00:28:27.570]the powerful accountable,
[00:28:29.320]but we're also accountable to our audiences,
[00:28:31.540]and again, as I learned from so many
[00:28:33.860]of my sources, especially LaMonica,
[00:28:35.681]that we're accountable to our sources as well,
[00:28:39.000]because they don't owe us, in many cases,
[00:28:41.430]unless they are public figures or whatever,
[00:28:43.080]they are entrusting us with something very valuable.
[00:28:46.740]So let's start with approach.
[00:28:50.331]So approach is not just, you know,
[00:28:54.970]how am I going to prepare for this interview?
[00:28:57.120]It starts with really understanding the gaps
[00:29:00.213]in media literacy in the world today,
[00:29:03.238]as well as the fact that, you know, as journalists,
[00:29:06.680]it wasn't until probably, what,
[00:29:09.040]after all the president's men
[00:29:10.740]and such that like journalism curricula
[00:29:12.620]became like a thing, and journalism
[00:29:14.410]became this academic pathway.
[00:29:18.230]A lot of journalists were trained
[00:29:19.700]in all kinds of different disciplines,
[00:29:21.420]and in fact, many journalism programs
[00:29:24.080]require a minor or some other areas of study,
[00:29:27.300]because we are multi-disciplinarians at heart.
[00:29:30.980]We are curious about everything.
[00:29:32.427]So it strikes me that if we are intentional about that,
[00:29:36.150]we are actually applying learnings
[00:29:37.820]from other disciplines to what we do.
[00:29:40.210]And so that starts with something like agreements,
[00:29:44.150]like what we did at the beginning of this session,
[00:29:46.304]and what the folks from Essential Partners
[00:29:49.970]taught me is that we actually, we don't,
[00:29:52.710]we go into interviews and talk with sources,
[00:29:55.090]folks who may not know us from Adam,
[00:29:57.350]and certainly don't know the inner workings
[00:29:59.740]of the journalism world, without them understanding
[00:30:02.225]or us being on the same page about terms like
[00:30:05.390]on the record, or what are you doing this for?
[00:30:08.020]What is this story about?
[00:30:09.260]Where do I fit in?
[00:30:10.780]And when you think about the sort of hubris
[00:30:12.825]it takes to think that we don't owe them
[00:30:14.800]that sort of context into where their name
[00:30:18.010]is going to be placed, I think we can start
[00:30:20.370]to understand why having some of our own
[00:30:22.910]set of agreements, when we're talking
[00:30:24.640]to anyone for our work, is really important,
[00:30:28.064]because when we make assumptions, when you assume, right?
[00:30:32.257]That old adage holds true in a lot of ways,
[00:30:35.610]and I think if anything, we've learned
[00:30:37.160]about trust in media, it's that a lot
[00:30:39.840]of the erosion of trust in media
[00:30:41.450]is because people don't understand what journalists do.
[00:30:44.080]I mean, half the time, if you ask people
[00:30:45.968]how journalists get sources, they'll be like,
[00:30:48.510]well advertisers pay for them, or something like
[00:30:50.920]that we just as journalists are like, what?
[00:30:52.980]Where did you get that idea?
[00:30:54.771]But the truth is, if we're not telling them
[00:30:58.320]what that actual pathway is,
[00:31:00.470]what our journey is, then they can't read our minds.
[00:31:03.790]So that's step one.
[00:31:05.809]Step two is about being intentional,
[00:31:09.590]really knowing why we're talking to people,
[00:31:11.940]and not sort of flailing around wildly for sources,
[00:31:14.410]but also being intentional about
[00:31:16.271]who we're talking to, why we're talking to them,
[00:31:19.050]and giving them the respect that we hope they're giving us.
[00:31:22.690]And then really having an idea
[00:31:24.640]of what our focus is, and how we are choosing a focus.
[00:31:29.340]Whether we say we are being straightforward
[00:31:31.650]and objective, our questions already
[00:31:36.760]come with a focus on them, whether that focus,
[00:31:39.410]whatever that focus is.
[00:31:40.610]So we just have to acknowledge that we do have a focus,
[00:31:43.540]and then be intentional about what that focus is.
[00:31:46.410]So one slide I like to show,
[00:31:52.510]that I think represents what I call
[00:31:54.740]the myth of objectivity, which used to always
[00:31:56.560]get me in trouble with my fellow professors.
[00:31:59.280]It shows this, and I just open this up.
[00:32:01.970]What do you all think when you see this?
[00:32:04.130]It's a small group, if you just want
[00:32:05.889]to speak up or type into the chat,
[00:32:08.440]whichever you feel more comfortable with.
[00:32:10.310]What's going on in this cartoon?
[00:32:15.760]Anyone?
[00:32:16.950]Bueller, Bueller.
[00:32:19.330]What do you see?
[00:32:22.800]He can't see past his own horn.
[00:32:26.200]His horn is a very important piece
[00:32:29.155]of every piece of art he does, or she does, right?
[00:32:32.720]They, hippo, they, or rhino they,
[00:32:36.500]why am I saying hippo?
[00:32:37.670]Rhino they has very clear artistic vision, right?
[00:32:42.140]And so do we all, right.
[00:32:43.810]Everybody's got a horn,
[00:32:45.200]and we can either be open and honest
[00:32:47.790]about the fact that we got a horn,
[00:32:49.180]or we can pretend like we can push
[00:32:50.952]that horn aside every minute of the day.
[00:32:54.400]And somehow erase the fact
[00:32:57.620]that we have our own sets of beliefs, opinions,
[00:33:01.740]our own wise people we're bringing
[00:33:03.880]in to every situation, our own families,
[00:33:06.697]our own religion, our own spiritual life,
[00:33:09.400]lack of whatever, or addition of whatever.
[00:33:13.410]All those things matter in every situation
[00:33:16.270]we go in to, that's just the reality of being human,
[00:33:19.500]and that's not a bad thing, right?
[00:33:21.810]It's only bad if we say it doesn't exist.
[00:33:25.600]So moving forward from there.
[00:33:29.745]This, has anyone ever heard
[00:33:32.620]of the ladder of influence, inference, not influence,
[00:33:36.685]the ladder of inference before?
[00:33:40.040]It's part of a discipline, actually,
[00:33:44.710]it's like professional development,
[00:33:46.380]leadership development discipline,
[00:33:47.970]but it was, I came to learn about it
[00:33:51.030]again through the work with Essential Partners,
[00:33:53.190]who are mediators and bridge builders.
[00:33:57.192]Not to say that journalists are around
[00:33:59.068]to build bridges, but it does help us
[00:34:01.040]to understand how people think the way they think,
[00:34:03.830]and why they react the way they do
[00:34:07.530]to certain questions, to certain situations
[00:34:10.949]and in certain settings.
[00:34:13.690]So the ladder of inference basically starts with reality.
[00:34:18.560]There's an observable event.
[00:34:21.200]Everybody sees the same thing,
[00:34:22.730]as like a video camera might capture it,
[00:34:25.038]but every single person will see
[00:34:28.380]the same event and notice different details, right?
[00:34:31.430]And those details that you select are the ones,
[00:34:35.410]you observe the whole thing,
[00:34:36.570]you select some details that then immediately
[00:34:41.200]come with meaning, that immediately lead to assumptions,
[00:34:44.690]and then we draw conclusions,
[00:34:46.410]adopt beliefs and take actions.
[00:34:48.270]Now, when you're a journalist,
[00:34:49.360]your action is, those details that you observed
[00:34:53.240]and selected are the ones that end up in your story, right?
[00:34:56.860]So that becomes the basis for your story frame,
[00:35:00.476]then your story frame becomes the observable event
[00:35:04.511]for all of your audience.
[00:35:06.900]So in some ways, and I don't want to belabor this,
[00:35:10.653]because it's always a matter
[00:35:12.180]of like where people's heads are in the room,
[00:35:14.580]but we are sort of like meta ladders
[00:35:17.270]of inference for people.
[00:35:18.870]So it's especially important for us
[00:35:21.500]to understand how our own experiences,
[00:35:24.610]and what our beliefs are,
[00:35:26.125]as we walk into every situation,
[00:35:28.607]how those beliefs shape the details that we see,
[00:35:32.630]the ones we pull out, the meaning that we add,
[00:35:35.940]and because of that meaning, we are.
[00:35:38.367]And this is happening in our brains,
[00:35:40.170]like within milliseconds.
[00:35:42.860]It's not something that's intentional.
[00:35:44.485]It's not something that is on purpose.
[00:35:47.452]It's not something that we are aware of,
[00:35:51.520]but it is in fact how we function,
[00:35:54.030]and it's how our brains process
[00:35:56.210]all of the amazing amounts of data
[00:35:58.360]that we're bombarded with every day.
[00:36:00.550]So it's especially important, I think,
[00:36:02.420]for journalists to kind of reset ourselves
[00:36:06.220]on that ladder, when we are working
[00:36:08.740]on pieces to publish, and question ourselves
[00:36:13.360]on each of those rungs.
[00:36:14.880]What are we adding in?
[00:36:17.120]What assumptions are we bringing from our past experiences?
[00:36:21.170]How are those impacting any conclusions
[00:36:23.300]that we're drawing, or next steps
[00:36:24.730]questions we might be asking?
[00:36:26.640]How are the beliefs that we are reinforcing
[00:36:30.800]coming back in and sifting their way up in our stories?
[00:36:35.576]Does that make sense?
[00:36:36.504]Does anybody have any questions
[00:36:38.070]about that or thoughts on that?
[00:36:43.738]I would just like to jump in and say that
[00:36:45.960]I really love every time you pull this ladder up,
[00:36:50.430]because it's a really great way
[00:36:51.850]to understand your own bias.
[00:36:54.320]And to really see, and it's a really good way,
[00:36:57.601]before writing a story, I think,
[00:36:59.880]for journalism students too,
[00:37:02.000]to kind of look at, just so.
[00:37:04.900]I always say, check yourself before you wreck yourself.
[00:37:07.480]So it's a good way to check your bias,
[00:37:09.070]before you jump right into a story
[00:37:11.111]with all of these things that
[00:37:13.110]you don't even understand, are playing such a heavy role
[00:37:15.860]in how you talk to people and ask them questions,
[00:37:18.370]and even how you go to set up your story.
[00:37:23.130]Awesome.
[00:37:24.140]Thank you.
[00:37:25.045]That's really great.
[00:37:26.230]I wonder if I might jump in with one thought.
[00:37:27.976]Yeah.
[00:37:29.822]So I'm wondering about how lawyers are trained,
[00:37:34.760]and how good journalists are trained
[00:37:37.100]to basically recognize but eliminate,
[00:37:41.640]to the extent possible, their biases,
[00:37:43.760]as they look at the facts.
[00:37:45.353]And I will use a lawyer as an example of this,
[00:37:50.440]the best lawyers that I have known have been able
[00:37:54.050]to look at all sides of a situation,
[00:37:57.036]and reflect and report on accurately
[00:38:01.360]all sides of a situation.
[00:38:03.559]They obviously have an advocacy point of view,
[00:38:06.170]but they understand all sides,
[00:38:08.527]and I think the best journalists do the same as well.
[00:38:12.103]And to some extent, what that means is,
[00:38:14.191]you recognize your biases, but you also adjust
[00:38:19.040]for them to try to look at things as they are.
[00:38:22.630]I think that is such an excellent point,
[00:38:25.640]and I think that is where my heart
[00:38:29.730]was for many, many years, and still a piece of me
[00:38:33.910]wants to believe that's possible,
[00:38:35.660]and I think it is possible,
[00:38:36.870]but I also think that all sides is a lot, right?
[00:38:41.740]And all sides, especially in complicated stories,
[00:38:45.160]often, if you're looking at all sides,
[00:38:47.948]then you really have to think about root causes, right?
[00:38:53.180]Because all sides is not he said, she said.
[00:38:56.084]All sides, and I used to say this to my students,
[00:38:59.620]and I'd be like, well, how many sides are there to a story?
[00:39:01.670]And they'd say two, and I'd be like, are you kidding me?
[00:39:03.690]There's more like 2000.
[00:39:05.580]So how we, I think that there's a, for me,
[00:39:10.600]it's being able to be vulnerable to say
[00:39:12.903]I know I can't possibly know all sides of the stories.
[00:39:16.230]I've done my homework,
[00:39:17.390]and I've gotten enough different perspectives,
[00:39:19.656]and I'm being mindful of the fact that,
[00:39:22.330]of the perspectives that I'm gathering,
[00:39:24.730]like 70% of the people most impacted by this story
[00:39:29.391]have not been given the opportunity
[00:39:32.480]to share the impact on them and on their lives.
[00:39:35.840]So it's a really complicated thing,
[00:39:37.930]and so to me, it's just that constant questioning, right?
[00:39:42.082]I feel like there's a sense of, you know,
[00:39:46.720]and just flat out, right?
[00:39:48.510]So if you are a male or female journalists,
[00:39:52.210]are you going to get different answers
[00:39:53.740]to the same questions about sexual assault from a source?
[00:40:00.270]Probably not, especially if you are,
[00:40:03.750]as I was with my students, in rural India, right?
[00:40:07.100]Where there was no way that many of the women
[00:40:10.870]that we were talking to would be willing
[00:40:13.020]to even have a conversation, or even allowed
[00:40:15.190]in the same room alone with a male journalist.
[00:40:18.650]So there's all kinds of, I think, different ways,
[00:40:25.690]things to be aware of when you go into these situations.
[00:40:29.010]So yeah, are we ever going to be perfect?
[00:40:31.480]No, but I do like to hone in on the fact
[00:40:36.290]that I think it can be easy to say
[00:40:39.150]we've done all the work, right?
[00:40:41.000]We know it all.
[00:40:42.360]I'm not, I'm not, I wouldn't dispute that,
[00:40:45.010]but I would say that one of the things
[00:40:47.039]that I've learned about journalism is that
[00:40:49.067]it all comes out in the wash, or at least much of it does.
[00:40:52.150]In other words, the first story
[00:40:54.750]is not going to be comprehensive.
[00:40:57.030]By the 10th story, maybe you've got
[00:40:59.440]a pretty good impression of how things work.
[00:41:02.257]Did I just lose everybody?
[00:41:03.950]I don't know. No, we got you.
[00:41:05.180]Computer did something weird.
[00:41:06.977]And the other thing is, I know,
[00:41:09.500]from having worked in newsrooms,
[00:41:11.880]a good city editor will pick a reporter
[00:41:16.120]partly based on gender, partly based on race,
[00:41:18.930]partly based on cultural history, et cetera,
[00:41:21.360]given the nature of the story.
[00:41:23.470]Because, as you say, sometimes the person
[00:41:27.640]you're interviewing will feel more comfortable
[00:41:29.560]with a given individual than with somebody else,
[00:41:32.860]and that's not a bad thing.
[00:41:35.072]I think you use whatever assets you have,
[00:41:39.650]when you're getting a story,
[00:41:40.640]because the object here is to get
[00:41:42.180]at the facts and get at the truth as best you can.
[00:41:45.230]Right.
[00:41:46.063]Yeah, no, that's great.
[00:41:47.380]That's great fodder, and I really appreciate those comments.
[00:41:50.920]I think another thing that I have often
[00:41:56.170]shared is who's truth, right?
[00:41:58.350]Because sometimes that becomes an issue as well.
[00:42:00.720]And I think understanding those nuances
[00:42:02.890]and that complexity is really important.
[00:42:04.590]And also understanding the constraints
[00:42:06.820]under which so many journalists are operating right now,
[00:42:10.060]that they may be in a place where they are the only,
[00:42:12.740]not just there aren't that luxury of options.
[00:42:16.510]I don't want to call them a luxury,
[00:42:17.570]I mean, it's very hard to practice
[00:42:19.610]responsible journalism
[00:42:20.630]when you're the only person doing everything, right?
[00:42:23.310]So very, very good points to bring into the conversation.
[00:42:28.570]Thank you.
[00:42:30.320]I also, if I could jump in, I was,
[00:42:32.643]I thought about this a lot, mostly because,
[00:42:37.460]I mean, I can only think about things
[00:42:39.910]like this in terms of like, not only, but words.
[00:42:43.509]And when I was at NPR,
[00:42:45.120]there was this big hullabaloo over
[00:42:46.760]the use of police involved shooting,
[00:42:49.479]and what that meant, and I didn't get it, truthfully.
[00:42:52.340]I mean, I had to sit down
[00:42:53.740]with two or three other reporters and say,
[00:42:55.220]I don't understand what the big deal is here.
[00:42:57.250]And cause I had used it any number of times,
[00:43:01.230]hundreds, well probably not hundreds,
[00:43:02.820]but dozens of times probably, and I just didn't get it.
[00:43:06.330]I didn't understand why that resonated
[00:43:09.842]differently with people.
[00:43:11.977]It took me, and then I think about things
[00:43:14.440]in real terms, like things like that,
[00:43:16.210]like if you switch the frame,
[00:43:18.654]that phrase means something different,
[00:43:21.540]and lets the cops off the hook, which it took me,
[00:43:23.880]I mean, weeks to understand this.
[00:43:25.590]I kept coming back to it,
[00:43:26.423]because I just couldn't get it.
[00:43:28.610]And then I thought the same thing about
[00:43:32.450]when you, Joe, when you were talking about
[00:43:33.950]how stories unfold, which is again, most of our career.
[00:43:39.109]You just sort of keep pushing the ball up the hill.
[00:43:41.890]But I thought about that a lot in light
[00:43:46.340]of the Atlanta Spa shootings,
[00:43:48.282]and why that was so offensive
[00:43:51.260]to so many Asian Americans,
[00:43:52.856]that truthfully, I didn't get it.
[00:43:55.180]And I thought, oh my God, I would have been
[00:43:56.730]at that press conference when they said,
[00:43:59.220]well, he told us the motive wasn't this,
[00:44:01.260]and sort of the megaphone that we gave,
[00:44:04.170]that the media gave the police during that,
[00:44:06.777]and I didn't understand that either.
[00:44:08.860]And then I just have to sit with this stuff
[00:44:10.950]for a little bit, 'cause I'm so used
[00:44:13.314]to practicing journalism so quickly,
[00:44:17.073]and so stopping down.
[00:44:19.360]So I'm really grateful, Elissa.
[00:44:20.670]I guess what I'm saying is that
[00:44:22.600]thinking about the ladder of inference,
[00:44:24.367]and thinking about these things,
[00:44:26.060]I just, I still, it takes me so long,
[00:44:28.418]in my head, to say, well, why is that a big deal?
[00:44:32.180]Or why, you know, because facts roll out.
[00:44:37.120]But then who, as you're talking about,
[00:44:39.370]whose story are we telling?
[00:44:40.510]Are we telling, you know, in the spa shooting,
[00:44:42.760]is it, who gets the microphone?
[00:44:46.558]And what is the impact of the microphone.
[00:44:47.502]And what is the impact of that, right,
[00:44:50.070]and how offended so many Asian Americans,
[00:44:53.438]and specifically female Americans,
[00:44:55.291]and it just revictimized, anyway.
[00:44:57.410]It's just interesting to me.
[00:45:00.300]I keep, just when I think I begin
[00:45:03.034]to figure out some of this, I'm like boom,
[00:45:06.600]I get slapped across the face with it.
[00:45:09.500]That's why the ladder, I think, is good too.
[00:45:11.952]Right, because intention,
[00:45:14.090]it's not about intention, right?
[00:45:16.050]It's about impact.
[00:45:17.490]So if you have the responsibility of impact,
[00:45:20.918]then you have to understand that it doesn't matter
[00:45:24.010]whether you intended to cause harm or not,
[00:45:25.840]maybe you still are, or yes you have.
[00:45:28.853]Because I know I have, and I've like been faced,
[00:45:31.981]come face to face with it, with an angry person
[00:45:34.980]who has said "You are racist, and here's why",
[00:45:38.470]and I would be like but, but, but,
[00:45:40.600]and now I'm just like, okay, I get it.
[00:45:42.820]That wasn't my intention at all,
[00:45:44.250]but the impact was exactly the same,
[00:45:46.310]so it didn't matter what my intention was.
[00:45:48.427]I'd better own up to that and understand,
[00:45:51.980]where I have been complicit, and how I might
[00:45:55.740]adjust my behavior moving forward, right?
[00:45:58.423]I think that's sort of, I don't know.
[00:46:02.670]Any other comments?
[00:46:03.520]I don't want to shut that down.
[00:46:07.920]Cause the next one, I'm sure everyone on the call
[00:46:11.040]has like a piece of paper and like a notepad,
[00:46:13.390]or like something to write with.
[00:46:14.841]Look at you, you're right, of course you are.
[00:46:16.970]So the next thing is a clip from a press conference
[00:46:20.620]that was a couple of years ago.
[00:46:22.320]It was in Canada.
[00:46:23.490]Ottawa, I believe, I could be wrong.
[00:46:25.850]But anyway, there were indigenous tribe members
[00:46:29.320]who had erected a teepee on government land,
[00:46:34.470]to protest a celebration,
[00:46:37.350]saying that the government itself
[00:46:41.379]was not being respectful of the people
[00:46:44.240]whose land they were celebrating upon,
[00:46:46.131]and the harm that had been done to their communities.
[00:46:49.020]They held a press conference.
[00:46:50.590]This is a short clip, a five minute clip.
[00:46:52.940]It is edited.
[00:46:53.773]I am aware of the impact of that as well.
[00:46:55.954]But the key that I want you to do is,
[00:46:58.280]now that we've seen this ladder,
[00:46:59.770]so we know this is an observable event.
[00:47:03.040]I can't talk, anyway.
[00:47:04.076]So it's an observable event we will all witness together.
[00:47:07.590]So as you, what data do you select?
[00:47:10.290]So just like jot down things that you note,
[00:47:12.950]whether it's a word, or a question,
[00:47:15.110]or a phrase, or an action, or a movement,
[00:47:17.360]or whatever, that you just like come into,
[00:47:20.620]that is the data that you pull out
[00:47:22.740]from these four minutes.
[00:47:23.890]And let's hope it all goes through.
[00:47:25.840]Alexis, take it away.
[00:47:29.970]The first part's kind of hard to hear,
[00:47:31.430]so hopefully we'll hear it.
[00:47:37.878]Maybe we'll hear it.
[00:47:42.873]It's not here.
[00:47:43.940]Can you guys hear it?
[00:47:52.370]Try it again. Alexis.
[00:47:56.541]Want me to try it again?
[00:47:57.770]Try it again, yeah, 'cause some reason,
[00:47:59.300]I thought I heard it the first time,
[00:48:01.173]when it went there automatically,
[00:48:02.810]but now it's not, the audio is not working.
[00:48:05.409]Uh-oh, okay.
[00:48:07.140]You know, that's what's going on.
[00:48:08.317]Let me run it.
[00:48:09.200]Yes.
[00:48:10.033]Most communities think that
[00:48:10.902]Justin Trudeau is making an effort.
[00:48:12.501]I gather you don't feel what he's doing is worthwhile.
[00:48:15.939]Well, have you seen how much teenagers
[00:48:18.660]are going missing in Thunder Bay?
[00:48:21.630]You know, there's white supremacy, obviously,
[00:48:25.150]you know, that's what's going on.
[00:48:25.983]You know that young boy.
[00:48:29.790]Yeah.
[00:48:32.401]How can he be blamed for that?
[00:48:34.713]Excuse me? I mean, you don't think
[00:48:35.546]that anything he's doing is helping the situation?
[00:48:39.094]Is he an improvement over Stephen Harper?
[00:48:41.730]I mean, talk on the record, is it?
[00:48:45.100]Excuse me, did I just hear you correctly?
[00:48:47.928]How can he be blamed for that?
[00:48:51.470]No, excuse me. Excuse me.
[00:48:53.436]Right now, stop. Don't speak to us that way.
[00:48:54.914]Stop right now.
[00:48:56.730]You do not speak to us that way.
[00:48:59.530]We are human beings,
[00:49:01.114]and the way that you're speaking to us is not acceptable.
[00:49:05.030]No, stop it!
[00:49:07.460]Stop it right now.
[00:49:08.830]You don't, we don't want you here.
[00:49:10.767]Can you please leave?
[00:49:11.960]Step out.
[00:49:12.793]Step out.
[00:49:13.626]Step out. Go.
[00:49:14.459]Then I don't wanna hear from you.
[00:49:16.200]You have no-
[00:49:17.075]You don't speak to us like that.
[00:49:19.470]I asked you a simple question,
[00:49:21.113]can I have an answer?
[00:49:22.650]And this is the problem,
[00:49:24.030]the way you communicate. You insinuate.
[00:49:25.669]I'm not insinuating anything.
[00:49:26.620]I'm looking for information.
[00:49:28.196]I'm not gonna argue with you.
[00:49:29.480]I'm not arguing anything. Stop, no stop, stop.
[00:49:31.752]I'm not gonna argue. You need to stop.
[00:49:32.700]I'm only asking- You need to stop.
[00:49:34.670]Stop!
[00:49:37.630]You're a guest here,
[00:49:39.240]and you don't even know how to speak to us.
[00:49:41.097]You don't even recognize the tone
[00:49:43.280]in your voice, and your delivery.
[00:49:46.534]And no, you're done, you're done.
[00:49:49.220]Next question.
[00:49:50.053]I'll re-ask Julie's question, how do you think-
[00:49:52.222]You want to reask?
[00:49:53.850]Yes, how do you think- Somebody else's question.
[00:49:54.978]You better be respectful.
[00:49:56.660]I'm being totally respectful.
[00:49:58.430]I'm asking how Justin Trudeau's record
[00:50:01.600]compared to Stephen Harper's record.
[00:50:03.770]Do you think he's improved the situation?
[00:50:05.700]I think think that's truly what Julie was asking.
[00:50:07.420]We have a holistic genocide happening here.
[00:50:11.610]Don't speak on behalf of Julie.
[00:50:13.182]Could you just answer the question, please?
[00:50:14.015]I can speak for myself.
[00:50:15.276]I was asking-
[00:50:16.109]And I can speak for myself.
[00:50:16.942]You know what, white people,
[00:50:19.080]you've had your voice here for 524 years.
[00:50:22.640]524 years, you've been visible, white lady.
[00:50:26.510]You've been visible for 524 years.
[00:50:29.220]Look how fast your white man comes and steps up for you.
[00:50:32.261]Where is everybody else to come and step up for us?
[00:50:37.380]I have a right to my voice.
[00:50:38.810]I'm still fighting for my voice and my visibility.
[00:50:43.877]We asked the question-
[00:50:44.875]And I'm telling you, and I'm telling you right now,
[00:50:48.440]there has been 524 years
[00:50:50.795]of holistic genocide on Turtle Island.
[00:50:54.610]We're the ones that are dying.
[00:50:56.180]It's not you that is dying.
[00:51:02.420]And as far as how Justin Trudeau is doing,
[00:51:06.687]one of the things that we need to keep in mind
[00:51:09.020]is we're asking the United Nations to help us,
[00:51:11.920]charges of genocide, a war against humanity,
[00:51:16.310]war crimes and a crime of aggression be laid,
[00:51:19.710]because your liberal party was also responsible.
[00:51:23.370]Every party, your every governance that has been in power,
[00:51:27.350]there's been a war conflict of Indian residential school.
[00:51:30.910]Sixties Scoop, Indian day school, and Millennium Scoop.
[00:51:34.310]None of your governments have clean hands.
[00:51:37.610]All your governments, all of your governments
[00:51:40.950]have blood on their hands.
[00:51:42.590]None of you are different.
[00:51:43.830]You haven't changed,
[00:51:45.240]because you haven't started your healing journeys.
[00:51:48.232]The moment that we have our voice and our backbone,
[00:51:51.423]you want to shut us down, and you would think
[00:51:54.720]you have, you're privileged to disrespect us.
[00:51:57.080]The moment we tell you, because of your colonial mindset,
[00:52:00.950]and your colonial way of being, your white privilege,
[00:52:04.620]your white fragility, you can't take our truths.
[00:52:10.436]Look how many people came to bat for you,
[00:52:12.740]white lady, and you're a guest here.
[00:52:16.640]Without us, you'd be homeless.
[00:52:20.670]This is over.
[00:52:31.569]Okay.
[00:52:33.206]Alexis, you want to stop sharing for a minute.
[00:52:40.309]So let's do some popcorn around the data
[00:52:45.360]you pulled from those action packed three, four minutes.
[00:52:50.280]I'm really curious.
[00:52:53.358]Michelle, what'd you got?
[00:52:58.170]Well, I wish I would have heard
[00:52:59.650]a little bit more of it before (laughs),
[00:53:02.125]but I guess what I noted was sort of
[00:53:08.965]the way the reporter asked the question,
[00:53:17.000]to me it was like a question you would ask
[00:53:21.870]of a sophisticated source, like a politician,
[00:53:25.760]and it was like they weren't reading the room.
[00:53:30.164]It was, and I talk to my students about this all the time.
[00:53:36.100]There's a difference between people
[00:53:37.620]who deal with the media all the time,
[00:53:39.210]and unsophisticated, and to me, that was just so obvious.
[00:53:44.018]Just kind of her, and it was her tone.
[00:53:46.840]It was, it was, well, why would you not blame him?
[00:53:52.230]Or why wouldn't he be, you know?
[00:53:54.240]And I could see where that just was not the right approach.
[00:53:58.100]And then the other thing I noted is like,
[00:54:00.650]I kept writing down apologize, apologize.
[00:54:04.710]Stop this, because they just kept going,
[00:54:07.607]and I think it would have been
[00:54:09.580]at that point really wise to say,
[00:54:12.017]"I apologize, I didn't mean to be arrogant",
[00:54:20.286]'cause that's the other thing I wrote down.
[00:54:22.880]I felt like they were very arrogant,
[00:54:24.610]both reporters that were were mentioned.
[00:54:27.210]But instead of stopping and deescalating,
[00:54:33.180]they just kept digging themselves deeper
[00:54:36.065]into a problem, I thought.
[00:54:40.570]Thank you.
[00:54:41.403]Okay, popcorn it over.
[00:54:42.236]Who do you want to say something next?
[00:54:45.340]Jessica.
[00:54:50.960]Oh my gosh, it's so hard.
[00:54:52.230]I'm like traveling back in time
[00:54:54.044]to when I was a reporter like, you know,
[00:54:57.000]10 years ago or whatever.
[00:54:58.590]And I worked in a really competitive,
[00:55:01.510]harsh media environment,
[00:55:02.870]and so, you know, this is how reporters
[00:55:05.830]talk to everyone (laughs), you know?
[00:55:09.200]And so I agree with Michelle that there,
[00:55:16.030]it's something, it's important to kind of change
[00:55:20.590]the way you approach, and even the questions
[00:55:22.950]you asked based on, you know,
[00:55:25.000]your audience or who your source is.
[00:55:28.750]But like, I can also understand that
[00:55:32.470]there are reporters who have had
[00:55:36.870]this objectivity thing drilled
[00:55:40.579]into their brains, and I'm one of them.
[00:55:43.796]And so like, I can also understand why
[00:55:46.610]they didn't apologize, because you are trained
[00:55:53.000]as a journalist to not let sources dictate things,
[00:55:59.540]and so like, that's what I was thinking
[00:56:01.040]when I was watching this.
[00:56:03.500]So this is a major shift, in terms of, you know,
[00:56:10.030]you need to sometimes let the sources dictate things.
[00:56:15.470]And so again, it comes to like, if this was a politician,
[00:56:19.250]then that is strongly appropriate what they were doing.
[00:56:23.000]But again, these are not people who are media savvy
[00:56:26.070]or used to dealing with the media,
[00:56:27.500]so there's definitely some education
[00:56:30.072]that needs to happen about, you know,
[00:56:32.937]you can still maintain your credibility,
[00:56:36.790]and also treat sources with respect, you know,
[00:56:40.390]and take a softer approach, I guess.
[00:56:44.530]But I think that's probably why those reporters
[00:56:47.610]acted the way they did is because they thought
[00:56:49.700]they were doing what they were supposed to do.
[00:56:54.590]That's great.
[00:56:57.065]Shall we go to Andrea?
[00:56:58.670]I know you are not in journalism,
[00:57:00.080]but I'm curious what details you picked out.
[00:57:02.590]I think that'd be really instructive for us.
[00:57:06.210]I was just trying to figure out what was going on.
[00:57:08.580]You know, I felt very tense.
[00:57:11.960]I was like, oh my gosh, what kind of set off this?
[00:57:14.560]Cause I wasn't aware of what Jessica
[00:57:20.890]and Michelle had mentioned
[00:57:22.220]about like these people aren't media savvy,
[00:57:25.550]and so they don't know how to respond
[00:57:28.810]to the way that the media is asking questions,
[00:57:31.920]and that's all new to me, so.
[00:57:34.640]But I just felt very like, oh my gosh,
[00:57:37.810]how did this get to this point?
[00:57:43.680]That's really interesting.
[00:57:44.890]Chris, have you seen that before?
[00:57:46.740]I think I've shared that with you before.
[00:57:48.070]I have.
[00:57:48.903]Does something stick out with you different?
[00:57:50.720]Every time I watch it, something different strikes me.
[00:57:52.570]Yeah, yeah.
[00:57:53.403]I've noticed, the first, I think I've seen it,
[00:57:56.502]well, at least once, if not twice.
[00:57:58.590]But the first two times, it made me really,
[00:58:01.440]really uptight, and really tense.
[00:58:04.950]And like to Michelle's point, it's like shut up.
[00:58:08.420]You're making it worse, just shut the up.
[00:58:12.158]But this time I watched more
[00:58:14.277]the non-verbal things that were happening
[00:58:17.284]between the people, like how the older woman,
[00:58:21.960]because it started with with the young woman,
[00:58:23.870]and how she just slowly sort of,
[00:58:27.430]I think to protect her would be my.
[00:58:30.490]Again, I'm a mom.
[00:58:31.610]I come, I told you my wife's person is my mom,
[00:58:34.150]who's a protector.
[00:58:35.530]So I thought, oh well that's interesting.
[00:58:37.050]She sort of shifts her away.
[00:58:39.590]She gets very emotional when she's talking.
[00:58:42.770]I mean, she's holding what appears
[00:58:44.710]to be a child's, I think, covered in blood or something.
[00:58:48.300]I mean, and again, I don't know the totality
[00:58:50.090]of circumstance, but I thought she pushing her away,
[00:58:52.350]she's got this child thing.
[00:58:54.350]And then the gentleman in the back,
[00:58:58.500]at some point she was really emotional.
[00:59:01.530]You could hear it in her voice,
[00:59:02.690]sort of her words catching in her throat.
[00:59:04.880]And he just sort of puts his hand on her shoulder,
[00:59:08.760]and it just, and it didn't deescalate anything.
[00:59:11.840]I just think what I read from this time
[00:59:15.690]was not about the reporters,
[00:59:17.110]which was every other time I'd seen it,
[00:59:19.070]I thought, oh, the reporters,
[00:59:20.394]here's to Michelle and Jess.
[00:59:22.357]But I saw for the first time, maybe,
[00:59:25.880]how the group who is holding the press conference,
[00:59:28.857]the indigenous people sort of,
[00:59:30.660]it seemed to me had a community behind that microphone,
[00:59:34.540]and a caring community and saying, hey, we're here,
[00:59:38.260]and it just, I thought that was interesting.
[00:59:41.290]I hadn't seen or appreciated that before, I guess.
[00:59:46.970]That's really cool.
[00:59:48.020]That's interesting.
[00:59:48.853]Alexis, how about you?
[00:59:51.640]I've seen this video so many times,
[00:59:53.210]and it makes me feel so many different ways.
[00:59:57.240]I did not notice the community behind her,
[01:00:00.579]so I think that was a really good point, Chris.
[01:00:05.010]I watched this video again last night,
[01:00:07.060]and I kind of just closed my eyes
[01:00:09.371]and just listened to the audio,
[01:00:11.682]because I really wanted to get a sense
[01:00:14.150]of what the room looked like behind the camera,
[01:00:20.923]and just try to understand what the reporters
[01:00:24.330]looked like behind the camera,
[01:00:26.326]and what kind of action they were
[01:00:31.340]taking behind the camera,
[01:00:32.280]because if you listen, there's shuffling around.
[01:00:34.970]She's asking the lady who asks the question to leave.
[01:00:38.600]The lady still hasn't obviously left.
[01:00:41.150]Then there's a gentlemen off to the side
[01:00:44.321]who is trying to ask her question again.
[01:00:47.702]Then you hear some other shuffling,
[01:00:49.460]and you hear some other voices
[01:00:50.780]that obviously don't have the microphone,
[01:00:52.760]but are trying to take up in defense of the reporter.
[01:00:56.980]And you just hear basically like a community
[01:01:01.381]of journalists trying to defend themselves.
[01:01:06.380]And so listening to that last night,
[01:01:08.110]I just thought to myself, wow, how ignorant are all of you?
[01:01:11.859]Like how ignorant are all of you.
[01:01:15.798]You might run into each other every once in a while
[01:01:19.380]at a press conference, but here you are trying
[01:01:21.942]to defend each other for asking
[01:01:24.462]such a blatantly ignorant question.
[01:01:28.367]And you pulled out a really great point, Chris,
[01:01:31.120]of the community behind the microphone,
[01:01:33.367]and the community in front of the microphone.
[01:01:35.610]And I think so clearly that there's a really
[01:01:39.300]clear divide in between those two,
[01:01:41.837]and obviously the community behind that video
[01:01:46.824]has a lot to learn, has a lot to learn.
[01:01:53.569]It's so, that's so powerful.
[01:01:55.940]I think everything that you all said
[01:01:58.340]is really powerful in very different ways,
[01:02:01.430]because one of the interesting,
[01:02:03.860]you know, and I'll just let y'all sit with it,
[01:02:05.830]but we use this in teaching
[01:02:08.980]the Poynter College Media Project, right?
[01:02:10.890]So we would go to campuses
[01:02:12.100]that were predominantly white, and also HBCUs,
[01:02:15.480]and then I would call Texas, Texas A&M.
[01:02:20.340]We went to Texas A&M.
[01:02:21.550]So there's lots of brown people in the room, right?
[01:02:25.290]It's not just, but it's a predominantly
[01:02:27.050]white institution, but it's a lot of people
[01:02:29.530]with very different lived experiences in the room.
[01:02:32.070]And it became almost like, it was this crazy
[01:02:35.400]like psychological experiment, because we would show it,
[01:02:38.354]and then I would be like, all right,
[01:02:39.950]so what do you think?
[01:02:40.810]And then in the PWIs, every single time
[01:02:43.507]the students were like, well why wouldn't
[01:02:45.550]the women answer the journalist's questions?
[01:02:47.680]The journalists were just asking questions,
[01:02:49.660]like, I don't understand why they didn't,
[01:02:51.400]they were just being so combative.
[01:02:53.670]I don't know why they were so emotional.
[01:02:55.820]And then every time we were in at an HBCU,
[01:02:58.990]or a place with other minoritized folks,
[01:03:01.940]the response was complete, it was 180.
[01:03:04.560]Wow, this journalist just didn't see
[01:03:06.390]what damage they were causing, did they?
[01:03:08.580]And it was so textbook.
[01:03:11.150]It was almost like this, how can this even be real?
[01:03:14.040]But it was so clarifying, right,
[01:03:18.450]that that lived experience,
[01:03:20.300]that ladder makes such a huge difference.
[01:03:22.410]And I will also say, you know, women in this room,
[01:03:25.590]women tend to have a more like that motherly,
[01:03:27.900]like the minute I saw her push that younger girl,
[01:03:29.772]woman aside, I was like, mama bear,
[01:03:32.050]mama bear's coming in, right?
[01:03:33.950]And then one of the students pointed out
[01:03:36.450]that hand on the shoulder before I ever saw it,
[01:03:38.578]and the significance of like them holding to these feathers
[01:03:42.440]for like strength and for their own community.
[01:03:45.340]I mean, there's so much rich stuff going on,
[01:03:48.050]but how that got flattened, so then I end it by saying,
[01:03:51.249]guess what story was written about this
[01:03:53.049]press conference?
[01:03:54.559]Indigenous women go off on reporters.
[01:03:57.350]They're so emotional, right?
[01:03:59.020]And it's just like, and we wonder why people
[01:04:01.780]look at the media and are distrustful.
[01:04:04.340]And we wonder why journalists are trained
[01:04:06.730]to continue to do the same thing over and over again,
[01:04:09.820]because you have to read the room, right?
[01:04:14.860]And I think that's, at a minimum,
[01:04:17.340]you have to read the room.
[01:04:18.869]One would hope that the reporter who's talking,
[01:04:22.382]the other background that I can share
[01:04:24.150]is that she was with the Canadian Broadcasting System.
[01:04:26.464]She'd been doing this work for years.
[01:04:28.400]She was not new on the scene.
[01:04:29.880]The people who rushed to support her
[01:04:31.616]were by far the majority.
[01:04:35.140]And this is not 50 years ago, this is two years ago,
[01:04:39.340]and you could say, we see it pretty commonly, right?
[01:04:44.237]So it's just a very powerful, I think,
[01:04:47.988]tool to examine this dynamic and how that influences.
[01:04:54.266]I think, Alexis, if you want to share the next,
[01:04:58.230]the slide after that is just about
[01:05:00.600]how the questions we ask have an impact,
[01:05:04.946]and what we focus on expands,
[01:05:08.750]and by giving something attention, we give it life,
[01:05:12.460]and that the questions we ask have effects.
[01:05:14.670]And I think that was our, that's where we leave that
[01:05:19.580]before our quick little mini break.
[01:05:21.460]Would everybody like a little bio break?
[01:05:26.480]Or want to keep going?
[01:05:28.330]I have no clue what people are thinking,
[01:05:30.360]'cause it's Zoom. (laughs)
[01:05:34.755]Type in the chat.
[01:05:35.782]I mean, I know that you've gotta jump off,
[01:05:37.710]Elissa, at like 40ish minutes.
[01:05:43.220]Yeah, so you want to keep going?
[01:05:45.300]It's up to everybody else, but I'm cool.
[01:05:49.860]Stand up, stretch your legs.
[01:05:51.460]Do a little intentional breathing. (laughs)
[01:05:56.110]That's it, I like that, Chris.
[01:05:57.610]Let's do a little walk like-
[01:05:59.181]That's yoga.
[01:06:00.480]That's like yoga, right?
[01:06:02.320]Awesome.
[01:06:03.840]All right, let's just keep going.
[01:06:05.730]I'm not hearing any squeals of "No more, let us go.
[01:06:09.720]We have to get out of here."
[01:06:11.260]Okay.
[01:06:12.093]That's a good sign. (laughs)
[01:06:13.139]It is a good sign.
[01:06:14.160]So I'm gonna share now though, right?
[01:06:16.407]Oh, wait, I was gonna do these last little bits.
[01:06:18.560]Okay, so focusing on the second A.
[01:06:22.380]So we've talked about awareness,
[01:06:24.000]or third A, approach and awareness.
[01:06:27.610]Now, this is accountability.
[01:06:28.890]So the accountability piece is understanding
[01:06:30.940]that default media narratives really do harm.
[01:06:33.360]So when we look at the SPJ Code of Ethics,
[01:06:36.570]it says don't do harm, so we need to understand
[01:06:38.590]we are doing harm, because we know that
[01:06:40.700]all voices aren't shared equally.
[01:06:42.590]We know how historical context is skewed
[01:06:44.706]to protect the white majority,
[01:06:46.833]or not even majority, the white perspective.
[01:06:49.640]And that non-stop news sources have conflated
[01:06:52.233]narrow surface narratives with context,
[01:06:54.780]which we don't get as much of as would be super helpful.
[01:06:58.140]And at the same time, when we understand
[01:07:00.960]that those default media narratives are doing harm,
[01:07:03.890]we also can see that they're subverting
[01:07:06.220]any idea of equity, because when all your mind
[01:07:09.590]knows our people's failures and pathologies,
[01:07:12.640]then it doesn't, then that ladder,
[01:07:15.183]what happens is we're feeding this ladder
[01:07:17.790]in our audiences, and if we're only showing
[01:07:20.210]certain perspectives and perceptions
[01:07:23.370]of types of people, typically black
[01:07:26.240]and brown people, then the way the mind works
[01:07:29.637]is that they don't deserve it.
[01:07:31.686]They don't deserve opportunities.
[01:07:33.660]They don't deserve, they're less than.
[01:07:35.983]There's this divide, right?
[01:07:38.094]So only by being intentional can we really use
[01:07:42.426]the lessons from neuroscience, and use the lessons
[01:07:45.840]from all those disciplines that we can draw from,
[01:07:48.580]to build empathy, and understanding that
[01:07:50.903]it's physiologically impossible
[01:07:53.064]to be both uninformed and unbiased,
[01:07:55.550]which I think is fascinating, right?
[01:07:58.140]Once you know something, once you know something,
[01:08:00.160]whether it's a fact or fiction,
[01:08:01.917]then that's gonna inform your perspective, duh, right?
[01:08:08.290]But I think what we don't then do
[01:08:10.290]is take that to the next step,
[01:08:11.490]to ask ourselves what our bias is,
[01:08:14.589]and in journalism, that's really important stuff.
[01:08:19.405]Ta-da.
[01:08:20.400]All right, we'll keep moving. (laughs)
[01:08:23.080]But we won't take a break.
[01:08:24.530]Now I'm turning it over to, and now I'll share.
[01:08:27.530]Okay.
[01:08:28.810]I will get up to that slide.
[01:08:32.124](Elissa whistling)
[01:08:37.360]Hold on one second.
[01:08:40.820]And turn it to.
[01:08:50.360]Okay.
[01:08:51.860]Quick second.
[01:08:53.460]Here we go.
[01:08:56.117]All right, can y'all see it?
[01:08:58.090]Mm-hmm.
[01:08:58.923]Awesome.
[01:09:02.870]Go ahead, Alexis.
[01:09:03.840]Whenever you're ready.
[01:09:04.860]Awesome, thank you.
[01:09:07.343]So now that we talked a little bit about accountability,
[01:09:11.664]I think it's smart to take a look at like,
[01:09:14.432]what does it mean when we aren't accountable?
[01:09:17.240]What does it mean when we're not being intentional?
[01:09:20.680]What are some good examples of how folks
[01:09:22.463]were doing it wrong, and how we can make changes
[01:09:25.620]or how we can do it right?
[01:09:26.922]And you can go, you can jump to the next slide if you want.
[01:09:31.490]Oh also, I just want to say, I'm super informal,
[01:09:33.990]so if you have a question,
[01:09:35.300]or if you want to jump in and chat, feel free.
[01:09:39.640]I love this.
[01:09:40.780]I call this the headline game.
[01:09:43.081]I love to play this with newsroom professionals,
[01:09:47.291]using their very own headlines,
[01:09:49.400]and I would love to play it with you all today. (laughs)
[01:09:54.080]So I just start by doing a little search
[01:09:57.370]and finding headlines, and even just reading the news
[01:10:00.435]and just reading things that just don't sit right with me.
[01:10:03.730]I'm sure we all do it every day,
[01:10:05.500]when you come across a headline or article,
[01:10:07.723]and you just feel that it just wasn't written
[01:10:10.830]with the right intention or with an accountable mindset.
[01:10:14.320]So I like to play a little game
[01:10:16.020]where we pick apart these headlines,
[01:10:17.700]and we talk about what's oh so very wrong about them.
[01:10:22.118]And I'm so glad Chris was bringing up
[01:10:25.590]so many great things earlier in the conversation.
[01:10:27.560]I was like, oh, but yet she doesn't know,
[01:10:29.410]we're gonna get to that.
[01:10:31.124]So we can take a stab here at the first headline,
[01:10:35.279]and I can just start by talking about it,
[01:10:37.700]and then someone else can jump in with the second one.
[01:10:41.180]So I'll just say how the game goes a little bit.
[01:10:43.380]So the first headline reads
[01:10:44.687]"Trump takes credit for China virus vaccine.
[01:10:47.170]'I hope everyone remembers.'
[01:10:48.849]If I wasn't president, you wouldn't be getting
[01:10:51.220]that beautiful shot for five years."
[01:10:54.970]I'll jump in and say that obviously,
[01:10:56.587]we know that in this headline,
[01:10:58.315]this news outlet is repeating things that
[01:11:00.691]he has said, but can anybody tell me
[01:11:04.760]what's obviously wrong about this headline?
[01:11:08.990]If anyone wants to come off mute.
[01:11:12.660]Well just reinforcing that it's the China virus,
[01:11:15.650]I mean, is absolutely just not correct, I mean.
[01:11:21.462]There was no reason for that
[01:11:22.449]to be in the headline.
[01:11:24.330]Right?
[01:11:26.340]Even the story, honestly, I mean-
[01:11:32.860]I think unsophisticated readers
[01:11:36.200]will read this as the truth. (laughs)
[01:11:39.320]They'll see it, and they'll process it
[01:11:41.180]as being the truth, even though
[01:11:42.940]it's just a bunch of lies
[01:11:44.772]and horrible things that he's saying.
[01:11:49.631]I don't understand that when we put things
[01:11:52.328]in quotes, I mean, they don't really,
[01:11:55.820]they're not that sophisticated to know that,
[01:11:58.859]oh well there's China virus in quotes,
[01:12:02.480]that means that's not what it is, but you're using it.
[01:12:09.296]Right, it's just another way for headlines,
[01:12:11.638]for news outlets to use this as a form of clickbait,
[01:12:15.260]in my opinion, and a way to just really
[01:12:19.210]destruct and tell a different narrative.
[01:12:23.740]So the second one reads
[01:12:25.387]"Trump is right: It's China's fault".
[01:12:28.680]Obviously this is a very,
[01:12:30.800]this comes from a very conservative news outlet.
[01:12:34.692](sighs) We all know what's wrong
[01:12:37.010]with this headline. (laughs)
[01:12:39.630]This whole idea, and this whole idea has really,
[01:12:46.317]and the way that media outlets have talked
[01:12:48.690]about the coronavirus has been very irresponsible,
[01:12:52.874]and has caused a lot of harm,
[01:12:56.550]in specifically the Asian, Asian American community,
[01:12:59.410]as we all saw from the Atlanta spa shootings,
[01:13:01.779]and so that's one main reason
[01:13:04.270]I wanted to pull a couple of these headlines.
[01:13:07.500]And even, and Alexis, even if this is an opinion piece,
[01:13:12.830]it certainly doesn't say it anywhere,
[01:13:14.820]and not like, again, why are we expecting people
[01:13:18.130]to read minds, or understand processes
[01:13:19.956]that they've never been exposed to?
[01:13:22.170]It's just nonsensical to me.
[01:13:24.490]And even when you, I would go another step further,
[01:13:27.020]even when you label something opinion,
[01:13:28.800]nobody reads that anyway.
[01:13:29.867]I mean, when I was a columnist,
[01:13:32.160]without fail, like two to three times a day,
[01:13:34.730]I would get, well, you're expressing your opinion.
[01:13:37.290]I'm like, yes, that's why it says opinion,
[01:13:39.010]but no people don't, readers don't,
[01:13:41.382]they don't, often, not all readers.
[01:13:45.360]Many readers don't know the fine distinctions we make,
[01:13:49.550]and they don't understand the difference
[01:13:51.420]between point of view or opinion writing,
[01:13:53.700]versus straight inverted pyramid.
[01:13:56.840]And even then, you know, we're not perfect
[01:13:59.400]by a long shot there either.
[01:14:01.080]So I would argue that even when you label
[01:14:04.240]something opinion, it just, I mean,
[01:14:07.703]I thought, oh this must be a column.
[01:14:09.920]This must be.
[01:14:11.100]God help us if we wrote that
[01:14:13.140]as a factual headline, but-
[01:14:15.860]Jessica, yeah, yeah, I was gonna say,
[01:14:17.760]Jessica, did you have something?
[01:14:19.010]Was that a hand up?
[01:14:20.870]No, it wasn't.
[01:14:21.703]But that was my thought as well
[01:14:23.160]that this to me reads like it's an opinion piece.
[01:14:27.010]Again, it could be from a newspaper
[01:14:28.501]or a news organization where they routinely
[01:14:31.108]write stories that are opinion.
[01:14:33.180]But yeah, this clearly it seems
[01:14:34.660]like something that I would expect
[01:14:36.620]to see on like the pages
[01:14:37.860]of The Wall Street Journal, or I don't know,
[01:14:40.503]a more conservative, kind of the opinion pages
[01:14:43.744]of a more conservative news organization.
[01:14:48.343]But again, people don't really realize that,
[01:14:50.481]they just see the words.
[01:14:54.166]Even for me, like I said,
[01:14:56.590]I wasn't trained as a journalist.
[01:14:57.910]I feel like I know more than the common person though,
[01:14:59.473]because they work in the College of Journalism,
[01:15:01.457]but I don't even, Chris, all those things
[01:15:03.500]that you were just talking about,
[01:15:04.600]I don't know what that is.
[01:15:07.380]And unless you're a trained journalist,
[01:15:11.050]it's really hard, and I just think about
[01:15:13.140]all my family members from small towns,
[01:15:15.457]this is the stuff that they walk away with
[01:15:17.740]and start reposting, and it's mind boggling to me.
[01:15:24.800]I think it's really important also
[01:15:26.720]to point out, Andrea, that journalists know
[01:15:29.300]exactly what we're doing when we use words like this,
[01:15:32.660]and confuse our readers, because we're wordsmiths.
[01:15:36.840]We spend all day finding ways to turn words
[01:15:41.100]into sentences, and sentences into paragraphs,
[01:15:43.300]and paragraphs into articles and stories.
[01:15:45.490]So we know exactly what we're doing
[01:15:46.850]when we use these coded words that confuse readers,
[01:15:50.520]and push perceptions about people and things.
[01:16:00.546]Oh, I thought someone was gonna jump in.
[01:16:02.236]I thought I heard someone say something.
[01:16:04.630]Was I wrong?
[01:16:05.910]Okay, great.
[01:16:07.214]And this last headline on this page.
[01:16:09.607]"Caitlyn Jenner comes out in support
[01:16:10.902]of path to citizenship for California's illegal aliens."
[01:16:17.647]I just, it makes me very uncomfortable
[01:16:19.971]when I see people refer to immigrants as illegal aliens.
[01:16:26.910]That is unacceptable and not okay,
[01:16:29.420]and we know exactly what we're doing as journalists
[01:16:31.711]when we put that in a headline, such as this.
[01:16:35.960]We are enticing folks to click
[01:16:37.820]and read our story, that is clickbait,
[01:16:39.900]and we are dehumanizing an entire group
[01:16:42.650]of people and causing harm to who they are.
[01:16:48.573]And it's against AP style.
[01:16:50.020]I mean, if somebody had just looked it up,
[01:16:51.730]we don't use the term illegal aliens, I mean.
[01:16:56.460]And so to my mind it's like, yeah,
[01:16:58.162]that's the first thing I was like,
[01:16:59.480]oh my God, what are they doing? (laughs)
[01:17:00.980]Well but even- Somebody should have
[01:17:02.830]caught that, I mean come on.
[01:17:04.510]Yeah, and, but how long ago did AP style
[01:17:07.890]make that change, right?
[01:17:09.830]I mean, I think there's a-
[01:17:10.930]Not that long ago. Root too, right?
[01:17:13.130]There's a root with this.
[01:17:14.088]Like a few years or so.
[01:17:15.390]That's the white gaze, right?
[01:17:16.950]It's just who's made all these rules?
[01:17:19.270]Who's always been in those positions of authority?
[01:17:22.560]That's who's reflected.
[01:17:26.430]Agreed, totally.
[01:17:28.280]Definitely. I never understood
[01:17:30.050]where this even came from, honestly.
[01:17:34.800]Alien.
[01:17:37.927]Right?
[01:17:39.120]Oh go right ahead.
[01:17:40.430]No yeah, go right ahead, Alexis.
[01:17:42.550]I'm just not sure where that,
[01:17:44.840]was it a governmental term or?
[01:17:52.121]I don't know.
[01:17:53.038]I don't either. I would just say
[01:17:53.871]it's a way of othering and-
[01:17:55.678]Well yeah.
[01:17:57.420]I just don't know where it even,
[01:18:02.800]what the genesis was, but yeah, no, I agree.
[01:18:06.500]I wouldn't be surprised if it's genesis
[01:18:08.660]was in some kind of racist language
[01:18:11.610]from the 1800s, you know.
[01:18:13.830]I mean, I didn't realize until I did
[01:18:16.060]this bystander training through ihollaback.org
[01:18:19.320]that there were like, there were the first laws
[01:18:22.200]against immigration were against Chinese people,
[01:18:24.017]and those were in effect till the 1900s.
[01:18:26.350]I was like, say what now?
[01:18:28.060]It was incredible to me the kind of abuse
[01:18:32.560]and just systemic stuff, and it was,
[01:18:35.650]it was codified in law.
[01:18:37.180]So if you're just picking up and putting out
[01:18:39.380]what's written down in law, that's what's gonna happen.
[01:18:46.590]Oh, you can jump to the next slide, if you'd like.
[01:18:48.250]Oh, I keep forgetting
[01:18:49.290]I'm in charge of the slides, Alexis.
[01:18:51.027]See how stupid I am?
[01:18:52.270]Man, anyway.
[01:18:54.560]I just can never find three,
[01:18:56.380]I just had to go with six,
[01:18:58.470]because once you start doing this research,
[01:19:01.470]you just can't stop, and you just find more
[01:19:03.500]and more things that just agitate you. (laughs)
[01:19:07.930]So obviously, this top headline
[01:19:11.270]is another opinion piece, but it reads,
[01:19:13.927]"The Biden administration is systematically
[01:19:16.160]discriminating against white people.
[01:19:18.620]Here's the proof."
[01:19:20.150]And I'll say that this comes
[01:19:22.305]from the American Conservative,
[01:19:24.280]which is another very conservative media outlet.
[01:19:33.000]Anyone have any comments or thoughts on this headline?
[01:19:38.150]Systematically discriminating.
[01:19:40.100]Yeah, they're using the term systematically,
[01:19:43.890]which has been recently applied to racism
[01:19:48.170]in this country, and so they're trying
[01:19:50.130]to kind of like co-opt that term.
[01:19:53.970]So I don't know, that seems like, I mean,
[01:19:56.620]also again, it's complete opinion
[01:19:58.114]and people are gonna read it,
[01:19:59.366]and think, read it as the truth,
[01:20:01.639]but that's like a very manipulative use of that term.
[01:20:08.440]Manipulative is a right way to describe that.
[01:20:13.751]And to jump into manipulative with this
[01:20:15.900]very next headline, which is also an opinion piece,
[01:20:18.675]just came out in the month of April.
[01:20:21.907]"Mansion buy proves BLM founder a true Marxist.
[01:20:26.380]'They steal and enrich themselves.'"
[01:20:30.030]This also gives, reads very manipulative.
[01:20:36.265]Proves, it proves it.
[01:20:37.880]Look, it proves it.
[01:20:44.750]Truly disgusting.
[01:20:48.760]And with this very last headline,
[01:20:50.787]"Georgia massage parlor shootings leave
[01:20:52.770]eight dead; man captured."
[01:20:57.280]There's been a lot of conversation
[01:20:59.570]in the Asian and Asian American community about,
[01:21:03.483]around the Atlanta spa shootings,
[01:21:05.690]with using the word parlor,
[01:21:08.400]in talking about this incident,
[01:21:09.869]because it's a very insinuating word,
[01:21:14.967]and insinuates that there's sexual favors
[01:21:22.140]involved with these spas.
[01:21:26.949]So a lot of folks have asked,
[01:21:30.560]and a lot of conversations have been had
[01:21:33.390]around the usage of the word parlor,
[01:21:35.707]and what kind of perception you get
[01:21:38.380]when you see and when you read that word.
[01:21:42.480]I'll just ask you all,
[01:21:43.633]when you read the word parlor just by itself,
[01:21:47.080]what kind of perception do you walk away with?
[01:21:50.810]And I think that's the key question.
[01:21:54.034]Well, especially when it's massage parlor,
[01:21:57.480]you know, that's loaded.
[01:22:00.830]That's like a code word, I think.
[01:22:08.320]So yeah, spa is more accurate, actually.
[01:22:18.800]Or just business.
[01:22:20.229]I don't know, just call it a business or-
[01:22:23.400]That's true. Place of work,
[01:22:24.610]or workplace or I don't know.
[01:22:27.603]I also- I don't think
[01:22:29.410]you would use the term massage parlor
[01:22:34.000]if it related to where white women go to get a massage.
[01:22:40.520]When I go get a massage, I say,
[01:22:41.807]"Oh, I'm taking a spa day".
[01:22:43.110]I don't say I'm gonna go take a parlor day,
[01:22:45.570]or I'm going to a massage parlor.
[01:22:47.310]Because I mean, so again, if we check ourselves
[01:22:49.457]and go up that ladder of inference,
[01:22:51.270]I was just thinking about how I would check my own self,
[01:22:54.710]and say, well I do get massage,
[01:22:56.160]I don't go to a massage parlor.
[01:23:00.890]And again, going back to when I had to sit
[01:23:03.230]with that whole police involved shooting,
[01:23:05.040]because it took me forever to try to understand
[01:23:08.766]how other people heard that phrase,
[01:23:11.430]and so that's kind of what I do.
[01:23:12.990]I was like, oh, I wouldn't, you know,
[01:23:15.780]if these were white women who were killed
[01:23:18.550]during the course of their work,
[01:23:20.970]I don't know that you'd, I don't know.
[01:23:23.290]It just has a, it makes you feel kind of ew,
[01:23:26.530]you know, massage parlor, ew.
[01:23:29.504]Yeah, it also makes them feel less like victims,
[01:23:33.000]because the implication is that
[01:23:34.430]they're doing something illegal there,
[01:23:36.680]and that it makes them less sympathetic, somehow.
[01:23:42.400]It's also in passive voice.
[01:23:44.260]So there's like no actual person who killed these people.
[01:23:48.110]They were just dead.
[01:23:49.470]The shooting's killed them, and so I feel like
[01:23:51.930]that's the other thing is that
[01:23:54.010]there's no doer of the action here.
[01:23:55.940]These people are just dead.
[01:23:57.220]They were left dead, and you know, that irritates me.
[01:24:01.678]Yeah that is, I didn't even notice that, but that's true.
[01:24:05.405]That's a really, really good point.
[01:24:06.680]Parlor is such an old fashioned
[01:24:08.780]kind of like brothel word, you know?
[01:24:11.260]I mean it hearkens back to like frontier days, you know.
[01:24:19.220]Also, so yeah, it's just kind of strange.
[01:24:26.900]Very good point, and very good point, Jessica,
[01:24:28.690]that who did the shooting is an afterthought, you know.
[01:24:33.730]Man captured is at the very end
[01:24:35.330]of the headline, like it's really devaluing their life.
[01:24:44.010]Yeah, that's really a good point.
[01:24:46.060]Yeah, and like the women-
[01:24:47.101]They were killed.
[01:24:48.050]Right, right, and the women died, right?
[01:24:55.722]And I think that was an ongoing conversation,
[01:24:58.238]right, who was even able to get the stories
[01:25:01.221]about the women who lost their lives,
[01:25:04.100]the people who lost their lives.
[01:25:08.810]It's really.
[01:25:11.720]Yeah, it's just interesting,
[01:25:12.730]'cause I did a whole bunch of reading
[01:25:14.100]just yesterday on this, 'cause as Jessica knows,
[01:25:16.160]I was creating an ethics
[01:25:17.827]and why words matter sort of exercise out of this.
[01:25:21.220]And there's so much horrible richness in this,
[01:25:25.380]I mean, in this whole,
[01:25:26.780]the whole coverage from the beginning,
[01:25:29.340]all the way through, an AAJA, and what they.
[01:25:32.910]Anyway, there's just, I continue
[01:25:35.320]to sort of unpack this, and again,
[01:25:40.100]to my own self and the ladder,
[01:25:43.448]and I can't help but internalize it,
[01:25:46.160]just 'cause this is a kind of coverage I did for so long.
[01:25:48.570]And I thought, oh my God, would I have
[01:25:51.670]thought there was anything wrong
[01:25:52.960]with that cop coming out saying,
[01:25:54.907]"Oh, he was just addicted to sex",
[01:25:57.240]which even him saying that is the implication
[01:25:59.570]that these women deserved it.
[01:26:01.850]Right. You know?
[01:26:02.683]And now just yesterday,
[01:26:04.650]when I was putting this exercise together,
[01:26:06.780]now he's charged with civil rights violations
[01:26:09.930]and hate crime.
[01:26:11.883]They're gonna seek the death penalty
[01:26:13.610]because of the hate crime.
[01:26:15.280]So I was like, wow, wow.
[01:26:17.480]So anyway, I just, the richness
[01:26:20.230]in some of these examples, just from the headline,
[01:26:23.960]and I didn't catch the same passive points
[01:26:25.950]either Jessica, good catch.
[01:26:29.180]Anyway, it just goes on and on and on.
[01:26:31.580]It's pretty startling, I think.
[01:26:33.810]So thank you for sharing that, Alexis.
[01:26:36.400]One thing also, Chris and Michelle
[01:26:38.820]and I were just talking about yesterday
[01:26:41.063]was how our students were all really struggling
[01:26:44.280]with lead writing, because they were
[01:26:46.630]writing leads like headlines.
[01:26:48.820]And I was speculating that
[01:26:52.220]it's because they only read headlines,
[01:26:54.240]and so that's also why this is so concerning,
[01:26:56.340]because you're just like,
[01:26:58.500]when you're just reading headlines,
[01:27:00.780]you have no context, you know?
[01:27:02.950]So that's also just troubling to see,
[01:27:09.160]to understand that that is how some,
[01:27:12.690]Gen Z is sometimes consuming news is just through headlines.
[01:27:15.900]I don't know how else to explain it.
[01:27:17.620]I don't know.
[01:27:19.380]I think many of us are just consuming news
[01:27:21.890]via headlines, and sharing based on headlines.
[01:27:24.760]I mean, that's just, that's the whatever
[01:27:29.580]of social media and overwhelming media bombardment.
[01:27:32.693]Alexis, you ready for me to go on?
[01:27:34.910]Oh yeah.
[01:27:38.009]And I think that's why counter storytelling
[01:27:41.190]is so important, especially after seeing
[01:27:45.810]all those headlines.
[01:27:47.100]And counter storytelling is really
[01:27:50.510]a lot of the work that I do.
[01:27:52.390]And just to tell you a little bit about what it is,
[01:27:56.600]it's really just magnifying the voices in the stories,
[01:28:00.520]and experiences of people who often
[01:28:02.924]don't have their story told,
[01:28:04.743]who are often the last people that journalists
[01:28:07.720]think about how they're being impacted.
[01:28:13.090]And just thinking of how, wow,
[01:28:16.120]how different all these headlines could be,
[01:28:19.230]if an ounce of counter storytelling
[01:28:21.682]could have been applied beforehand.
[01:28:26.487]And you know, this is really important,
[01:28:28.450]and it really matters, because it really is working
[01:28:31.153]to contradict these racist
[01:28:33.934]characterizations of social life.
[01:28:36.700]And it really is exposing and revealing
[01:28:41.070]how white privilege is really operating,
[01:28:43.060]to reinforce these unequal racial relations in our society.
[01:28:49.640]And we can just show you some great examples
[01:28:52.061]of how it shows up, and some really great projects
[01:28:56.417]of how it's getting done.
[01:28:58.690]So I'm a really big fan of The 1619 Project.
[01:29:03.950]It's being heavily talked about right now,
[01:29:07.960]by legislators, and by journalists
[01:29:10.793]all throughout the country,
[01:29:13.570]because critical race theory is something
[01:29:16.410]that a lot of folks are wanting to be implemented
[01:29:19.300]into our public education system.
[01:29:21.500]And this is going to be hopefully
[01:29:23.950]one of the first steps in the right direction
[01:29:25.840]of getting people's stories told correctly.
[01:29:28.050]If you don't know what The 1619 Project is,
[01:29:31.344]there's no worries, there's no harms,
[01:29:34.114]because you can leave this conversation today
[01:29:36.960]and go and Google it for yourself.
[01:29:39.240]But if you do know, it's a great project
[01:29:42.760]made by a really awesome journalist,
[01:29:46.940]Nicole Hannah Jones, with The New York Times.
[01:29:51.030]And the project was written to better explain
[01:29:54.870]and tell the true narrative in story
[01:29:56.900]of the enslaved people within this country,
[01:30:00.420]and how our journey began in the year 1619.
[01:30:05.590]It just really takes you through a mistold,
[01:30:09.640]an untold narrative that's not taught
[01:30:12.110]in our education system, and if clearly
[01:30:15.130]it was taught in our education system,
[01:30:17.920]then we could be breaking down
[01:30:19.530]some of these systematic barriers that continue
[01:30:22.199]to affect black folks in this country.
[01:30:27.090]So I ask in your free time that you go
[01:30:29.930]and just check out The 1619 Project, if you haven't.
[01:30:32.800]There's a really great interactive website
[01:30:35.056]on The New York Times, and it's completely free,
[01:30:38.320]if you've ran out of all your free reads
[01:30:40.115]on The New York Times.
[01:30:41.517]Also, there is a really short podcast
[01:30:45.220]that you can check out and read as well,
[01:30:48.200]and it was also turned into a magazine.
[01:30:50.220]And if you want to follow the creator
[01:30:52.100]of the project on Twitter, her handle is Ida Bae Wells.
[01:30:57.320]I'm a big fan of Nicole Hannah Jones.
[01:30:59.312]She is a great investigative journalist,
[01:31:01.439]and mimics a lot of great work like Ida B. Wells.
[01:31:05.470]If you don't know who she is,
[01:31:06.550]she was another great investigative journalist
[01:31:09.350]who did a lot of great work
[01:31:11.664]and investigation around lynching.
[01:31:13.858]And she started the Ida B. Wells Foundation,
[01:31:18.070]which continues to do investigative work
[01:31:19.840]in telling the stories of black and brown folks
[01:31:22.160]in this country, who far too often
[01:31:23.928]don't have their stories told.
[01:31:26.220]Also, I will give out a little shout out
[01:31:28.840]to the Black Narrative, which is also a really
[01:31:31.690]great counter storytelling project,
[01:31:36.367]which was formed under the Poynter College Media Project,
[01:31:40.300]which was a big help by Elissa.
[01:31:43.561]And I'll just explain a little bit
[01:31:45.310]about the Black Narrative as well.
[01:31:47.310]So it's an in-depth dive into how media outlets
[01:31:50.630]cover historically black institutions,
[01:31:52.820]specifically North Carolina A&T State University.
[01:31:56.410]And just like the headline game I just showed you all,
[01:32:00.602]I also went through and found a lot of headlines
[01:32:04.251]written by local media outlets,
[01:32:06.252]framing the historically black university
[01:32:10.920]in a dangerous crime filled light,
[01:32:13.320]by saying this shooting happened
[01:32:15.900]near North Carolina A&T State University.
[01:32:18.090]This crime happened near the university.
[01:32:20.600]A person was robbed near this university.
[01:32:23.100]Basically painting the university in a very negative light.
[01:32:28.080]By supporting projects like this
[01:32:30.280]and looking for more ways that
[01:32:32.060]we can do counter storytelling,
[01:32:34.160]we can really roll back and find ways
[01:32:37.098]to break up white supremacy,
[01:32:39.300]and tell the stories of people
[01:32:40.930]that really need to have their voices heard.
[01:32:45.200]You can roll into the next slide.
[01:32:47.340]And just one thing I want to add here,
[01:32:49.470]that I think is so powerful, that Alexis,
[01:32:52.100]when working with Alexis has taught me,
[01:32:54.330]and Michelle, you mentioned it earlier.
[01:32:56.820]It's also about accuracy, right?
[01:32:59.163]The stories that Alexis and her team,
[01:33:02.024]it's basically Alexis who was her team,
[01:33:04.596]found were these crimes had nothing
[01:33:08.010]to do with the university.
[01:33:09.160]They were just geographic locators,
[01:33:11.170]which then the media was like, oh, that's no big deal,
[01:33:14.340]it's a geographic locator, except that it's doing harm.
[01:33:17.240]So actually, do your work, be more accurate,
[01:33:20.038]and you'll have better journalism.
[01:33:24.180]That's a really good point.
[01:33:25.548]And that brings us to, you know,
[01:33:28.502]the importance of if you want to do this work,
[01:33:31.370]and what that means, and the difference
[01:33:34.210]between having this inclusive community reporting,
[01:33:38.860]or having this white savior complex.
[01:33:42.380]And I think where the line is clearly drawn
[01:33:45.410]between the two for me is, are you including
[01:33:49.870]the people's voices from the start to the end?
[01:33:53.939]And who's leading this charge?
[01:33:58.587]Who's leading this project?
[01:34:00.110]Who's creating this counter storytelling process?
[01:34:03.104]Is it the people of color, who not only deserve
[01:34:06.790]to be at the forefront of this process,
[01:34:08.580]but also deserve to have their stories told?
[01:34:11.620]Or are white people taking up too much space yet again,
[01:34:15.358]and assuming, and thinking that they are helping,
[01:34:20.730]or supporting, or being allies in our fight,
[01:34:24.050]but in actuality, you are just trying
[01:34:27.480]to be a white savior.
[01:34:28.900]You're not thinking about what it looks like
[01:34:30.760]to include people of color in your process,
[01:34:33.862]and in a way that really benefits counter storytelling.
[01:34:41.770]And I just want to note that
[01:34:42.990]also counter storytelling is a really popular
[01:34:47.040]and great tool that a lot of folks
[01:34:48.620]are using right now for critical race theory.
[01:34:51.640]And you're going to see a lot more
[01:34:56.410]of critical race theory popping up
[01:34:58.590]in legislative conversations.
[01:35:02.020]Political commentators coming
[01:35:04.110]on your favorite news outlets talking about it.
[01:35:06.160]It's a really big buzz right now,
[01:35:07.540]so I'll just say that.
[01:35:11.470]And I want to ask, if you've all seen Lamont Hill.
[01:35:17.850]I think that's his name.
[01:35:18.820]He's an expert critical race theoretician,
[01:35:22.300]whatever, and he was talking to someone
[01:35:24.740]who is running for Governor of Georgia,
[01:35:29.363]and he asked him to define critical race theory,
[01:35:31.560]and he couldn't do it.
[01:35:32.570]So I think that it starts with actually a definition,
[01:35:35.310]because a lot of people who are trying
[01:35:37.620]to outlaw it have absolutely no idea what it is.
[01:35:40.550]And so that's a really fascinating,
[01:35:42.530]if you can find that on Twitter,
[01:35:43.870]the back and forth is absolutely.
[01:35:45.560]It's Marc Lamont Hill, and he's interviewing (laughs)
[01:35:49.692]the man who's running for governor, and it's quite a thing.
[01:35:55.320]All right.
[01:35:56.153]So anything else, we just wanted to move forward
[01:35:59.334]with sort of, now we've talked about
[01:36:02.060]a lot of different things,
[01:36:03.270]and shown you a lot of different ways
[01:36:07.202]of kind of re-examining our role as journalists.
[01:36:11.600]So I just wanted to point out
[01:36:13.590]these few pressure points that I think
[01:36:15.690]are directly, that directly impact teaching,
[01:36:19.237]and our work with students.
[01:36:21.090]So what does making progress look like?
[01:36:24.960]It looks like being intentional,
[01:36:26.230]which is not something I think
[01:36:27.780]that I was ever taught in journalism school.
[01:36:31.340]It's about talking about balance versus accuracy.
[01:36:35.810]So if you get two sides to a story,
[01:36:37.800]it may be quote unquote balanced, but is it accurate, right?
[01:36:41.150]So are we really having conversations like that.
[01:36:44.000]Objectivity versus transparency.
[01:36:46.050]Are we owning our bias, or are we somehow saying
[01:36:50.320]that we can overcome this instinctive process
[01:36:53.470]that our brains are going through,
[01:36:55.270]and not in a judgmental way, but just in an open way.
[01:36:58.600]How can we have more productive conversations about that?
[01:37:03.375]Are we focusing on relationships
[01:37:05.540]as much as we're focusing on deadlines?
[01:37:07.430]God knows we're not, right, but if you don't
[01:37:09.730]have relationships, your deadlines are going
[01:37:12.140]to be pretty horrible, a lot worse, right?
[01:37:14.800]So how do people really form relationships
[01:37:19.230]that can make for better and more accurate stories?
[01:37:24.140]Are we teaching about the concept of using people
[01:37:27.260]as sources versus engaging with them as partners, right?
[01:37:30.810]Story partners versus sources.
[01:37:33.300]And having manners.
[01:37:34.810]I think that whole, what can differentiate us,
[01:37:39.210]as professionals who are responsible
[01:37:42.873]in our work, is we can be respectful.
[01:37:45.780]We don't have to have that gruff like,
[01:37:47.880]you're going to tell me the truth because I said so,
[01:37:50.660]and you know, like, no, no, just no.
[01:37:54.230]No one that.
[01:37:55.636]And you wouldn't want anybody doing it to you.
[01:37:58.470]So.
[01:38:00.781]Can I just-
[01:38:01.809]Yes. Point about that.
[01:38:03.063]I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah.
[01:38:04.150]But this is something I wrote down
[01:38:06.870]from the clip you showed was,
[01:38:10.040]she was saying "You are guests here",
[01:38:12.910]and if we would start thinking
[01:38:14.590]of ourselves as guests, even at press conferences,
[01:38:19.260]it kind of goes to that point about manners.
[01:38:22.000]You're not going to ask a rude,
[01:38:24.630]arrogant question if you're thinking
[01:38:26.830]of yourself as a guest.
[01:38:28.811]Yeah, yeah, I totally, I love that.
[01:38:33.572]I agree too, that's good language, Michelle,
[01:38:36.420]and I always, when I teach interviewing,
[01:38:39.520]I always say, you know, get off your ass
[01:38:41.020]and go sit in somebody's kitchen.
[01:38:42.890]It's that same sort of, you cannot have that conversation,
[01:38:46.730]you can't be a guest on the telephone.
[01:38:49.410]You can't, so I liked that reframing of that,
[01:38:51.980]so thank you for using that term.
[01:38:57.780]Like when you're sitting on someone's stoop,
[01:38:59.640]or you're sitting in their kitchen,
[01:39:01.140]or they've been, I mean, they invite us in,
[01:39:03.810]and I've used that terminology, but I like the guest.
[01:39:06.460]I like that a lot.
[01:39:07.730]Thank you.
[01:39:08.850]Yeah, that's awesome.
[01:39:10.350]And then just some points that Alexis
[01:39:14.030]and I were sort of batting back and forth,
[01:39:16.480]in terms of ways that, how does this show up, right?
[01:39:20.220]How does it show up in your work?
[01:39:21.640]This isn't just something to like
[01:39:23.540]put on a shelf and be like, okay,
[01:39:25.233]like this is really actionable,
[01:39:27.460]and it's really necessary right now.
[01:39:29.660]So how do you do this in a predominantly white institution?
[01:39:34.010]You make sure that your students
[01:39:35.387]are reading work by all different kinds of journalists.
[01:39:38.510]You're assigning 1619 Project.
[01:39:40.450]You're assigning work from Indian Country Today.
[01:39:43.580]You're looking at Reckon, at Scalawag, right?
[01:39:49.920]You're having your students,
[01:39:51.890]as well as in your faculty group,
[01:39:54.010]studying these kinds of new takes on police reporting.
[01:39:57.230]I don't know if you'd read the defund
[01:39:59.110]the crime beat piece out of Nieman,
[01:40:00.850]but that man, that is some powerful stuff.
[01:40:03.570]And we think about how these baby journalists
[01:40:06.130]we're sending out into the world
[01:40:07.180]are often tossed into the front lines
[01:40:09.000]of police reporting, and they're the least equipped
[01:40:12.060]to be able to do anything other than just
[01:40:13.930]parrot whatever the police say.
[01:40:15.770]So these cycles, we keep fueling,
[01:40:18.270]we have the power to put the brakes on, right?
[01:40:21.350]And that's what I think are, that's the part
[01:40:23.710]of being accountable and responsible.
[01:40:26.420]I linked also to, and I'll share this deck
[01:40:28.840]with Chris and y'all, but to the movement journalism world
[01:40:33.040]that's happening now, which is right out
[01:40:35.660]of Ida B. Wells' history, right?
[01:40:37.930]And just think of what we wouldn't know
[01:40:40.380]about our country if it weren't for Ida B. Wells.
[01:40:43.569]I mean it's really important stuff.
[01:40:46.100]Is it the only thing we should have?
[01:40:48.360]No, but nobody's saying that, but by God,
[01:40:50.610]we certainly could use the extra doses of it.
[01:40:53.860]Then champion compensated representation
[01:40:56.790]in your classrooms, because help don't come for free,
[01:41:00.362]and read up on new questions, new styles from gender.
[01:41:04.570]And Alexis, why don't you talk about these last ones?
[01:41:07.140]Cause these are really your areas of expertise.
[01:41:10.020]Yeah, of course.
[01:41:11.000]Yeah, definitely reading up on new ways
[01:41:14.710]and styles of asking and approaching questions,
[01:41:18.470]and gender identity, learning how to show up
[01:41:20.890]to an interview and ask, you know, "Hi, my name is Alexis.
[01:41:24.630]I use she, her, hers pronouns.
[01:41:27.130]What can I call you?
[01:41:28.313]What pronouns do you like to go by?"
[01:41:31.150]And just really understanding
[01:41:32.750]how you show up in someone else's space.
[01:41:35.210]Also capitalization practices are really
[01:41:38.250]important right now.
[01:41:39.851]A lot of news outlets are moving
[01:41:42.090]toward capitalizing the B in black.
[01:41:44.040]I know I was, as a student journalist,
[01:41:45.980]and got told many times, no,
[01:41:47.844]that's not supposed to be capitalized,
[01:41:50.060]and I still snuck it in my stories anyway.
[01:41:52.320]So I'm glad in the year that 2021,
[01:41:54.460]a lot of news outlets are catching up to that.
[01:41:56.791]A lot of folks are still grappling with the fact of,
[01:41:59.240]do I lowercase the W in white, or do I capitalize it?
[01:42:03.605]I personally don't capitalize the W in white.
[01:42:06.434]So just really trying to understand
[01:42:08.610]and read on the best practices for that.
[01:42:11.311]Also being aware of coded language,
[01:42:14.550]which goes back to those headlines
[01:42:16.150]that we pulled from earlier,
[01:42:18.090]and teaching your students that
[01:42:22.820]your words have power and meaning,
[01:42:24.630]and you know exactly what you do, when you're using them.
[01:42:27.777]For example, saying domestic terrorist
[01:42:33.139]is a practice that journalists need to start using,
[01:42:38.176]especially when so many incidents
[01:42:43.607]are happening and coming up across this country,
[01:42:46.860]when it comes to gun violence and gun abuse.
[01:42:51.337]Do you want to jump to the next slide?
[01:42:55.000]And I just threw some coded language,
[01:42:57.560]a coded language dictionary together.
[01:42:59.410]I recycle some of these words that I've used before
[01:43:03.270]with other folks and added some more,
[01:43:05.320]because times are changing,
[01:43:07.170]and words are being thrown together,
[01:43:09.660]and thrown out every single day.
[01:43:11.170]And I see these used all the time,
[01:43:13.653]and used in the wrong way all the time.
[01:43:18.260]From thug, to victim, to low-income, looters,
[01:43:21.795]immigrant, terrorists, savage, gang-related,
[01:43:25.300]and there's just so many more.
[01:43:26.980]And we could sit here today and just come up
[01:43:30.130]with many more lists, and many more ways
[01:43:32.570]of how we have used these words
[01:43:34.405]oh so incorrectly.
[01:43:35.910]I was watching a video the other day
[01:43:37.882]that thug is an Indian word,
[01:43:40.510]and it comes from Indian culture.
[01:43:44.300]And they used it to talk about assassins,
[01:43:46.708]and to talk about, you know,
[01:43:50.196]people in their communities that
[01:43:52.100]come to kill and harm and hurt people,
[01:43:54.820]and how we have Americanized it,
[01:43:56.787]and white supremacy has laid its ugly coat on top of it.
[01:44:00.650]And now news outlets and politicians use it
[01:44:04.200]as a way to frame black men in this country,
[01:44:06.950]when it was never intended for that purpose,
[01:44:09.200]and how we just continue to truly hurt people
[01:44:11.500]with the words that we use.
[01:44:13.300]And this is a great reminder for student journalists,
[01:44:16.520]and for professionals that journalism
[01:44:20.040]has played a huge role
[01:44:21.240]in how white supremacy ideology is really sewn
[01:44:26.943]into the fabric of this country.
[01:44:37.620]Yeah, thank you so much.
[01:44:39.240]That's so powerful.
[01:44:40.160]I always sit with it because I think
[01:44:41.137]there are some news organizations that are now
[01:44:43.990]reckoning with their financial ties
[01:44:46.140]to a very racist past, and how that keeps
[01:44:49.809]perpetuating, and damaging, and adding to the harm
[01:44:54.090]we're trying to say we shouldn't be doing. (laughs)
[01:44:57.350]So this is just sort of,
[01:45:00.870]this ties in with what y'all were saying
[01:45:02.620]before about responsible interview advice.
[01:45:04.570]Again, I wish someone had taught me this,
[01:45:07.970]but this is why I think is important
[01:45:09.860]that we start interviews with a shared intention.
[01:45:13.110]How is my journalism work?
[01:45:14.450]Talk about your research, talk about your goals.
[01:45:16.780]Clarify the basics, get those details right every time.
[01:45:20.120]I mean, that stuff we were taught,
[01:45:21.770]but also not everything has to be a question.
[01:45:24.760]Really let yourself, I loved hearing how wise people
[01:45:30.520]in your lives were curious, right?
[01:45:32.920]Because curiosity is a way to get to new knowledge,
[01:45:37.790]and an understanding that there's no way we can know it all.
[01:45:41.660]So we need to be voices for continuous improvement,
[01:45:47.930]continuous learning, continuous growing,
[01:45:50.834]continuous evolving, as we better understand.
[01:45:54.300]We don't spend time just beating up
[01:45:56.540]ourselves for doing harm.
[01:45:58.310]We can actually impact the future,
[01:46:00.370]and I think really differentiate ourselves
[01:46:02.390]and our work, from the work of like every person
[01:46:05.620]with a cell phone, right? (laughs)
[01:46:07.690]Who is like an instant journalist these days.
[01:46:11.670]So yeah, I think that's kind of
[01:46:13.582]where we end it for our presentation.
[01:46:21.110]And we hope that if you have questions
[01:46:24.214]or just thoughts about, what'd you think?
[01:46:29.050]Helpful, interesting, actionable.
[01:46:36.140]Anything?
[01:46:36.973]Anything you took away?
[01:46:38.970]Yeah.
[01:46:39.803]Definitely helpful.
[01:46:41.230]It's just a good, we need to keep thinking about this.
[01:46:46.390]It's not something we're gonna solve right away,
[01:46:49.170]but you know, how can we infuse some of these ideas
[01:46:57.780]in our teaching, in a more holistic way?
[01:47:02.890]I think the people here do a good job of it,
[01:47:08.530]we just need to take it out to the rest of the faculty.
[01:47:13.610]And really, Chris and I were talking about this today,
[01:47:16.250]really make sure that every class
[01:47:19.560]in our curriculum is building on,
[01:47:23.200]we're starting at the beginning,
[01:47:24.590]and it's building on this,
[01:47:29.330]and it's reinforced throughout the whole curriculum.
[01:47:33.740]No, that's so, it's so important,
[01:47:35.930]and I think, you know, it's always, yeah,
[01:47:39.420]there's probably people not in the room
[01:47:40.890]that could be in the room,
[01:47:41.840]that might be nice to be in the room.
[01:47:43.330]But at the same time, you know, you've got access
[01:47:46.510]to this information, and you can share it,
[01:47:48.700]and I encourage you to do so and be like,
[01:47:51.818]no, this is actually a thing.
[01:47:53.680]This is actually, we need to do this,
[01:47:55.130]and we need to be mindful that if we're not doing it,
[01:47:58.710]we're not preparing the students to do
[01:48:01.210]what they need to do out there.
[01:48:03.650]Exactly.
[01:48:05.383]Alexis, anything- Yeah, I think.
[01:48:07.250]Okay. Sorry.
[01:48:08.110]Go ahead Chris, sorry.
[01:48:09.460]No, you go.
[01:48:10.610]I was just gonna say, I think there's so many,
[01:48:14.170]I wrote down a whole page
[01:48:15.440]and a half of sort of action items.
[01:48:18.650]Just even thinking about my own syllabus,
[01:48:21.890]even thinking about the words I even use,
[01:48:24.310]just writing some of these assignments yesterday,
[01:48:26.880]Jessica, like, hm, I better go back
[01:48:28.940]and check some words of my own that I used.
[01:48:33.270]And anyway, just a lot.
[01:48:37.260]I mean, it's a lot and every time,
[01:48:39.850]this is not the first time I've heard Elissa's,
[01:48:41.910]in full transparency, the three A's.
[01:48:44.280]But I get different things,
[01:48:45.960]and I think about, oh, wait a minute, hold up.
[01:48:51.030]What words am I even using
[01:48:52.460]in class when I'm talking to students?
[01:48:54.457]And what does that look like?
[01:48:56.030]And anyway, I just, I think there's a lot to unpack
[01:49:00.790]and to continue to think about,
[01:49:02.990]and talk about one-on-one, and as a group,
[01:49:06.870]and what all that looks like,
[01:49:08.450]and anyway, I don't, so yeah, it's helpful. (laughs)
[01:49:12.193]Going on a bit. Very.
[01:49:15.009]Yeah, this was helpful for me,
[01:49:17.487]because I usually meet with students
[01:49:19.930]right before they decide to choose journalism
[01:49:23.324]as a major, and this gave me some
[01:49:25.900]really good content to think about,
[01:49:28.100]in having those initial conversations with them,
[01:49:29.881]when they're thinking, oh maybe I should
[01:49:32.480]change my major to journalism or maybe I shouldn't.
[01:49:35.518]So it was fascinating, thank you.
[01:49:37.750]Awesome. Well, and I will
[01:49:39.400]just say too, our students are wanting us
[01:49:43.540]to be talking about this.
[01:49:44.820]That's what I found this semester in particular,
[01:49:47.670]with some of the reporting classes.
[01:49:50.219]They want to have these conversations.
[01:49:52.820]In a lot of ways, they're a lot more
[01:49:54.810]enlightened than we are.
[01:49:59.340]I mean, they just really want
[01:50:01.880]to challenge journalism, you know,
[01:50:06.334]as the traditional practice of it,
[01:50:10.030]and I'm there with them. (laughs)
[01:50:13.660]I think it's a lot of things,
[01:50:17.230]there's a reckoning in a lot of areas,
[01:50:19.540]and I think journalism is ripe for it right now.
[01:50:26.165]Yeah, I would agree.
[01:50:27.370]I was going to talk about that too.
[01:50:28.300]I had a really instructive conversation
[01:50:30.770]with actually two students, but one in particular,
[01:50:34.160]who said, how come we just can't have a space to talk
[01:50:36.610]about all this stuff that's going on in journalism?
[01:50:40.947]Where's our space for that?
[01:50:43.390]So powerful.
[01:50:44.760]It was really powerful.
[01:50:46.420]And for him to come, and I'd had a similar
[01:50:49.419]conversation with a student
[01:50:50.880]who was in one of my courses as well,
[01:50:52.700]but she framed it a little differently.
[01:50:55.030]But I was like, okay, so first step,
[01:50:56.970]I'm going to introduce you guys,
[01:50:58.330]and then we're going to take it from there,
[01:50:59.900]so you know that you're not alone.
[01:51:03.147]And I think, I tell you, it is, to Michelle's point,
[01:51:08.883]and I continue to learn this,
[01:51:10.310]and Elissa already knows this,
[01:51:11.540]but one of the best pieces of advice I ever got
[01:51:14.010]from an editor was listen 'til your ears bleed,
[01:51:18.443]'cause I'm a talker.
[01:51:19.690]But I just think listening to students
[01:51:24.610]and hearing their needs, and again,
[01:51:27.250]it goes back to the interviewing stuff,
[01:51:30.290]asking people what their story is,
[01:51:33.330]as opposed to swooping in and telling them.
[01:51:36.170]So that's, I mean, if I take away,
[01:51:38.737]well I took away a lot, but that continually,
[01:51:42.960]man, we don't know shit. (laughs)
[01:51:46.399]We know stuff, of course we know stuff, but wow, yeah.
[01:51:52.610]Alexis.
[01:51:53.530]Yeah, everyone, I'm so glad that folks
[01:51:56.260]are going to be able to take away
[01:51:57.820]a lot from this conversation today,
[01:51:58.987]and I think that that's the most important thing.
[01:52:01.283]Because I see journalism as a science,
[01:52:03.960]an ever-changing practice,
[01:52:05.480]something that we are going to have
[01:52:07.290]to continue to evolve and work at,
[01:52:09.530]and understand how it works better for everyone.
[01:52:12.490]And the first step is having conversations like this,
[01:52:15.740]where we can say, this is how we're doing it wrong,
[01:52:18.220]and I think that this is a good direction to move in,
[01:52:20.730]so that we can try to do it right the next time.
[01:52:23.520]And just all of you showing up today is a sign
[01:52:26.583]that you want to do the work,
[01:52:28.090]and you want to prepare your curriculum,
[01:52:31.930]so that it is training the 21st century journalist,
[01:52:36.180]because the world is changing every day,
[01:52:37.910]and we're going to look up,
[01:52:39.060]and things are going to be so different.
[01:52:40.880]And we're going to need journalists
[01:52:42.010]to talk about social movements,
[01:52:43.480]and we're going to need journalists to talk
[01:52:44.810]about what it looks like to cover a protest,
[01:52:49.130]and what it looks like when all of these
[01:52:51.530]racial anxieties are coming up,
[01:52:53.620]and how they fit and bring themselves into the space.
[01:52:56.684]So I'm just super excited for the 21st century
[01:53:01.820]journalists that you all are training,
[01:53:03.450]and teaching, and educating, and I'm super happy
[01:53:06.020]that we were all gathered here today,
[01:53:08.537]and can all take something away from it, so thank you all.
[01:53:12.880]Thank you.
[01:53:14.150]Thank you.
[01:53:14.983]Yeah, thank you.
[01:53:15.816]I echo, I can't say it better than Alexis, what Alexis said.
[01:53:18.954](Alexis laughing)
[01:53:21.100]And Nicole, we'll end, and then we'll get
[01:53:25.960]this recording, put it somewhere,
[01:53:27.940]and then Elissa, if you want to, sorry,
[01:53:29.700]the little details here.
[01:53:31.690]And Elissa, if you want to send me
[01:53:33.110]your deck and we'll make sure, as much as we can,
[01:53:36.060]to make it publicly available to folks,
[01:53:38.810]which probably was not good form that I cussed,
[01:53:41.970]so I'm sorry to everybody.
[01:53:43.720]Well, and I kind of dissed people who weren't here.
[01:53:47.120]Maybe we can cut off-
[01:53:49.040]Cut off that last part.
[01:53:50.610]It's all good.
[01:53:51.770]This is the deck.
[01:53:52.970]But anyway, and I'll send you the deck too.
[01:53:54.800]Well, thank you all.
[01:53:55.970]I'm going to go give out a scholarship.
[01:53:57.510]Really appreciated your time.
[01:53:59.670]Alexis, as always, I feel so lucky to be,
[01:54:03.380]I mean like, she's taught me so much
[01:54:05.888]and continues to everyday, so I keep pulling you back.
[01:54:09.250]Journalism can't lose you.
[01:54:10.740]Can't lose you. (laughs)
[01:54:12.522](Alexis laughing)
[01:54:14.020]Anyway, so it was lovely to meet you all.
[01:54:16.610]Nice to meet you.
[01:54:17.443]Thanks again. Thank you.
[01:54:18.691]Thank you. Thanks guys.
[01:54:20.025]Bye bye.
[01:54:21.243]Bye.

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Accountability Journalism in the 21st Century

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