(Photo: Roby Ferrari / Flickr; Edited: EL/TO)
Today’s media landscape is constantly shifting. As
the industry follows wider economic trends, steady writing jobs remain few and
far between. Many talented reporters and critics move around from outlet to
outlet in a largely freelance economy. The way audiences find news and analysis
has also changed - more and more often, readers will follow those writers
around, using social media feeds to find stories, rather than going directly to
one web site (let alone one television network, radio station or print publication).
The line between “audience” and “media-makers” has eroded, too, amplifying
voices and movements traditionally excluded from dominant journalistic
platforms. Tweets and Facebook posts often travel farther and wider and faster
than even the most “high-profile” newspaper articles.
As corporate media companies have scrambled to adapt,
sometimes in the process offering platforms to people who disrupt the hegemony
of the mainstream, new outlets have emerged which can’t be categorized as
mainstream yet but don’t fit clearly into the mold of independent media either.
Some of them openly tack still further to the right than corporate news (Free
Beacon, for example, or the Breitbart News Network), while others have drawn
criticism for the extent to which they seem
dominated by the
same, already overrepresented voices. Meanwhile, at the same time as social
media has become increasingly recognized - though certainly not by everyone -
as Media with a capital M (media to be taken seriously), it has enabled the
emergence of new critiques of all sections of media - or perhaps more
accurately, it has amplified critiques that were not new but now for the first
time are too loud to be ignored.
In light of these developments, what principles
should independent media follow? If we want the things we say about ourselves
to ring true in the landscape in which we find ourselves in 2014, how should we
act, write and envision our mission and purpose?
The following are principles to which Truthout
already strives to adhere, but which we now feel are important to articulate
explicitly. We hope to help inform a conversation which has already begun, but
which needs to move with some swiftness from one that is reactive to one that
is proactive. We hope to gesture towards an independent media that serves the
future - whether that’s five minutes from now or 50 years ahead of us - and the
people who live in it.
Be
Intentional
Independent media has, on occasion, erred on the side
of declaring not just an appropriate independence from corporations or
political parties, but an independence from causes, ideologies, convictions,
even points of view.
Most of us are not afraid to admit, privately, that
we have intentions and that these intentions are political. But elsewhere, we
feel we must make a point of insisting on our objectivity and balance, lest we
be accused of partisanship or bias. This fear is not without substance:
Accusations of bias have been used to discredit independent media, defund
public media, and even to end mainstream careers. One of the earliest things
both of us were taught about journalism was that it should strive, at all (or
most) costs, for the grand ideal of “objectivity.”
Yet every time we retreat behind the shield of “objectivity,”
something is lost. In part, that’s because the corporate media is not afraid to
openly side with those with the most power - whether it’s the partisan
conservative ties of Fox News or the “progressive” DNC partisanship of MSNBC.
Fortunately, more and more reporters and other media-makers espouse the view,
as we do, that “the myth
of ‘objective’ journalism is not only false, but also unhelpful.”The next
step, then, is to embrace being intentional.
For independent media, what does it mean to take a
truly intentional approach? It means making decisions with an informed, wider
context in mind and with clear social justice aims - both editorial decisions
and decisions about our own practices. It means reframing and sometimes even
discarding the idea of “bias”; in fact, we all should be “biased” toward truth,
justice and freedom.
For us, at Truthout, it means constantly asking about
everything we publish, whether it’s an original piece or one reprinted from a
partner publication: Why are we publishing this? What does it add - to
Truthout, to the broader conversation, to the struggle for justice?
It means being intentional about what voices we quote
and promote; being aware that if we do not make conscious choices, invisible
privileges will lead to the continued predominance of white, male, abled,
heterosexual, cisgender and well-off voices. It means acknowledging power
dynamics and seeking, wherever possible, to confront power and to avoid the
cheap and easy satisfaction of criticizing those who do not have it - punching
up, not punching down.
It means taking a stand on some issues and making it
clear we do not believe they are up for debate. For example, we are not
interested in “debating” the rights of trans and non-binary people to determine
their own gender, to be accepted as such and to be afforded the same rights and
basic human decency as cisgender people. We won’t represent “both sides” of a
debate about whether it’s justified for the US government to pre-emptively
murder a teenage boy.
Be
Humble
An emphasis on talking heads, definitive opinions,
and sound bites on cable TV has perpetuated the idea that being indisputably right
is the main goal of both journalism and public dialogue. This closes out
opportunities for questioning, and imagining, and experimentation. Independent
media must take responsibility and serve as a forum for creative thought
concerning social justice.
Confidence that one is 100 percent right - or 100
percent knowledgeable - about everything in a given area should not be a precursor
for being granted a voice or a platform. Indeed, it could be argued that 100
percent confidence is usually a good indicator that something is being
distorted or overlooked. When challenging the status quo, sometimes the “answer”
is not immediately available, because the structures necessary to build those
answers are not yet in place.
We must admit that we don’t know everything.
Non-corporate media can and should provide a space to
puzzle out possibilities for both dismantling current systems and paving new
paths, and for this journey, humility is an essential ingredient.
This approach has almost immeasurable intellectual,
political and professional value. Intellectually, it is far more likely to
yield new insights than the current fad for “explainer” journalism that assumes
both that its audience is ill-informed in the extreme, and that the best way to
rectify that is to have the subject at hand broken down into bite-sized flash
cards by a wonkish figure of authority. Politically, it will broaden our understanding
of who gets to speak with authority.
Professionally, it will simply lead to better
journalism - by almost any standards. Journalism is a field that’s grounded
in inquiry, and with inquiry must come a willingness and a capacity to learn.
As we carry on our work as independent journalists, we should carry with us the
mindset that the world has a lot to teach us - and that when it comes down to
it, much of our job is simply to listen.
Be
Bold
At the 2014 annual meeting of The Media Consortium, Rinku
Sen (president and executive director of Race
Forward and publisher of Colorlines)
encouraged attendees to make two paradigmatic shifts. Firstly, to value not
only those stories which prove to be great successes but also the ones read,
seen or heard by only a handful of people; secondly, to move from a framework
of scarcity to one of abundance.
What do these ideas have to do with being bold? The
answer is that both can free us from a fear of failure that hampers the kind of
journalism we could otherwise be producing.
Of course it’s only sensible and good for media
outlets to look at data about our audiences, to keep track of what is most read
and what’s having the biggest impact on the wider conversation and the wider
world. But if our approach as writers and editors is tied too closely to
chasing a bigger and bigger audience, and our desire to reach this audience is
primarily tied to ensuring we stay funded, we are putting the cart before the
horse in a way that risks falling into the same traps that hamstring the
corporate media.
If we commit to covering stories that would otherwise
go untold, it should be with the understanding that this is a worthwhile act in
and of itself. If we commit to giving a voice to the voiceless, it cannot be
conditional on the immediate popularity of what the voiceless have to say.
While of course we want to amplify these voices and disseminate these stories
to as many people as possible, and should always be refining our approach to do
that as effectively as possible, one thing is inevitable: Some stories that are
worth telling will not be well-received.
Taking risks and putting out ideas that might make
some people uncomfortable, even angry, is the only way to move dialogues
forward. (As we discuss below, however, too many media outlets are only
interested in provoking anger and discomfort in people whose anger will
generate attention, but is assumed ultimately not to matter.)
As part of this process, testing the bounds of what’s
considered “journalism” - and who should be given a platform in a publication -
is crucial. “Journalism” cannot remain confined to a scroll of “professionals”
enacting formulas and filling in the blanks with interviews. If independent
media is to provide a genuine alternative to corporate media, we must free
ourselves from the respectability politics that not only keeps marginalized
people in the margins but also limits the quality and range of public
discourse.
Be
Accountable
Too often, media have strived to maintain an airy
distance from critique, an almost patrician-like separation from the “mob” of
social media, comments sections, the mass of reader feedback emails and similar
forums. The fear has been, perhaps, that to make media accountable would mean
opening the floodgates and allowing oneself to be held hostage to anyone with a
grudge.
To be sure, as we have outlined above, a media outlet
that committed to never making any reader or subject of a story unhappy would
be a media outlet that never published anything of value. If we have already
decided to be bold, we have already decided that we are going to upset somebody.
But if we have already decided to be intentional, then we can make decisions
about to whom we are accountable.
In fact, pretty much every media outlet out there
already makes these decisions - it’s just that usually, they decide that the
only people whose feedback is worth listening to are the ones who already hold
the most power, money and influence. George Orwell famously defined journalism
as “printing what someone else does not want printed,” adding “everything else
is public relations” - this now seems to us somewhat incomplete without
specifying that journalism is publishing what someone with power does
not want to see the light of day. There is sadly no shortage of journalism that
is happy to be combative and take people to task, but only when they are people
already marginalized.
If we are intentional, if we have a clear ethical and
political compass, and if we are bold, then we will be able to stick to our
guns when we anger powerful, wealthy and high-profile men but think
carefully about what we might have done wrong if we upset marginalized
communities - not the other way around.
This also requires us to think differently about the
people for whom we are writing and publishing. Independent media must embrace
and value readers, not only as “audiences” but as communities. Since we aren’t
working for profit, our work only has a point if we are serving our
communities and developing alongside them. That service and development is a
collaborative effort, and we must remain conscious of the spirit of our
involvement as journalists.
We must always remain conscious of whose stories we’re
telling, and the impact these stories will make on not only the larger public
but on the subjects of our stories themselves. We must not, in the name of “good
journalism,” ignore
the effects of that journalism on the
people about whom we’re writing.
This means going beyond a legalistic outlook in which
anything heard or printed in a public forum is fair game, and damn the
consequences. It means acknowledging that by virtue of the platforms we have,
most of us enjoy “a tremendous privilege and an even greater responsibility,”
and that, to quote Susie
Cagle, “At the least, we should seek to minimize harm to those we use - and
yes, we do use them - to tell stories and ultimately earn livelihoods for
ourselves.”
Progress,
Not Perfection
The term “progressive” has been batted around in
recent years to mean a number of contradictory things, some of which simply
connote maintaining the status quo and tweaking it around the edges or
returning to a mythical golden age when life was good for everyone. Journalists
are uniquely positioned to provide an example of what it might mean instead to
strive to be “progressive” in a different sense: committed to improving
ourselves, our work and our society, but acutely aware of the inevitability of
imperfection.
A strawman often invoked in recent years against
efforts to hold media accountable, especially media that self-identifies as
progressive, left-wing or feminist, is that critics are demanding an
unreasonable and unachievable perfection.
It is true that perfection is unachievable. But the
claim “nobody’s perfect!” is offered too frequently as a defense mechanism. It’s
a knee-jerk resistance to criticism that many of us can recognize from
arguments in our personal lives. Since nobody is perfect, the thinking goes, we
should surely not have our shortcomings pointed out but rather our
accomplishments praised. Since the bar is set so low, surely we have done
enough.
What would the media culture look like if, instead,
we took “nobody’s perfect” to mean that we acknowledged our own limitations,
shortcomings and past mistakes - and instead of either denying them,
downplaying them or being discouraged by them, resolved to learn from them?
It’s hard to say, because that isn’t the media
culture we currently have. But it’s the one we’re trying to build, not with a
wholly defined end in sight but as a continual process, working to carve our
own media landscape, transforming as we go.
We can’t promise perfection. We don’t pretend this
practice will be easy - that there won’t be times when important priorities
conflict or when the needs of different communities clash (after all, “there
are some very real tensions for us to hold in the face of overlapping systems
of oppression“). All we can do is make our best good-faith effort to be
intentional, humble, bold and accountable, more so today than yesterday and
even more so tomorrow, working with the conviction that a better media world is
possible. Starting with Truthout.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Maya Schenwar is Truthout’s editor-in-chief and the
author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn’t Work and How We
Can Do Better. Follow her on Twitter @mayaschenwar.
Previously, she was a senior editor and reporter at
Truthout, writing on US defense policy, the criminal justice system, campaign
politics, and immigration reform. Prior to her work at Truthout, Maya was
contributing editor at Punk Planet magazine. She has also written for the Guardian,
In These Times, Ms. Magazine, AlterNet, Z Magazine, Bitch
Magazine, Common Dreams, the New Jersey Star-Ledger and others. She also
served as a publicity coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Maya is
on the Board of Advisors at Waging Nonviolence.
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