The New York Times - USA (2020-06-28)

2 SR THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 K

I

T WAS a brief interaction, during the

first weeks of my career. There had

been a stabbing, and I’d been dis-

patched to a block in Roxbury, a pre-

dominantly black section of Boston, to

snag quotes from anyone who might

know anything about what had hap-

pened.

“Who are you with?” inquired the first

person I had approached, a black man in

his 50s. “The Globe?” he exclaimed after

hearing my response. “The Globe does-

n’t have black reporters. What are you

doing over here? You lost? Y’all don’t

write about this part of town.”

His complaints and his skepticism

were familiar, voiced for decades by

black people both outside newsrooms

and within them — that most American

media organizations do not reflect the di-

versity of the nation or the communities

they cover and too often confine their

coverage of black and brown neighbor-

hoods to the crime of the day.

Now, almost a decade later, as pro-

testers are taking to the streets of Ameri-

can cities to denounce racism and the un-

abated police killings of black people, the

journalism industry has seemingly

reached a breaking point of its own:

Black journalists are publicly airing

years of accumulated grievances; in

many newsrooms, writers and editors

are now also openly pushing for a para-

digm shift in how our outlets define their

operations and ideals.

While these two battles may seem su-

perficially separate, in reality, the failure

of the mainstream press to accurately

cover black communities is intrinsically

linked with its failure to employ, retain

and listen to black people.

Since American journalism’s pivot

many decades ago from an openly parti-

san press to a model of professed objec-

tivity, the views and inclinations of the

white gaze have been accepted as the ob-

jective neutral. When black and brown

reporters and editors challenge those

conventions, it’s not uncommon for them

to be pushed out, reprimanded or robbed

of new opportunities.

The journalist Alex S. Jones, a long-

time director of Harvard’s Shorenstein

Center on Media, Politics and Public Pol-

icy, wrote in “Losing the News,” his 2009

book, that objectivity “means not trying

to create the illusion of fairness by letting

advocates pretend in your journalism

that there is a debate about the facts

when the weight of truth is clear.” He cri-

tiqued “he-said/she-said reporting,

which just pits one voice against an-

other,” as “the discredited face of objec-

tivity. But that is not authentic objectiv-

ity.”

It’s striking to read objectivity defined

that way — not because it’s objection-

able, but rather because it barely resem-

bles the way the concept is commonly

discussed in newsrooms today. Instead

of telling hard truths in this polarized en-

vironment, regardless of what some

white readers will think, America’s

newsrooms too often deprive their read-

ers of plainly stated facts that could ex-

pose reporters to accusations of partial-

ity or imbalance.

For years, I’ve been among a chorus of

mainstream journalists who have called

for our industry to abandon the appear-

ance of objectivity as the aspirational

journalistic standard, and for reporters

instead to focus on being fair and telling

the truth, as best as one can, based on the

context and available facts.

It’s not a novel argument. Scores of

journalists across generations, from

gonzo reporters like Hunter S. Thomp-

son to more traditional voices like Bill

Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel, have advo-

cated this very approach.

Ostensibly neutral objective journal-

ism is constructed atop a pyramid of sub-

jective decision-making: which stories

to cover, how intensely to cover those

stories, which sources to seek out and in-

clude, which pieces of information are

highlighted and which are played down.

And so, instead of promising our read-

ers that we will never, on any platform,

betray a bias, a better pledge would be an

assurance that we will devote ourselves

to accuracy, that we will diligently seek

out the perspectives of those with whom

we personally may be inclined to dis-

agree and that we will be just as sure to

ask hard questions of those with whom

we’re inclined to agree.

A fairness-and-truth focus would have

different, healthy interpretations. And it

would take moral clarity, requiring both

editors and reporters to stop doing

things like reflexively hiding behind eu-

phemisms that obfuscate the truth sim-

ply because we’ve always done it that

way. Deference to precedent is a poor ex-

cuse for continuing to make decisions

that potentially let powerful bad actors

off the hook and harm the public we

serve.

Neutral objectivity trips over itself to

find ways to avoid telling the truth. Moral

clarity would insist that politicians who

traffic in racist stereotypes and tropes —

however cleverly — be labeled such with

clear language and unburied evidence.

Ideally, the group of journalists with

the power to decide what and whom to

give a platform in this moment would

both understand this era’s gravity and

reflect the diversity of the country. Un-

fortunately, too often that is not the case.

Perhaps the most recent controversy

to erupt because of thoughtlessness and

lack of inclusion was provided by this pa-

per in the Opinion section, when it pub-

lished an essay online by Senator Tom

Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas,

calling for, among other things, an “over-

whelming show of force” by the Ameri-

can military in order to quell civil unrest

at protests that, while at times violent,

have largely been made up of peaceful

demonstrations.

A method of moral clarity would have

required that leadership think very hard

before providing the section’s deeply in-

fluential platform to any elected official.

It would require, at the very least, that

such an article not contain several over-

statements and unsubstantiated as-

sertions.

Instead, the OpEd section accepted an

essay from a firebrand senator. It pub-

lished that column without adequate line

or conceptual editing. Then it got loudly

called out for it online by its own staffers

and the union that represents many of

them, leading to the resignation of one

man in top leadership and the re-

assignment of another.

It was a rare case of accountability.

And despite the suggestions of an in-

creasingly hysterical set of pundits, this

fallout was not an attack on the very con-

cept of public debate.

It’s the story of a group of Times em-

ployees concluding that a specific piece

of content and the process by which it

was published was beneath the stand-

ards they are asked themselves to up-

hold — then having the audacity to say

so.

The turmoil at The Times and the si-

multaneous eruptions inside other news-

rooms across the country are the predict-

able results of the mainstream media’s

labored refusal to racially integrate.

It’s been more than 50 years since the

first black journalists appeared in main-

stream American newsrooms. Col-

lectively, the industry has responded to

generations of black journalists with in-

difference at best and open hostility at its

frequent worst. Similarly negative expe-

riences have been shared by Hispanic,

Asian, Native, immigrant (both docu-

mented and undocumented), Muslim,

gay and lesbian, transgender and gen-

der-nonconforming journalists, too.

What’s different now, in this moment,

is that the editors no longer hold a mo-

nopoly on publishing power. Individual

reporters now have followings of our

own on social media platforms, granting

us the ability to speak directly to the

public.

If recent years have taught black jour-

nalists anything, it’s that public embar-

rassment appears to make our bosses

better hear us. But humility and atten-

tiveness don’t have to be isolated to cri-

ses.

Instead of consistently attempting to

censor the crucial personnel of color on

their own staffs — who consistently de-

liver the best of their journalism — the

leaders of America’s newsrooms could

consider truly listening to them.

As I stood on that street corner in Rox-

bury as a cub reporter all those years

ago, the man I’d approached told me that

years earlier a family member had been

wrongfully arrested. He said the paper

printed his relative’s full criminal his-

tory, as well as a mug shot from an unre-

lated incident. There had been no follow-

up when his loved one was later cleared

of the crime.

I told him that I understood why he

was still upset and that it did sound

pretty messed up, before tucking my

notebook into my back pocket and turn-

ing to leave.

“Hey, kid! What was it you wanted to

know about?” he asked. “The stabbing?”

For years, he’d waited for the chance

to tell off a Globe reporter. And now that

he had, and had been heard, he wanted to

help me tell the story, and get it right.

A Reckoning Over Objectivity

All news is constructed atop a pyramid of

subjective decision-making.

OPINION

BY WESLEY

LOWERY

A CBS News

correspondent.

Journalists out-

side a memorial

service for

George Floyd in

Houston.

MICHAEL STARGHILL JR. FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

I

BOUGHT my house in Oregon with-

out ever having set foot in it, without

ever having even been to the state. I

bought it knowing I might never

make it here, that I’d have to risk my life

to try. In my rowhouse in the clatter of

Washington, D.C., my only view was the

back of another house, about as far as I’d

ever been able to see during years spent

largely housebound with an illness that

was finally beginning to let me go.

One day five years ago, I saw a photo-

graph of this house and its gobsmacking

view of a mountain, of shining rivers, of

forests and hills that folded over one an-

other into infinity. I hung my heart on

that view, bought the house and one

morning six months later, climbed into

an R.V. and set off for Oregon in hopes of

inventing my life out of nothing.

On an autumn day, I finally arrived.

One of the first things to arrest me was

the Norway maple in the backyard. It

was an exuberant explosion of a tree, its

foliage so full that the branches kissed

the ground. Each summer, the tree

bounded outward in all directions, grow-

ing perhaps two feet; each fall, its torrent

of huge orange leaves whirled through

the air like laughter. The tree was so in

love with life that it swallowed the sky.

This year, in which everything has felt

sundered, the tree became my refuge. In

the mornings, I began carrying a pillow

to it and ducking under the branches,

finding myself in a magical green cave.

As the leaves sifted the breeze around

me, I’d sit on my pillow and meditate, em-

braced in the dappled, ebullient, immuta-

ble light.

Last summer, a neighbor stopped me.

He said the tree was overawing his yard,

devouring his arbor and eclipsing the

rivers and mountain. People live here for

this view. I knew I had no right to deprive

him of it. Heartsick, I asked if I could give

the tree one more season. He said yes.

An arborist suggested felling the tree,

but I couldn’t do it. He said he could cut it

far back. It wouldn’t look good, he said,

but it would survive.

He came on a sultry morning four

weeks ago. I stood on the deck and whis-

pered my apology to the tree. It was es-

pecially resplendent that morning, the

leaves glittering and scattering light,

casting shade on the sweat-shining men

gathered beside it.

The growl of saws, the crack of limbs,

the churn of the chipper — all of it tore

me, making me ache with guilt and loss. I

couldn’t bear it. I went inside. There was

a violence to all this rending that felt too

much like everything feels now.

In the evening, silence. I went outside.

The maple still stood. Its lower branches

were gone, but the central limbs re-

mained, grand and defiant, arcing into

the sky like fireworks, bursting into a joy

of greenness.

In the space once crowded with leaves,

there was something new. A little dog-

wood had long hunched beside the ma-

ple, almost unseen, slowly drowning un-

der it. Some of its branches were wizened

to sticks, with only a few pale leaves on

the tips. Now those leaves were at last

breathing the sunshine, and in the new

clearing of sky, the landscape tumbled on

forever.

The maple was not gone, but reimag-

ined, and with it, the dogwood beneath,

and the whole world around them. I

gazed at all this beauty, feeling my grief

arrive at gratitude.

A scrub jay swooped over the lawn and

lit on the bare dogwood branch, in that

open space of sky. Done with her day’s

labors, she rested, occasionally fluffing

her feathers and grooming herself, then

settling to gaze toward the mountain as

the light passed through yellow and or-

ange and red and the deepest blue. As

the last light died, she flew away. The

next evening she was back. And the

evening after. One day she brought her

baby, who sat on the branch, beating her

wings and calling in her small, new voice,

as her mother hunted the lawn for food.

Every evening since, they have come.

After these days of rending, of loss, of

violence, of grief, of convulsant change,

may we find a beautiful, grateful reimag-

ining. May we land as the blue bird does,

resting and peaceful.

From a Loss, Something Found

CHARLOTTE TROUNCE

The cutting of a beloved tree felled

my heart. Then a bird came.

OPINION

BY LAURA
HILLENBRAND
The author of
“Unbroken: A
World War II Story
of Survival,
Resilience, and
Redemption” and
“Seabiscuit: An
American Legend.”