The country’s new political climate has jarred some journalists into rethinking the whole ethical construct of impartiality. This introspection is long overdue. For many years, most media organizations have insisted that newsroom employees refrain from any political activity beyond private thoughts in order to guard against even an appearance of bias.
That meant, of course, that news staffers could not publicly voice political opinions, attend protest marches or campaign for candidates. Many news managements were such strict constructionists on this rule that they, in effect, demanded their charges take a vow of intellectual celibacy. If you think that is an exaggeration, I’d be glad to introduce you to two reporters who were once suspended for attending a Bruce Springsteen concert.
The principle behind this non-involvement ethic is rational and understandable. It’s execution, however, has been the subject of intense debate among journalists since the days of the linotype machine. There is general agreement that reporters need psychic and emotional distance between themselves and their scope of coverage. If you report on city hall, you can’t manage the mayor’s re-election campaign. Such a conflict skews interests and damages credibility. So how about a hockey writer who puts a school board candidate’s campaign sign on her lawn? No problem? Believe me, journalists have been disciplined for far less. It’s always been a question of where to draw the line. Thanks to the politics of Donald Trump, that line seems to be moving a bit.
Helene Cooper covers the Pentagon for the New York Times. She had an intensely personal reaction to Trump’s executive order banning refugees from certain countries. When Helene was a 13-year-old girl in Liberia, a military coup took over the government. One soldier shot her father. Another raped her mother. Over the next frantic weeks, Cooper’s mother did everything she could to get her family out of the country. Eventually, they found safety and a better life in America. The only reason I know that is because Cooper wrote about it in a first-person New York Times account. Days earlier, she wrote the Times’ initial report of Trump’s refugee ban. To be sure, Cooper’s moving, poignant personal story was no partisan political act. Yet, it offered compelling testimony in opposition to the president’s immigration position by a reporter who continues to be able to craft excellent news reports from Washington. The Times moved the line by running Cooper’s personal essay.
Jim Schachter is vice president for news at New York’s public radio station, WYNC. In a recent “On the Media” segment, he described his reaction when he learned his wife and daughters were going to participate in last month’s Women’s March. He told them he would not share their tweets or post their pictures on social media because “. . .you’re going to engage in an act of politics. . .that is anathema to me as a journalist.” The line seemed pretty clear to him. Then, a few days later, Trump issued his restrictions on refugee resettlement. Schachter said his “head was a mess” because his mother and mother-in-law were refugees from Nazi Germany. This wasn’t a “political matter,” he said, “this was a human rights matter.” Then he remembered that his wife and daughters had argued that the Women’s March was also a human right matter. Schachter moved the line.
That line between human involvement and journalistic detachment is apt to keep on moving throughout the Trump years because we are no longer dealing with arcane political issues. It’s one thing to keep your opinions to yourself on tax reform. It’s something else when basic human rights are being shredded.
Another force helping to move the line comes from the newsroom presence of millennials, people of color and those with an LGBT orientation. Many young reporters seem more capable than their elders of elegantly balancing a strong set of beliefs with their journalistic skillsets. They, along with those from marginalized groups, see the fight for equality with the same passion they have for pursuing truth through their journalism.
Shaya Tayefe Mohajer is a former Associated Press reporter and an Iranian-American. She recently wrote a piece for the Columbia Journalism Review criticizing newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle and the New York Times, for prohibiting reporters from participating in the Women’s March. While working for the AP, Mohajer said she followed the news service’s edict insisting that reporters “refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in a public forum . . .and must not take part in demonstrations in support of causes or movements.” Those rules, she noted, were originally written by white men who handed them down to the generations of white men who replaced them, and none of them ever had to worry about the lack of equality. No longer bound by AP’s rule, Mohajer said she went to the Women’s March “not just because I understand inequality to be real and would like to live to see its end, but also because I’m deeply grateful for my right as an American to peaceful protest, and I intend to use it to call for a basic tenet of journalism: fairness.”
The line between advocacy and news reporting should not be removed. A Washington Post political reporter is never going to circle the White House on a lunch break with a sign that says “Trump Sucks”, and then replace it with a notebook and attend the afternoon press briefing. Yet, it’s well past time to modify the line, to relax its rigidity. There has been talk of replacing reporters with robots, but it hasn’t happened yet. Until it does, they need to be treated like real people, complete with real beliefs. And, absent a direct conflict with their job, they should be allowed to stand up for those beliefs. With a government poised for an assault on human rights, speaking truth to power is everyone’s job, even if it means an end to the illusion of journalism’s intellectual celibacy.