Nieman Lab.
Predictions for
Journalism, 2024.
In the years since 2020, some major newsrooms have made some progress with worker diversity, both at management and staffer levels. But diversity without support for marginalized journalists and their free speech is a hollow victory.
Continued attrition and major newsroom crackdowns on journalists expressing their views about being a person experiencing life through historically marginalized identities — whether on Black Lives Matter in 2020, or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 2023 (a redux of conversations happening in 2021 and earlier) — is a harbinger of segregation in those newsrooms and in mainstream journalism at large.
The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, in its recommendations for covering Israel’s bombing campaign on Palestine, urges newsrooms to interview Palestinians, noting “your story is always incomplete without them” and to be receptive to feedback from “staffers of Arab and Middle Eastern descent, especially those who may be personally impacted by the situation.”
Though they shouldn’t necessarily be forced to report stories that pigeonhole their experiences, journalists who can recognize their biases and emotions toward a situation — and understand the point of view they’re writing from — are best positioned to cover issues connected to their identities thoughtfully and with proper context.
It’s hypocritical to make commitments to platform journalists from impacted communities, then renege on those commitments when those same journalists respond to oppression, tragedy, or human rights violations as affected community members first, rather than “objective” observers. At the LA Times, for example, “most if not all” of the journalists who signed the Protect Journalists open letter — and were therefore removed from coverage of stories related to Gaza for three months — are Arab, have current family or ancestral ties to Palestine, or are Muslim.
While there are a number of publications that are pushing back — like those that have co-published TruthOut’s piece explicitly calling for journalists to raise their voices about attacks on journalists in Gaza — the journalist’s tenet to “speak truth to power” becomes muddied as long as major media leadership continues to advance the same culture of censorship around journalists’ speech.
And it sends a tacit message to journalists across generations — particularly those who are LGBTQ+, disabled, people of color, or otherwise marginalized — that their full selves, and the stories they tell from those lenses, are unwelcome in newsrooms and in the industry at large.
If newsrooms truly want to see a journalism industry that rectifies the harm historically and presently caused to marginalized workers, they must squarely confront their own hypocrisy. Otherwise, they risk pushing out a diverse, intergenerational group of potential and current journalists who are best positioned to critically cover the continued interlocking forces of oppression and harm, whether those be systemic racism, white supremacy, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, or U.S.-funded military campaigns.
Janelle Salanga works as a Northern California-based reporter and moonlights as the co-executive director of The Objective.
In the years since 2020, some major newsrooms have made some progress with worker diversity, both at management and staffer levels. But diversity without support for marginalized journalists and their free speech is a hollow victory.
Continued attrition and major newsroom crackdowns on journalists expressing their views about being a person experiencing life through historically marginalized identities — whether on Black Lives Matter in 2020, or ethnic cleansing of Palestinians in 2023 (a redux of conversations happening in 2021 and earlier) — is a harbinger of segregation in those newsrooms and in mainstream journalism at large.
The Arab and Middle Eastern Journalists Association, in its recommendations for covering Israel’s bombing campaign on Palestine, urges newsrooms to interview Palestinians, noting “your story is always incomplete without them” and to be receptive to feedback from “staffers of Arab and Middle Eastern descent, especially those who may be personally impacted by the situation.”
Though they shouldn’t necessarily be forced to report stories that pigeonhole their experiences, journalists who can recognize their biases and emotions toward a situation — and understand the point of view they’re writing from — are best positioned to cover issues connected to their identities thoughtfully and with proper context.
It’s hypocritical to make commitments to platform journalists from impacted communities, then renege on those commitments when those same journalists respond to oppression, tragedy, or human rights violations as affected community members first, rather than “objective” observers. At the LA Times, for example, “most if not all” of the journalists who signed the Protect Journalists open letter — and were therefore removed from coverage of stories related to Gaza for three months — are Arab, have current family or ancestral ties to Palestine, or are Muslim.
While there are a number of publications that are pushing back — like those that have co-published TruthOut’s piece explicitly calling for journalists to raise their voices about attacks on journalists in Gaza — the journalist’s tenet to “speak truth to power” becomes muddied as long as major media leadership continues to advance the same culture of censorship around journalists’ speech.
And it sends a tacit message to journalists across generations — particularly those who are LGBTQ+, disabled, people of color, or otherwise marginalized — that their full selves, and the stories they tell from those lenses, are unwelcome in newsrooms and in the industry at large.
If newsrooms truly want to see a journalism industry that rectifies the harm historically and presently caused to marginalized workers, they must squarely confront their own hypocrisy. Otherwise, they risk pushing out a diverse, intergenerational group of potential and current journalists who are best positioned to critically cover the continued interlocking forces of oppression and harm, whether those be systemic racism, white supremacy, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, or U.S.-funded military campaigns.
Janelle Salanga works as a Northern California-based reporter and moonlights as the co-executive director of The Objective.
