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J-Students Get It Twisted

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Troy Closson, a 21-year-old senior at Northwestern, stands in the Daily Northwestern newsroom. (Credit: Armando Sanchez/Chicago Tribune)

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At: https://www.journal-isms.com/2019/11/syracuse-u-paper-rips-years-of-inaction

Syracuse U. Paper Rips ‘Years of Inaction’

Empathy for ‘Marginalized’ Backfires

A dust-up about Northwestern University’s student newspaper over the past week has its roots in its editors’ desire to do right by “marginalized” people who have long complained that the white media don’t do right by them.

But the real problem, according to Charles Whitaker, the first African American dean of Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications, is that “the public is quite unaware of what journalism is, what our processes are, what it means to be balanced.

“The public thinks of journalism as advocacy and many of our students when they start thinking of journalism as advocacy as well,” Whitaker told CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday. “And we quickly try to disabuse them of that notion. But the public thinks that, you know, I think in this era where so much of our media is balkanized and partisan and very much perspective driven, the public thinks that that’s as it should be, and you’re either with us or against us. . . .”

An incident like the current dustup, Whitaker maintained, “actually underscores the need for us to embark on a campaign of media literacy.”

As “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter explained, “Whitaker’s comments were prompted by the waves of outrage directed at the university’s independently run publication.

“The first wave came after The Daily Northwestern covered former US Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ visit to campus — and the protests that ensued.

“Some activists said the student newspaper harmed them by publishing photos of the protest and by using the school directory to contact protesters for interviews.

“As the Daily Northwestern said in one of its own stories, ‘the incident laid bare the strained relationship between journalists and activists on campus, reflecting long-voiced concerns that reporters, in pursuit of the traditional sense of objectivity, fail to practice compassion and empathize with the circumstances of those they write about.’

“The student editors were overwhelmed by what Whitaker called ‘hate mail’ after covering the protest. He said some of the messages were ‘threatening.’

“That’s the context for what came next: The removal of some photos and a statement of apology from the newspaper.

“While the statement may have appeased some of the students at Northwestern, it horrified professional journalists who learned about it via social media. There was a full-fledged Twitter uproar about the paper’s decision to apologize for, in essence, committing basic acts of journalism. . . .”

Kathleen Foody of the Associated Press provided more context: “[Troy] Closson, a 21-year-old senior at Northwestern, is only the third black student to lead the paper since its founding in 1881,” Foody wrote Nov. 12. “Closson said he was the only black staff member when he joined the paper as a freshman, and he found the paper lacked stories on students ‘who looked like me or had experiences like me.’

“He and other editors leading the paper in recent years were determined to change that, including the creation of a team focused on building diversity in the paper’s coverage, Closson said.

“According to the National Center for Education Statistics, Northwestern’s enrolled undergraduates in the fall of 2018 were 45% white, 17% Asian, 12% Hispanic and 6% black. This year’s freshman class is 54% white, 12.6% Hispanic/Latino and 10.2% black, according to Northwestern’s admissions office. . . .”

In the Chicago Tribune, columnist Dahleen Glanton went straight to the racial dynamics.

“The bottom line is that Closson was forced to answer the question nearly every black journalist has been asked at one time or another in their career: “Are you black first or are you a journalist first?‘ ” Glanton wrote on Nov. 12.

“The question doesn’t always come from the outside. Sometimes it comes from within. Regardless, there is only one correct answer.

“We are journalists. That doesn’t mean, however, that we should lose sight of who we are as individuals. Experience gives every journalist, regardless of race, the tools we need to better navigate the delicate journey between our work and our individuality.

“As African Americans, we perform our jobs as vigorously as our white counterparts, without losing sight of the subtle and sometimes intangible cultural undercurrents that often lie beneath the surface of complicated news stories. These are assets that our race affords us.

“Closson was a black student in a powerful position, directing the coverage of one of the biggest news events to take place on campus. And to do the job well, he had to put other students of color in jeopardy of being reprimanded by the university. His initial instinct was correct.

“Among the racially diverse group of protesters were African American and Latino students — minority groups that have been most directly penalized by the policies Sessions carried out while in Donald Trump’s administration, regarding civil rights, immigration, police reform, voting rights and LGBTQ rights. . . .”

Glanton also wrote, “The protesters have to understand that there often are consequences for standing up in what you believe in. In the 1960s, students were kicked out of school and adults lost their jobs marching for the right to vote or to sit down on a public bus. If you ask many of them today as elders, they would say they’d proudly do it again.

“The job of a journalist isn’t supposed to be easy. But we can never lose sight of our mission — to serve as watchdogs in the interest of the public. That must never change, regardless of the color of our skin.”

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