Journalists, bloggers and other writers who cover news are not just transcribers. We consult a range of sources, check facts, seek multiple perspectives and try to patch together an accurate picture. And consider this: we're also storytellers. To draw audiences in and keep them, we often set scenes, create characters and build some tension into the story narrative. That part of the job brings power, a power to create reality for our audiences.
Reporting may seem an objective process, done right. But think of the number of times you edit a story. From the very start, you leave things out. Whom do you grab for an interview, and whom do you pass by? What do you write down, and what do you overlook? What do you take from your notebook, and how do you build it back into a story? What do you lead with, what facts do you include, and how do you close? When do you slip into easy characterizations and shorthand that unintentionally reproduce social assumptions, instead of offering insight?
Communication expert Laura Ellingson, my colleague at Santa Clara University, asks writers to take ethical responsibility for the worlds they bring into being. Every step of the research process involves a messy process of decision-making, she insists, one influenced by personal history, institutional politics and societal norms. Ellingson's arguments and recommendations, while directed to fellow researchers, make plenty of sense for all types of writers.
Ellingson asks researchers to acknowledge the distortion that they cannot avoid, and to apply an ethics of representation in response. Many of the questions and guidelines she offers can be adapted for journalism. They seem especially relevant when we are writing about the "other," someone whose life circumstances or culture seem different to us from our own.
Here are a few ethical questions Ellingson inspires:
1) Have I relied on easy categories? Am I reinforcing damaging social myths through oversimplification?
2) Are my sources disembodied voices? Are their stories disconnected from historic, structural or economic context?
3) Have I allowed the extraordinary to seem representative? Or have I told more of the story by also including the mundane?
4) Who is exposed, made vulnerable, or held responsible by the version of the story I tell?
5) How have I highlighted difference? What do I note and label, and what goes unmentioned and thus privileged as the "norm"?
6) Do my anecdotes create distance? Do they frame issues as personal choice and circumstance, masking social and institutional responsibility?
7) What if I let my sources respond to my story? Would they object to my characterizations? Would they have a point?
8) Can I use multiple ways of representation -- sound, visuals, print or even first-person narrative -- to show a fuller picture and allow audiences to develop their own interpretations?
We strive for accuracy and fairness. We write what we see. But what we see has a lot to do with who we are. Consider the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education fault lines framework: Our race, class, gender, generation and geography shape what we notice and what we view as important.
Here's one recent example. In live-blog coverage of confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor for the U.S. Supreme Court, New York Times readers learned, "Ms. Sotomayor wore a cobalt blue pants suit, a color often worn by Hillary Rodham Clinton...." and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand was "clad in a satin brocade suit that practically casts a glare around her on television." Later in the week, they read in the paper about Sotomayor's manicured nails, "painted a pale pink."
While I’m all for the telling detail, what do these snippets tell us about only the third woman nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court? Are they impartial choices when a core issue at play is the influence of one's race and gender on the process of judging?
If the New York Times writer had intended to highlight Sotomayor's minority status as a female, she might have mentioned the sea of gray and blue suits surrounding that striking cobalt selection -- or the crossed arms of her questioners, compared with her own "palms turned upward."
Cross-checking our vision against the fault lines and asking questions such as Ellingson's may seem like overkill on deadline. But remember the power we wield. We don't just tell stories, we construct the world for our audiences.
And for that, we bear responsibility.
Note: To learn more about Ellingson's theories about using multiple genres, representations and audiences to tell a fuller story, see her book, Engaging Crystallization in Qualitative Research: An Introduction. (Sage, 2009)
