By Kelsey Harkness
Tuesday, July 05, 2016
In June, I had the honor of attending one of the top
journalism conferences in the country, if not the world. For three days, I
rubbed shoulders with reporters from places such as The New York Times, USA Today,
and ProPublica.
Call me naïve, but I expected to learn about fairness,
integrity, and hard work. This means giving equal weight to politically
divisive issues such as gun rights, women’s health, and policing. Instead,
during some training sessions I watched top professionals in their fields
encouraging political bias against conservatives before reporters’ pens could
even hit paper.
Bias at a lefty news organization would be expected, and
the same for those on the Right. (For full transparency, I am employed at a
news organization that is openly affiliated with the conservative Heritage
Foundation.) But to preach political bias at a conference that represents the
gold standard in journalism is alarming, and is something that we, as
journalists, have a duty to address.
The purpose of the 2016 Investigative Reporters and
Editors conference was to share investigative journalism tips and tricks from
one reporter to another. The concept behind the conference is selfless: fellow
journalists openly share their most successful secrets so we competitors in the
field can come together for the greater cause. Attendees could choose from more
than 100 sessions with hundreds of speakers representing a diversity of topics.
To be clear, only a select few appeared politically
charged. But those that were reflect a dangerous outlook for the future of
journalism, and it’s time they were called out.
Two panels in particular caught my attention. The first
was called “How to investigate the war on women’s health.”
The ‘War on
Women’s Health’
“How to investigate the war on women’s health” is
described publicly online as such:
How to investigate the war on women’s health
Speakers: Hannah Levintova (Mother Jones), Molly Redden (The
Guardian US, formerly Mother Jones), Nina Martin (ProPublica)
**Moderated by Marianne
Szegedy-Maszak, Mother Jones
In the first quarter of 2016, state
lawmakers introduced more than 1,000 restrictions on sexual and reproductive
health—more than 400 related to abortion alone. This election season, this
conflict will rage on and will touch millions of lives. That’s why this realm
is ripe for investigative reporting. A panel of reporters and editors who cover
this beat will offer advice on how to dig deeper on reproductive rights.
They’ll discuss intersections with other beats, the unique challenges of
interviewing sources on either side of a stark ideological divide, and best
practices for researching the major players involved—the donors, lobbyists,
scientists, and politicians.
For starters, “The war on women’s health” has no basis in
fact. The language assumes lawmakers deliberately aim to harm women, which is
an extremely bad-faith assumption. There is no proof of this malevolent design,
either. Further, according to a May 2016 Rasmussen poll, only 25 percent of
likely U.S. voters believe a “war on women” even exists. Yet a top journalism
nonprofit organization adopts this language and uses it to teach young
journalists how to cover the area of women’s health. Then, organizers of the
conference extended panelist invitations only to journalists from outlets such
as Mother Jones who unabashedly
support this premise.
This is deeply troubling for a number of reasons.
Conference organizers could have chosen any issue in the world to train and
equip young journalists to cover. The ones that they do pick send the message
to reporters and editors in newsrooms nationwide: these are the issues that are worth your time.
One might ask, if we’re training young reporters to
investigate “abortion restrictions,” might they also investigate “abortion
safety”? And what about the other “millions of lives” that will be lost due to
abortion? Are those lives not worth investigating?
I don’t mean to discredit the important work that Mother Jones, The Guardian, and ProPublica have done in the area of women’s
health. But in assembling this panel, IRE sends the message that only one
political view of women’s health care matters. Only one side of women’s health
care is worth investigating. In a country where only 29 percent of Americans
believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, that message seems a
bit unfair.
In May 2013, Kermit Gosnell, an abortionist who operated
a late-term abortion clinic in West Philadelphia, was convicted of first-degree
murder for killing multiple babies who were accidently born alive during the
procedures (by “snipping” their necks with scissors, no less). He was also
found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for leaving a 41-year-old refugee,
Karnamaya Mongar, lying on an abortion table to die. For these charges, and
many more, Gosnell is now serving a life sentence.
The media greatly failed in their duty to investigate or
even report on this case, where baby body parts were routinely shoved down the
garbage disposal “to the point where they plunged it one day and an arm popped
out.” This failure is generally accepted by media on both sides of the aisle as
fact.
After attending this conference, it became clear to me
how we missed such an atrocity. It made me reflect on what kind of
responsibility we—as journalists and editors—bear for allowing these atrocities
to happen sometimes, not even behind our backs.
Reporting on Guns
The second panel that failed to encourage the best
journalism practices was called “Reporting on guns.” The description, according
to the IRE website, is as follows:
Reporting on guns
Speakers: Lois Beckett (ProPublica), Ben Hallman (Huffington Post),
Mike McLively (Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence), Jonathan Bullington (The
Times-Picayune)
**Moderated by Matt Drange, Forbes
With more guns than people in the
U.S., you’d think there would be an army of journalists covering every aspect
of guns, from gun violence to the business of guns to gun policy and everything
in between. The reality is, there are precious few journalism resources
dedicated to consistent coverage of guns. Most newsrooms only get involved when
there’s a mass shooting. Come hear from some of the best in the business as we
talk about how to cover guns and highlight recent in-depth reporting on them.
We aim to send you back to your newsroom with story ideas you can execute right
away, along with resources you can use for the long haul.
In this case, the problem wasn’t with the premise of the
panel, but rather, the journalists invited to speak. Ben Hallman is a former
senior editor at The Huffington Post and current deputy editor for The Trace, a
nonprofit news organization funded by the the Joyce Foundation and the
Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund (a gun-control advocacy group that seeks
to “unseat politicians who do the NRA’s bidding”). Browsing The Trace and
Hallman’s present and past portfolio, it’s clear he has it out for the National
Rifle Association.
The NRA, like any advocacy group, deserves to be held
accountable. But at a journalist conference organized by journalists, one might
think that you’d find a staunch Second Amendment supporter sitting next to
Hallman. Or, at least, someone who investigates the other side to the gun
debate.
Instead, accompanying Hallman on-stage was Mike McLively
from the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The Law Center to Prevent Gun
Violence does some great work, but is a highly politicized organization that
advocates in favor of gun-control legislation, much of which groups such as the
NRA oppose.
If an organization preaching good journalism decides to
invite an advocate who represents the liberal side to the gun-control debate,
it should go without saying that they should invite someone from the other
side. Perhaps that’s why, when watching your TV at night, it’s so easy to
conclude that the majority of Americans support more gun control. But a quick
Google search of the polling reveals something much different.
“While support for gun rights surpassed that of gun
control in December of last year, reaching a two-decade high, it has since
fallen five percentage points,” reads a 2015 Pew Research report. “Now 50
percent say it is more important to control gun ownership, just slightly more
than the 47 percent who say it is more important to protect the right of
Americans to own guns.”
During the session on guns, Lois Beckett, the panelist
who most fairly represented both sides to the gun debate, asked attendees to
raise their hands if they thought the media were biased against conservatives
in their coverage of guns. The room went silent, with almost no one raising a
hand. Beckett, shocked, asked again. Instead of raising their hands, the
editors and reporters filling the room looked at one another and laughed. They
laughed because they all knew there is a liberal bias, but to them, it’s funny.
Nothing more.
The Future of
Journalism
Before writing this article, I reached out to Mark
Horvit, executive director of IRE, who did not indicate that leaders even
considered inviting someone from a group such as the NRA.
“We sometimes add experts to sessions if they’ve done
research on a topic or have information that can help the session,” Horvit said
of the decision to invite advocates such as McLively, adding: “For example, we
had a former police chief on a panel about policing, and we’ve had judges and
elected officials speak on sessions. While such speakers almost certainly
represent specific positions, the hope is that the mix of voices adds to
everyone’s understanding of an issue.”
A skewed panel like the one IRE hosted in June, however,
runs the risk of blinding up-and-coming journalists to an entire side of the
gun debate before they even get started. If IRE truly seeks to help reporters
understand these issues, the organization needs to do better at including a “mix
of voices.”
For the panel addressing the so-called “war on women’s
health,” Horvit admitted the title was “provocative,” but said “that is not an
excuse” for any bias that occurred. “I agree that in the future, we need to
look especially closely at both the focus and makeup of panels on topics that
cover politically charged issues,” Horvit said, suggesting hope that next year,
IRE leaders might look more critically at the panels they compose.
To close the conference, attendees had the privilege of
hearing from the original Boston Globe
“Spotlight” team, the group of investigative reporters and editors who
uncovered the Catholic church sex abuse scandal. This meant having the honor of
hearing from Marty Baron, who led the original “Spotlight” team and now serves
as executive editor of The Washington Post. As he was on stage, Baron expressed
frustration about the current state of journalism, where the public now gets
its news from politically charged outlets that each has its own set of facts.
We can’t even agree on the facts anymore, Baron lamented.
After attending this conference, I gathered the problem
goes far beyond agreeing on the facts.
No comments:
Post a Comment