{"id":254271,"date":"2016-07-06T16:23:35","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T16:23:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-is-a-journalist-if-not-an-advocate-on-behalf-of-the-public\/"},"modified":"2016-07-07T00:10:22","modified_gmt":"2016-07-07T00:10:22","slug":"what-is-a-journalist-if-not-an-advocate-on-behalf-of-the-public","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/what-is-a-journalist-if-not-an-advocate-on-behalf-of-the-public\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018What Is a Journalist if Not an Advocate on Behalf of the Public?\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Janine Jackson interviewed Rory O\u2019Connor for the July 1, 2016, episode<\/a> of CounterSpin<\/strong>. This is a lightly edited transcript.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Rory<\/a><\/p>\n

Rory O\u2019Connor: \u201cGetting the story is hard, but getting the resources to put that story out there in front of the public is even harder.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

MP3 Link<\/strong><\/a><\/div>\n

Janine Jackson:<\/b> Today\u2019s US news watchers might not recognize that the pretense of objectivity in journalism, the view that reporters should strive to report the news as if from nowhere, is\u2014besides not being possible\u2014not a value that adheres to journalism the world around, or that has even always held sway in this country. Many of those thought of as the giants of the profession \u2014 Ida B. Wells, Lincoln Steffens \u2014 were advocacy journalists before that term was considered not just a pejorative, but an oxymoron. Things seem to be changing again, though, with a growing awareness that if taking a side against poverty or racism or climate change means breaking some rule of straight journalism, then it\u2019s the rules that ought to change.<\/p>\n

Our next guest has never separated journalism and social change. Co-founder with the late Danny Schechter of the media group GlobalVision<\/b>, Rory O\u2019Connor is a filmmaker and journalist and author of, most recently, Friends, Followers and the Future: How Social Media Are Changing Politics, Threatening Big Brands and Killing Traditional Media<\/i>. Welcome to CounterSpin<\/b>, Rory O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n

Rory O\u2019Connor:<\/b> Thank you. Always a pleasure.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> Well, you wear many hats, but I have you here today for a specific reason, which is to talk about the award newly established by your educational foundation, the Global Center. It\u2019s aimed squarely at this question of socially engaged journalism. Tell us about the award.<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> Well, we call it The Danny for short, and it\u2019s going to be an annual award. This is the first year we\u2019re offering it. And it includes, importantly, a $3,000 stipend to support both future reporting and advocacy work by the winner. And I\u2019m really pleased not only that we\u2019ve been able to establish this award to remember my late partner, Brother Schechter, but also the initial recipient, Jose Antonio Vargas, is just spectacular. And if your listeners don\u2019t know about him, they should find out really, really soon.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> Well, tell us about the connections here. What is it about Vargas\u2019 work that you think connects it to Danny\u2019s? In other words, what are the values of Danny Schechter\u2019s life and work<\/a> \u2014 and his birthday was yesterday, June 27 \u2014 what are those elements that you hope the award reflects, and that you see reflected in Jose Vargas?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> I think that this idea of, quote unquote, \u201cobjectivity\u201d and false equivalence that you\u2019ve been talking about is eroding in journalistic circles, although it is still somewhat prevalent in the mainstream. But when Danny and I started GlobalVision<\/b> nearly 30 years ago, that was far from the case. You know, the first thing that we did was we did a program about apartheid in South Africa called South Africa Now<\/b>, and we found, to our surprise, that the fact that the program was anti-apartheid on the face of it was a matter of controversy, and in fact that we were kept off of the airways by Public Broadcasting Service<\/b> here in the United States, for the reason that we actually took a stand against apartheid. That type of thinking still exists, although it is eroding, and we want to get rid of it entirely.<\/p>\n

Danny and I actually paid, you know, a fairly significant price. We were denounced in the pages of the Boston Globe<\/b>, for example, as, quote, \u201chardline Marxist propagandists.\u201d And we really felt we had been branded with the scarlet letter A, for advocate or activist, and people said we weren\u2019t journalists.<\/p>\n

So we want to encourage more and more people like Jose, who is, after all, a Pulitzer Prize\u2013winner from the Washington Post<\/b>. He has had an outstanding career in journalism, but he\u2019s also probably one of the leading advocates and activists in America when it comes to that very hot topic of immigration. He himself is an undocumented immigrant to the United States, what other people like to call an illegal alien, and he has very proudly and bravely stepped up and announced to the world that he is here and undocumented, and that he is not leaving. So he\u2019s a leader in that field, as well as in journalism.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> We do seem to be getting past this idea that advocacy is somehow the opposite of fairness, \u00a0this idea that, well, how can we possibly judge a piece of work\u2019s fairness if it represents a point of view? I think people are coming to understand that you develop critical skills; you don\u2019t just designate some outlets good or some reporters good and then believe everything they say. You have to bring critical skills to bear, no matter what you\u2019re looking at. Do you think that social media is part of how people have just kind of gotten more subtle about it, more critical about it?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> Yeah, I think social media has democratized the process, and more and more people are realizing that, you know, frankly it\u2019s hard to talk about objectivity in journalism with a straight face, as one expert, Pat Aufderheide, put it.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> Right.<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> And, you know, I quote her to that point in an article that\u2019s just appeared on AlterNet<\/b> today, that I would encourage people to go check out, called \u201cA for Activist.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

So leading theorists like Pat, like Jeff Jarvis, for example, at the CUNY School of Graduate Journalism, they\u2019re on record now as saying if a piece of journalism isn\u2019t advocacy, it isn\u2019t journalism: \u201cAfter all, what is a journalist if not an advocate on behalf of the public?\u201d That being said, you\u2019re absolutely right that we do have responsibilities as journalists and as advocates to be fair, to provide balance, to look at the situation and come back to the public and tell them to the best of our ability what we believe is the truth, not what is on the one hand this, on the other hand that, he said, she said. That\u2019s not a truthful way of reporting, this so-called objectivity, and I think that we\u2019ve all now begun to realize it in the age where, thanks to social media, frankly, all of us are potentially journalists.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> Well, I think one of you and Danny Schechter\u2019s gifts to media criticism and activism was to go from that insider point of view, from working within corporate media, so-called mainstream media. Because we talk a lot about owner bias and advertiser bias, and those are real, for sure, but one of the things that you shone a spotlight on was just an institutional climate that leads to a timidity within journalists themselves. And I only say that to say you\u2019re not joking to underscore that there\u2019s a stipend with this award, because we have to actually reward different kinds of work, don\u2019t we, if we want to encourage them?<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> We have to reward and we have to encourage it. And I can tell you from my past, from having left the corporate media, the mainstream media, and going independent, that getting resources is always the biggest struggle. Getting the story is hard, but getting the resources to put that story out there in front of the public is even harder. So we thought that it was important, not only to honor the work, but to support the work. And I\u2019m very happy that an anonymous donor came forward and has funded the first five years of this award. So we are able to offer a small stipend, but $3,000 in the right hands can be the difference between success and failure.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> I want to underscore that although we\u2019re saying that we are seeing more and more of people reporting, and being recognized as good reporters, and there\u2019s no doubt whatsoever that they\u2019re expressing a point of view, at the same time, activism, and that includes activist journalism, by definition isn\u2019t really safe. And I guess you could hardly make that clearer than with the inaugural winner, with Jose Antonio Vargas. But it\u2019s important to remember that we aren\u2019t talking about just doing super-good reporting; that\u2019s going to win you any kind of award. It\u2019s a particular kind of barrier-pushing work that you\u2019re looking to honor.<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> That\u2019s absolutely right, and when we started looking for people who might qualify this year, what we found is that there was a plethora of great candidates, ranging from the people who revealed the video in Chicago that led to the police department coming apart and the firing of the head of the police department and a lot of pressure being put on the mayor there. There were a number of cases, just in the past year, of people who had done excellent work from outside the mainstream that made a huge difference in the journalist world, but these were people who were, quite frankly, identified, self-identified, as advocates and as activists. And that\u2019s the shift that we\u2019re seeing, and it\u2019s the shift that I hope that The Danny and the small stipend that comes with it will encourage and will move forward even more rapidly than it\u2019s happening now.<\/p>\n

JJ:<\/b> We\u2019ve been speaking with Rory O\u2019Connor. You can find the article \u201cA for Activist: No Longer Journalism\u2019s Scarlet Letter<\/a>\u201d on AlterNet.org<\/b>. Rory O\u2019Connor, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin<\/b>.<\/p>\n

RO:<\/b> Thank you. And thank you, FAIR, for existing.<\/p>\n

This piece was reprinted by RINF Alternative News<\/a> with permission from FAIR<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Janine Jackson interviewed Rory O\u2019Connor for the July 1, 2016, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript. Rory O\u2019Connor: \u201cGetting the story is hard, but getting the resources to put that story out there in front of the public is even harder.\u201d MP3 Link Janine Jackson: Today\u2019s US news watchers might not recognize […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-254271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=254271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/254271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=254271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=254271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=254271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}