Posted on 08/03/2016 11:25:43 AM PDT by Drango
On the final night of the Republican National Convention last month, as Donald Trump formally accepted his party's nomination for president, my Code Switch co-host Shereen Marisol Meraji fired off a tweet about how unnerved she was watching Trump's address, with its angry denunciations of Muslims and Mexican immigrants.
"This speech is difficult to listen to as a Latina and an Iranian," she wrote. "So much fear-mongering."
Another NPR colleague — a person of color, and a friend — quickly texted her and told her the tweet might be inappropriate, work-wise. Shereen considered it, and took her tweet down.
But then she took to Twitter to pose a question that a lot of journalists have been wondering about during this heady, racially charged summer — and particularly those of us of who are reporters of color:
Follow Shereen Marisol @RadioMirage How do we address this critically without being labeled partisan? Is there precedent to understand how to do this as journalists of color? 8:57 PM - 21 Jul 2016 69 69 Retweets 175 175 likes
A lot of Twitter folks responded that journalists should simply strive to share the facts and be objective, and that the truth will out. But others, including several journalists, hopped in the conversation to point out that that advice, however well-intentioned, oversimplifies some very complex reader-audience dynamics.
How someone hears a story is inextricable from who they are, but also from the notions they have about who the storyteller is. Black reporters and Latino reporters are often especially sensitive to the idea that the work they do on their beats — especially if race is heavily implicated in what they cover, like policing or immigration policy — is less than fair or rigorous.
That's what we're getting into on this week's episode of the podcast, which happens to coincide with a huge joint convention of black and Latino journalists in Washington D.C. Shereen and I talk to Pilar Marrero and Wesley Lowery, who are both on news beats where race is central — but they've come to some very different conclusions about what fairness and truth look like in how they cover those beats.
Lowery, a reporter at the Washington Post who covers race and justice issues, told us that he's uncomfortable describing an individual as "racist," in large part because the response to the story then tends to get bogged down in arguments about whether the use of that term was fair or not. He tends to describe specific policies or actions as racist instead.
"I do think it's our job to say true things," he said. "But I also think...that people might be more amenable to a conversation — especially the type of people you're trying to convince that this is true — might be more amenable to [the idea that a specific policy has disparate racial effects]."
But Pilar Marrero, a veteran political reporter who now writes for the Spanish language news site La Opinion, has no problem using that kind of pointed language when referring to Donald Trump. "To be clear, we don't call [Trump] a racist just because he looks racist," she said. "We call him a racist because he says racist things, he promotes racist policies and he retweets white supremacist Twitter accounts." And as she pointed out, since her readership is primarily Latino — a group among whom Trump is enormously unpopular — they are far less likely to be bothered by that characterization of Trump than the Post's mostly white readership might.
You can check out our lively conversation with Pilar and Wesley at NPR's podcast directory, and on iTunes and other places podcasts are found.
So if her father is half Iranian and half Hispanic, and her mother is half Sudanese and half Lithuanian she would be Iranian-Latina-Sudanese-Lithuanian. See how confusing it gets?
And her 3/4 "person of color" would vote to reject the 1/4 Lithuanian ... and she'd cut off one leg.
See how confusing it gets?
How far down the rabbit-hole do you wanna go?
oooh noes....concerned troll is concerned
Well then "step off", Tokyo Rose!
Spoken like a true #NeverTrump concern troll.
In the middle of a heated battle, we don't need such defeatism. Not in this community.
I'm sure you can find many other places to indulge such hysterical negativity, wistfully longing for the bygone days of "mainstream" GOPe candidates like McCain or Romney.
Or does your taste instead run into the Ted Cruz fanboy realm?
According to your shallow analysis (while wringing your hands in despondence), and even though resistance is obviously futile, you'll still be voting for Donald Trump in November, right?
Vote Trump!
EXACTLY! Since WHEN is it “racist” to want what EVERY other country on Earth demands...SECURE BORDERS!!!! MEXICO has an 18 foot fence topped with barbed wire on its’ border with Guatemala. Gee whiz, Mexico must therefore be racist! /s
YOU Frank - totally 'get it'...
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” But the public deserves factual reporting and informed analysis without our opinions influencing what they hear or see. “
Yeah,right,NPR. Guess you forgot the rules.
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Maybe it’s just me. How does one get ‘informed analysis’ WITHOUT the same being influenced by opinion?
Oh, I see, it’s the elite/college educated opinionated ‘analysis’ that makes it ‘news’ worth reporting. The ‘facts’ being to nuanced for me to form my own analysis. /s
I can’t pin down the exact number but the NPR is no longer mostly funded by the federal government. At most it’s around 10%.
Thanks
” I get sick of totalitarian thugs and Fr’s left over Cruzzettes getting the vapors over us deciding we have the right to control our borders.”
have the audacity to judge people by race, how they talk and where they’re from!... /sarc(????)
LOL - YOU Tzimisce - TOTALLY GET WHAT'S GOING ON...
I agree... maybe it IS a DNA thing...
Could be!:)
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