Every narrative should count and from an idealist perspective, every narrative does count. However, this is not the most realistic conception of journalism. In terms of traditional journalism, it has been quite easy to fall into the trap of only conveying the dominant narrative and ignoring the narrative of those voices less heard. While speaking for those less heard has become a more popular phenomenon in the journalistic process, Walter Johnson discusses and critiques this tendency for journalists to provide a voice to the “voiceless.” Why does the journalist have any right to provide agency for these people? Does this dehumanize and silence them even more? Shouldn’t they be able to be “agents of their own destiny” (114)? Johnson uses his article to point out the problematic areas journalists who work to speak for those who are often silenced might run into through their work. Even though a journalist might have good intentions, they run the risk of producing work that could come off as condescending and white savior–esque.
The History Harvest, put on to commemorate the majority black neighborhood of Rondo in St. Paul, did a good job of giving a voice to those who had been previously silenced in a responsible and respectful way. The event fully engaged the community, centering itself entirely on community members and families of community members. Organizers did not lead participants and let them shape the event themselves. In the “Remembering Rondo” digital project, people with a connection to Rondo brought personal artifacts to a location to be photographed and documented on a digital archive. This event and this digital project gave the previously silenced and discriminated against people of Rondo a voice in a respectful and responsible way. They were given the opportunity to shape their own event and share their own stories. Street science is an engaged way to solve community issues through direct involvement with community members, making the “social, individual, and material aspects… interdependent” (44). And through the sharing of stories, “actors simultaneously shape, grasp, and legitimate both their actions and the situation that gave rise to their actions” (45). Street science operates as an active form of an engaged technique. In the same way as the History Harvest, it directly involves the concerns and possible solutions of community members.
So, every narrative should count. And narratives that have been previously silenced should be made to count by those who have the privilege and influence to reach a wide audience. However, it is extremely important to avoid coming at a situation like this with the lens of a white savior. The best way to do this is by allowing the people who are being focused on to create their own narrative and shape the coverage of their own story. It is not the journalist’s job to rigidly structure a story and “save” a group of people. It is their job to honestly relay the stories they are given by these people. To show them in the truest possible light and give their stories an audience that they might not be able to capture on their own.
I believe that every narrative should be heard because every narrative is important. If journalism is supposed to inform and enable the public as stakeholders in a democracy, then journalism should do its best to accurately (and proportionally) represent ALL stakeholders in democracy. In the case of democracy, ALL individuals are stakeholders therefore ALL individuals should be heard and have the access to listen. Journalists have an obligation and the privilege to serve as a liaison for the public not a savior.
The inclusion of a variety of narratives in harvesting knowledge has proven to be an effective way to inform, the public invite conversation, and/or lead to policy change. In chapter 2 of Jason Coburn's book, "Street Science" a few case studies on pesticides, AIDS activism, and West Harlem Environmental Action, highlighted the efficacy of utilizing local knowledge. After summarizing the projects Coburn states, "The three vignettes [aforementioned case studies] show how local people- be they workers, health activists, young people, or concerned community members- are more able to deal with complicated social and technical questions than the conventional wisdom generally assumes" (57). The power and value of local knowledge used in reporting brings different approaches, ideas, and discourses to a topic, or beat, that the reporter themselves might be utterly unaware of, or less equipped to answer. Other projects such as High Ground and Remembering Rondo are also nice examples of instances where public knowledge coming from a diverse pool of narratives that is not only effective news but also echos the public in the clearest way possible. Instead of hegemonic epistemologies, corporate business ventures, or political propaganda steering journalism via coverage, stories, reports, etc. it should be the people that shape their news. Journalism should act as mirror for the public. By this I mean that the public should be reading, listening, or watching reports that are made by and made for the public.
Ideally, every narrative should count and every person deserves to know. Though, in the journalism world, that is far from the case. In traditional journalism, only the hegemonic narrative counts. Mantsios describes how the mass media is highly concentrated and the people who run the news are homogenous. Therefore, only one specific narrative counts, the concerns of the wealthy. Though, the media fails to mention how the rich shape society and policy and the media paints the wealthy as interesting and good. Because only the hegemonic narrative is distributed, it leads to the poor’s, middle class’, and people of color’s narratives to be neglected.
The other articles describe how grassroots movements and activism allows for the narratives that “do not count” to be heard. The “New” Social History, Local History, and Community Empowerment” article discusses how combined efforts from neighborhood and community partners can get their goals accomplished. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 discuss the power of local knowledge and getting the community members involved. “Popular education” is a method to give community members a voice to share their experience and knowledge to change social conditions. This expert local knowledge can be used in conjunction with traditional professional knowledge to create policy change.
Engaged journalism could provide a means for the marginalized groups voices to be heard by listening to grassroots movements. When engaged journalists go into communities and ask for questions, it would allow groups outside the hegemonic’ s voices and concerns to be heard. It is important that the journalists do not just enter the wealthy and white communities and they enter communities where people’s voices are not traditionally heard. Engaged journalism could provide a means where local knowledge is combined with professional knowledge to allow for a larger range of narratives to count.
This answer to this question is very different if we are to discuss the ideal of journalism versus the reality. As a young journalist (and perhaps also a bit of an idealist), I’d like to say that everyone’s narratives count and should be reflected in the media. It is our job as reporters to tell a fair story about all people and give a representative view of the goings on in the world. Especially in a world where much journalism is free to access, it is important that we be aware that our consumer base has the potential to be everyone. As such, it seems to me that we should be trying to tell the stories of as many people as we can and with as diverse of voices as possible. Obviously, there must be some editorializing as all stories cannot be told, but in deciding what to focus on, we ought to try to remain balanced in the types of stories we tell and who we are talking about.
Unfortunately, the reality of journalism does not live up to this ideal I have proposed. In the real world, journalism needs resources in order to be created. Much of this funding comes from advertising revenue. It is much harder to monetize the desires of the whole population and is therefore easier to pick a dominant narrative that not only tells the story of one group of people (namely educated, middle-class, heterosexual, and white) but also addresses this same group. By focusing on one more homogenous group, journalism is able to direct its writing better. Further, it is only useful to advertise to people who have the means to purchase the things being advertised, so, as Mantsios argues, it can be easy to ignore or vilify the poor while celebrating the middle-class. Journalists inherently are going to write from their own experiences, and this can bias their focus towards what they know. Thus, for the past few decades journalism has largely ignored diversity of ideas to focus on consistency.
But! It is not all for naught. In the computer age where ads can be targeted and barriers to entry for journalism are majorly decreased, there can now be a space to reach for the ideal. While traditional print journalism may decide to continue focusing on one narrative, new media can and have begun to tell the stories of people who were historically marginalized. Chambers, Johnson, and Wingo and Sullivan all talk about different approaches to diversifying the stories being told by the media. In all these cases, people are taking the telling of their stories into their own hands and breaking from the strict narrative that has been told in the past. Ideally, by bringing more voices into the conversation, more people will feel recognized in the news and everyone will be able to gain a better understanding of what is really going on in the world around them.
It goes without saying that any form of media iis going to be biased in its portrayal of any party; but it’s also become clear in recent years that there, regardless, is a very white, upper middle class skew. I believe that there has been a small effort by major media conglomerates to be more diverse in their coverage, but most of the progress, as illustrated in the readings, was through grassroots efforts. Remembering Rondo echoes High Ground’s In the Heights. The focus is not on the stereotypes which have been used of people in impoverished areas: bums, drug addicts, laziness. It is on the people and what they believe they need to change. Groups which have been under the thumb of such believed “white superiority” in America, primarily African Americans and other black citizens, have a reputation in news media for being the comedy relief to everyday tragedies. Memes like “ain’t nobody got time for that” and “hide yo kids” are funny in the moment, but the choice of the media to portray the reaction to what is genuinely a tragedy is, in my opinion, irresponsible. They perpetuate images of poverty mostly being black people in urban areas, when, as asserted by Mantsios, the majority of people who are classified as “impoverished” in the United States are white and live in rural areas. Coverage of white people in rural areas is typically farmers or small business owners, middle class people. So even their stories are not covered properly. Overall, it seems, money/influence on the immediate community is one of the deciding factors in portrayal of people and stories. Furthermore, it is still white people who dominate the narrative. The quotes around “new” in The “New” Social History are a perfect representation of this. Just as addressed in earlier readings, the history of people of color in America is not new. It’s simply been covered up, in newspapers, school curriculums, etc. Continuing, Chambers acknowledges the way that traditional historians in the early twentieth century were educated: in a “traditional” manner of American history, which is to say, white, and even so, focused on Evangelicals or Protestants. Irish asylum seekers were discriminated against for a long period of time until they were considered “normal”; does the same tedious fate belie Mexican, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern asylum seekers? How long will it be until their perceived “otherness” fades away? Coverage of these issues is improving steadily without being sensationalized too much, but there is still a fine line of exploitation and coverage. The stories of the perceived “minorities” are being covered more and more as their issues are reduced to the decisions of people who will likely never understand how they feel. Subscriptions are increasing in popularity, and the people who can afford these subscriptions are looking for certain hard hitting stories. Not to mention the ad revenue. However; Grassroots organizations’ efforts are becoming more and more important, as concerned families become determined groups. The colloquial term “street science” almost diminishes the impact which these groups have on their communities, particularly in the subject of environmental health, as discussed in Local Knowledge. The Love Canal issue is a perfect example of collaboration between journalists, citizens and the government in displaying their stories. But again, these stories were not something that would be taught to students later on in learning about influence; I’d never heard of it. In short: the stories that matter are determined by the people who pay for them; and a large portion of stories have a white angle on them, though progress is being made to move away from this.
Whose narratives are seen as legitimate ultimately depends on who is doing the reporting, and the purpose of that reporting. Although it is important to report on news stories that impact large amounts of the population, it’s dangerous to assume the most popular narrative is the most important to tell. If that happens, the majority once again outweighs the minority and their issues are seen as more legitimate. “The ‘New’ Social History, Local History and Community Empowerment,” article speaks about the shift from a history education that only included the dominant narrative from the white male perspective to one that includes different experiences. Something I struggled with in this article is both the idea that this history is “new,” which the article definitely notes the irony of this term, as well as how white washed this “new” social history is. Although “professional historians” and “concerned citizens” teamed together to report a more holistic story, the way this article explained this shift made it seem as though the story of historically oppressed groups was being told from the outside more as white-guilt than a community engaged approach. This "new" social history does seem to recognize the complicated and diverse dynamics of different oppressed groups instead of emphasizing homogeneity, but it still seems as though this movement is merely a formality to alleviate white guilt. The article about “Remembering Rondo” seems similar to this but also emphasizes community engagement in a beneficial way. This History Harvest does a good job of first including a public apology about the separation of families and creation of a diaspora of the black community, and then moving forward with education and attempted solutions. The idea of a community liaison seems vital to any sort of work with a community that works within historically oppressed groups, especially if the journalist is not a part of that community. I’m not sure how exactly this would work, but if historians ensured that they had their own community liaisons for different parts of history that could make this “new” social history be more representative of the current issues and needs of the oppressed groups of people that are now being permitted to have their existence acknowledged in their history books. Overall, local and social history should innately have a community engaged approach, but whose narratives count really depends on the positionality of the reporter as well as the audience they are reporting to. Who gets to know relies on accessibility, language, and education of the audience.
Of course it would be nice to say that everyone’s narrative counts and that everybody is valued for who they are but that’s simply not the case. Governmental and journalistic institutions have repeatedly failed their constituents through tactics of willful ignorance, lack of value placed on non-power-holding groups, and straight-up lies.
This power dynamic is well-represented through the case study of Rondo. The Department of Transportation had a choice in front of them when they were constructing a highway, between building atop an abandoned railroad and building straight through a majority black neighborhood. To no surprise given the American government’s history in inter-racial relations, the DoT built straight through the black neighborhood. This is as direct as it gets when talking about whose narrative counts. To the government and to journalistic institutions that failed to report properly on this event, those people in Rondo simply don’t count. It’s a blatant, in-your-face denial of any real human meaning. Police literally had to remove residents that were rightfully angry about their neighborhood being torn apart.
It’s crucial that in times of government-funded inequality, that journalists respond and report accordingly. Clearly, they didn’t do a good enough job. Journalism is an important part of recorded history, as well as current public opinion. Let’s expand on the public opinion piece.
“Of the various social and political forces in our society, the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness” (Mantsios). And this was true before mass media. Newspapers have been extremely influential for so many years, and the fact that journalists have simply ignored or just not covered serious and impactful events reflects an overall failure to recognize humans as humans. If journalism was more serious about its principles, history would look different.
Quite obviously, the goal of egalitarian, non-partisan journalism would be for all narratives to “count” and for everyone to "get to know". However, evidently, that’s not the way the world works, both on behalf of journalists and of their audience. Gregory Mantsios’ reflection on this concept in his piece “Media Magic: Making Class Invisible” opened my eyes to the extent of this partiality of visibility. “Unlike other cultural and socializing institutions, ownership and control of the mass media is highly concentrated...the number of media companies is shrinking and their control of the industry is expanding” (464). Along with this expanding power which an elite group has access to, comes the lack of representation within their coverage. Certain groups’ and certain individuals’ sides of each story are often times not told, both because the journalists may not bother to document these ends of a narrative and because the people who don’t want or care enough to hear it. It’s a chicken vs. egg situation of sorts. While it seems as if there are strides being made toward framing new narratives, these marginalized groups are often focused upon, but patronized in a sort of way which still allows those in power to take control of their stories and shape them in the manner that they please. In Clarke A. Chambers’ “The ‘New’ Social History, Local History, and Community Empowerment”, he sheds light upon the fact that since the cultural changes which took place during 60s and 70s, many minority groups’ erased histories were often revisited and demanded justice. “The counterculture, evidenced in the lives of our daughters and sons and students, called into question a whole range of genteel, bourgeois virtues — work, thrift, prudence, tidiness, respectability, temperance, self-control, privacy, and ambition. Suddenly we had also to recognize a planet plundered by heedless exploitation” (15). However, that doesn’t change the fact that the groups in control of stories being told in the US and the main consumers of these stories are relatively the same as before: wealthy, straight, white males. And oftentimes, the people in power only want to benefit themselves and their image in their attempts to help groups of a lower status. Yes, these wealthy white Americans, who make up the majority of both major news outlets consumers and producers, do want to showcase a variety of different perspectives and lifestyles. But considering that they are the majority and do have the authority in the situation, they’d probably rather have their needs prioritized first and the stories which challenge their ideals left untold. However, I can end this thought on a note of hope. Referring to this group as “they”, I do really mean “we”. WE are the ones in control of the future of journalism and WE have the opportunity to diversify OUR demographics. While eliminating bias and societal imbalance will always be a struggle, as journalists, it’s our duty to do what we can to truly make a difference in the “truth” that’s being told and who has the opportunity to hear it. As Johnson stated in his work “On Agency”, “I think that there is a thread in the way we write and talk about history that nobody has tugged very hard for quite some time: the idea that the task of the social historian is to ‘give the slave back their agency’”(114).
After tonights readings, when thinking about whose narratives count, and who should get to know that a niche, wealthy privileged community fits both of these categories. This idea is explored throughout the piece “Magic” by Gregory Mantsios. Mantsios discusses how singular companies own so much of the news, that the result is no diversity in the news that gets spread and consumed. In fact, 23 corporations own more than half of newspapers, magazines, movie studios, radio, and tv.
However, that is not the way that journalism should be. Journalism is supposed to inform and educate ALL people on ALL topics. As we know, mass media is one of the most powerful ways to influence and shaping the public’s views. Thus, when the news is only covering a disproportionate amount of the population, then they are failing their job. The media is supposed to lack bias and merely inform. But, as Corey mentioned in class all journalists have bias and it is extremely hard to eliminate these biases. Thus, one way journalists, and the media in general should be mitigating this problem, is by actively reporting on situations that generally lack coverage; this includes poverty and poor people. Additionally, rather than victim blame and portray these people in a harsh light, they should rethink the way they report on these issues. Considering very few wealthy people get painted in a bad light in the media (for example, Trump), it doesn’t make sense that those who are impoverished should be. Furthermore, the media needs to stop equating affluence to intelligence, and report objectively and to all.
To continue, the article “Remembering Rondo” by Rebecca S. Wingo and Amy C. Sullivan discuss is an extremely relevant article, especially for our class. The article discusses how students from Macalaster College in Minnesota worked with the Rondo community in a project called “History Harvest”. Rondo’s community was essentially torn apart when in an act of ignorance (and racism) the state built the I-94 highway in the middle of their community destroying their business district. Thus, the Rondo Ave. Inc. (RAI) and Macalaster students worked with the community to explore and shine a light on the history of African Americans in Minnesota, digital/ theory and methodology, and innovations. However, the students ran into some issues when they offered a shuttle to the elders during the winter to transport to the event, but ended up insulting them. Additionally, after this project, many students cut ties with the community which wasn’t thoughtful or considerate. However, one thing they did do well was they kept the focus on the RAI and didn’t make it about the college.
We as a class can follow this example and hopefully learn from their successes and mistakes.
Overall, after tonights readings I feel even more strongly that the news should EQUALLY cover everyone and be EQUALLY accessible to everyone. Because, in reality it is absolutely not today. Rather than continuing to desensitize people to issues and victim blame those in need, we should work towards a world of journalism that is not influenced by large companies, and one where people take action to improve the world we live in.
At first, I was a little confused reading the articles for last night, especially the article on environmental risk. As I continued reading, however, I realized the procedure for their risk management is to our preparation on this project. Our class had to go through very similar steps - even if on a smaller scale - to prepare for our interviews, surveys, and questions.
Another powerful piece from last night that really resonated with me was the Rondo article. I found so many similarities within the steps they took to ‘history harvest’ and how Madeline and her team does their neighborhood journalism for the High Ground. It also displayed how trial and error is common in these approaches - the section on transportation showed this. It made me feel a little better about our project because it was easy to find so many similarities among these articles talking about professionals doing the same steps and making the same mistakes as us. My only question while reading this is, why didn’t we read this earlier? I found it so reassuring in parts, and would have liked that reassurance last week when we were planning our campaigns.
Ideally, everyone deserves to both know and be heard. I don’t think some narratives count more than others, although they some may be more representative than others and I do think narratives should be represented proportionally- not an easy task, but an important one. This may be an idealistic notion but I think it’s an important one to hold on to as an engaged journalist. As we’ve discussed in class and as I thought about more reading the Mantsios reading, capitalism is a barrier to this. However, non profit models like high ground news can and I think do push to at least work towards this ideal. The Rondo case study is just one example of how narratives are Ignored. I know there are countless situations like this and countless communities that are aware that their story isn’t being told. Thinking about this is somehwhat disheartening, but thinking about efforts to do better is inspiring. Thinking about high ground news and how they go into these neighborhoods whose narratives is ignored gives me hope for the future. I think this needs to be a key facet of a framework of engaged journalism - attempting at least to engage with everyone. To tell whole stories, and instead of ignoring the stories of those who are often ignored, or harder to reach, focusing hardest on telling these narratives. More traditional Journalists and journalists more focused on a philosophy of a more engaged type of journalism seem to agree that truth is a top priority, and a backbone of good journalism. No matter how truthful a story is, if narratives are chosen for convinience, or appearance, or ease instead of thoughtfully attempted to be represented proportionally, truth is lost.
Within the parameters of contemporary traditional journalism, those who are educated and serving as the “gatekeepers” of knowledge are bestowed with the choice of what it is that they want to present as the narrative of what matters. Often, this comes to mean that the stories of people who are more similar to them get amplified and less educated and less affluent groups of people are underrepresented in the journalistic world. As Gregory Mantsios noted in Media Magic, the media addresses its audience as if it were a group of like-minded individuals, giving less of a voice to those outside the majority opinion held by those who read a specific publication or newsource. While this condemnation of contemporary media can at times be true, many forms of journalism that we have studied and read throughout this course defy this categorization.
As we have studied throughout this course, citizen journalism and engaged journalism often serve to give a voice to all of the members of the community it is addressing. As Jason Coburn noted in Street Science, citizens of local communities often have “local knowledge” that is often anecdotal and less scientifically based than traditional knowledge. This casual manner of knowledge, however, is in no way inherently less valuable and deserves to be presented with and as a an aide to other forms of knowledge. In this way, citizens who do not fit into the majority opinion reflected by traditional forms of journalism can still have the representation that they deserve.
If journalism does not retain its sense of perspective and loses sight of who it is meant to be representing, it becomes less functional as a tool in any community it reports on. Practices of citizen and engaged journalism can help it remain representative of the whole population.
One of my high school history teachers always noted that “history is always written by the winners”. Although my passion for sociology and examining the unique inequalities that exist in our society through large institutional structures was not yet clear, this concept resonated with me on a very visceral level. After taking this class, I have reexamined how perhaps journalist has historically been written by the “winners” in our societies and left our the voices, and therefor narratives, of those who are “losing” in our society. This has obviously not been completely accurate as many marginalized voices have created other methods of communicating their stories and experiences. The Black Press, for instance, has always advocated for and written about issues surrounding Black Americans in the United States. However, more generally, traditional press has seemed to stay in line with the concept that some narratives count and others do not.
As more news outlets are attempting to be more inclusive in whose narratives are included in their journalism, writers and editors must walk a very fine line. Including these stories is of the utmost importance, however, the motivation and execution must be very critically examined for essentialism and other forms of tokenism within journalism. Finally, it is equally as important to understand why we are focusing on marginalized people in journalism. Do we just want to make ourselves feel better by checking off a box? Are we actually attempting to dismantle the systems of racism, sexism, patriarchy, and white supremacy or do we just want brownie points for being somewhat “woke”? In Johnson’s piece, he notes that “I think that we must admit we are practicing therapy rather than politics: we are using our work to make ourselves feel better and more righteous rather than to make the world better or more righteous” (pp. 121). I believe anyone attempting to open up the space to more complex and intersecting narratives must marinate and deeply consider that quote. It is extremely easy to post your MLK quote on your instagram story and much more difficult to start to examine your own biases and racial privileges on a daily basis. Just some food for thought!
Not everyone fits at the table- that would be one very long, very loud table.
While as stated in class “everyone is an expert on their own story,” no one contains the knowledge to discuss all issues publicly. Journalists need to identify what perspectives merit recognition. In many if not all cases, this means the journalists talks to a wide variety of people and then critically funnels different perspectives for an audience making sure they encompass the issue fully. For example, in the essay entitled, ‘Media Magic, Making Class Invisible,’ Gregory Mantsios recognized that the impoverished perspective had been denied representation in mass media. Mantsios explains that the “poor is shown through middle class eyes” in the sense that the news follows a few distinct narratives to comment on the state of poverty in America. A responsible journalist would attempt to get more perspective to challenge the narrative. On a similar note, Street Science by Jason Coburn identified that the expert opinion does not always come from the expert. In an example examining the use of the pesticide named “2,4,5-T,” in Britain, farmers identified the a threatening health hazards despite what experts were saying. Not everyone’s perspective needs to be encompassed into a story. However, journalists need to critically analyze which voices should get featured.
Furthermore, everyone should have access to comment on the finished narratives. In this way journalism is ongoing. While a journalists job is to try and encompass all the perspectives needed, this job is impossible. As pointed out by Coburn, local knowledge can sometimes change at a fast pace. In this sense, people’s perspectives are always changing, and journalism should reflect the world it is trying to describe.
I think everyone narrative deserves to be heard. In order to make opinions I believe it is important to hear multiple perspectives first. And in a country where news sources and social media dominate the coverage, they get to decide the narrative. Mantsios elaborates on this point in his article “Media Magic, Making Class Invisible,”. He starts off by illuminating the immense amount of power the media has in our country, “The number of media companies is shrinking and their control of the industry is expanding,” (Mantsios). Mantsios explains how media oftentimes hides class divisions and inequalities, “We maintain these illusions, in large part, because the media hides the gross inequalities from public view,” (Mantsios). Not only does the media hide these class inequalities, but when it acknowledges the poor Mantsios describes how this is oftentimes an unflattering portrayal. In contrast, the media covers news in a way that appeals to those of like-mindedness and affluence to build “We-ness”. This coverage does not share every narrative equally and creates a sense of separation amongst our society.
In Wingo and Sullivan’s article about recognizing the history of Ringo, they describe how the Macalester college students teamed up with RAI to preserve the history of what happened to Rondo residents when I-94 was built. I think this article is a great example of sharing others narratives that don’t normally get the chance to be heard. It was not until 2015 that somebody finally issued an apology for what was done to Rondo. The students worked to preserve the history of the city and celebrate it. Their project was about this city and not about the college students, and they built an important relationship with the residents.
In contrast to this idea of sharing information, the “Local Knowledge in Environmental Health Policy” paints a picture similar to that of Mantsios in where the public does not get to know everything. During risk management assessments the author illuminates how excluded the public is from this process in which they should be involved in, “In the best risk-management processes, the analyst consults with the public that is being asked to bear a ‘risk’ from the beginning of the hazard assessment. However, more often analysts—perhaps feeling that professional training give them ultimate discretion to carry out and implement decisions-- omit the pubic from the decision making process,”.
These readings gave light to ways news sources and media often times exclude certain groups from the conversation. I think, especially in terms of our class, we need to focus on making sure every narrative counts and is heard.
I feel as though we’ve discussed the main root of this in class: media is power; narratives are power. The narratives that are shared, and those that listen, are largely decided by socioeconomic status. The narratives that can be shared often (not always, these are, as a whole, many sweeping generalizations with wonderful exceptions) require things that one must have privilege to have: time, eloquence, informedness. Those who get to know require almost the exact same things. I found Mantsios’ point about the news creating classes, and dividing them even further, particularly poignant. That concept, that we not only have hugely divided lower, middle, and upper classes, but that we are actively choosing to perpetuate the generalizations of those, is not surprising. Upsetting and terrifying, but speaks to which narratives are heard. Why does every radio hour talk about the stock market, and the business deals of the day? To how many people is that interesting and relevant information? My guess would be the minority. But, by deciding that it is valuable content, media producers make a statement as to who they expect and desire as their readers/watchers/listeners. It ties in to the Street Science idea of maintaining a public peace -- if we assume that this is what everyone wants to consume, we can maintain the public peace. We assume everyone is happy with the media they can consume. We do not take into account the classism. So, most often, the common narrative is the one that is most peaceful. It is wealthy, white, and does not cause discrepancies. It is heard by those similar to it. It validates them in their state. What concerns me is, even when the readings discuss breaking out of this and valuing the knowledge of experience and locality, there almost always needs to be an expert involved. Even if the goal is to empower a community, or to amplify its’ voice, there has to be some partner organization/school/person (like us, in this class), that harvests the community voice and, by our very existence, validates it in a way that would not be possible otherwise. Even if a pool of people has an answer to a question that an expert doesn’t have, does the expert have to be there to draw it out? I’m not sure how to create a more egalitarian way of collecting information and media, and I do believe that many of the projects that we read about are wonderful, valuable projects. However, I still find myself caught by the nature that a community cannot fully engage on its own. How can we break that?
I have emphasised this definition of truth before, however I feel it expresses one of the core truths of engaged journalism and so I am going to link it to yet another prompt. Journalists can report on the truth by 'negotiating shared meaning'. There is no one truth, and thus there is no one who can 'find' it by themselves and then use it to decide who or what are worthy of being covered. In Gregory's (wonderfully clearly formatted, I wish academics would take notes) article, he seems to point out that the shared meaning is negotiated only by those sitting at the table when the media is created; that is the wealthy, white, male owners of major media conglomerates. By his references to AOL and Time Warner, I would assume this was written more than a decade ago, and since then the consolidation of corporate power in media has only gotten more extreme. To find the real truth about class, Gregory's article translates directly into engaged journalism practices in his explanation of the communities that aren't allowed a say in the 'american' truth, making it not a truth at all, but simply propaganda. We all know whose narratives are allowed to 'count' the most, and who makes that call (shockingly, there's a lot of overlap), but we also know whose narratives should be allowed to count and therefore those voices that we need to work on raising up, which just means that we have some work to do as citizens and as consumers of the media and maybe even as journalists.
Who's narratives count? While I'd like to say that everyone's narratives count, it seems that in an age where national media outlets owned by a highly concentrated group of elites, as pointed out by Mantsios, the narratives of the upper and middle classes count, with special attention given to the upper class. I found Mantsios' paper "Media Magic" incredibly interesting as it articulates a suspicion of large media outlets that I think many of us share. The US is an extremely stratified society in which the poor are disregarded as insignificant and only having "themselves to blame." For example, it took years for the citizens of Rondo to see any recognition of the atrocities committed by the city of St. Paul in tearing Rondo's community center apart. Meanwhile, the concerns of the wealthy, such as stocks and international business news, are broadcasted to the nation. However, the wealthy, the upper class, is not acknowledged as such. It is blended with the middle class as portrayed in media, so as to hide the existence of such a distinct upper class. I should also include that, as pointed out in "Street science", the views of professionals and experts are often given heavy preference at the expense of local knowledge.
Next, who gets to hear? The wealthy and middle class - those who can afford to subscribe to these media outlets, and more importantly, those who find that this news actually concerns them. I imagine that lower classes quickly grow tired of being portrayed as the troublesome members of the society (especially in the light of incredibly corporate greed and injustice) and hearing about the stock market and ski reports rather than their local news. In order to alleviate this, we must, as outlined in "On Agency", "re-immerse ourselves in the nightmare of History rather than resting easy while dreaming that it is dawn and we have awakened".
Every narrative should count and from an idealist perspective, every narrative does count. However, this is not the most realistic conception of journalism. In terms of traditional journalism, it has been quite easy to fall into the trap of only conveying the dominant narrative and ignoring the narrative of those voices less heard. While speaking for those less heard has become a more popular phenomenon in the journalistic process, Walter Johnson discusses and critiques this tendency for journalists to provide a voice to the “voiceless.” Why does the journalist have any right to provide agency for these people? Does this dehumanize and silence them even more? Shouldn’t they be able to be “agents of their own destiny” (114)? Johnson uses his article to point out the problematic areas journalists who work to speak for those who are often silenced might run into through their work. Even though a journalist might have good intentions, they run the risk of producing work that could come off as condescending and white savior–esque.
ReplyDeleteThe History Harvest, put on to commemorate the majority black neighborhood of Rondo in St. Paul, did a good job of giving a voice to those who had been previously silenced in a responsible and respectful way. The event fully engaged the community, centering itself entirely on community members and families of community members. Organizers did not lead participants and let them shape the event themselves. In the “Remembering Rondo” digital project, people with a connection to Rondo brought personal artifacts to a location to be photographed and documented on a digital archive. This event and this digital project gave the previously silenced and discriminated against people of Rondo a voice in a respectful and responsible way. They were given the opportunity to shape their own event and share their own stories. Street science is an engaged way to solve community issues through direct involvement with community members, making the “social, individual, and material aspects… interdependent” (44). And through the sharing of stories, “actors simultaneously shape, grasp, and legitimate both their actions and the situation that gave rise to their actions” (45). Street science operates as an active form of an engaged technique. In the same way as the History Harvest, it directly involves the concerns and possible solutions of community members.
So, every narrative should count. And narratives that have been previously silenced should be made to count by those who have the privilege and influence to reach a wide audience. However, it is extremely important to avoid coming at a situation like this with the lens of a white savior. The best way to do this is by allowing the people who are being focused on to create their own narrative and shape the coverage of their own story. It is not the journalist’s job to rigidly structure a story and “save” a group of people. It is their job to honestly relay the stories they are given by these people. To show them in the truest possible light and give their stories an audience that they might not be able to capture on their own.
I believe that every narrative should be heard because every narrative is important. If journalism is supposed to inform and enable the public as stakeholders in a democracy, then journalism should do its best to accurately (and proportionally) represent ALL stakeholders in democracy. In the case of democracy, ALL individuals are stakeholders therefore ALL individuals should be heard and have the access to listen. Journalists have an obligation and the privilege to serve as a liaison for the public not a savior.
ReplyDeleteThe inclusion of a variety of narratives in harvesting knowledge has proven to be an effective way to inform, the public invite conversation, and/or lead to policy change. In chapter 2 of Jason Coburn's book, "Street Science" a few case studies on pesticides, AIDS activism, and West Harlem Environmental Action, highlighted the efficacy of utilizing local knowledge. After summarizing the projects Coburn states, "The three vignettes [aforementioned case studies] show how local people- be they workers, health activists, young people, or concerned community members- are more able to deal with complicated social and technical questions than the conventional wisdom generally assumes" (57). The power and value of local knowledge used in reporting brings different approaches, ideas, and discourses to a topic, or beat, that the reporter themselves might be utterly unaware of, or less equipped to answer. Other projects such as High Ground and Remembering Rondo are also nice examples of instances where public knowledge coming from a diverse pool of narratives that is not only effective news but also echos the public in the clearest way possible. Instead of hegemonic epistemologies, corporate business ventures, or political propaganda steering journalism via coverage, stories, reports, etc. it should be the people that shape their news. Journalism should act as mirror for the public. By this I mean that the public should be reading, listening, or watching reports that are made by and made for the public.
Ideally, every narrative should count and every person deserves to know. Though, in the journalism world, that is far from the case. In traditional journalism, only the hegemonic narrative counts. Mantsios describes how the mass media is highly concentrated and the people who run the news are homogenous. Therefore, only one specific narrative counts, the concerns of the wealthy. Though, the media fails to mention how the rich shape society and policy and the media paints the wealthy as interesting and good. Because only the hegemonic narrative is distributed, it leads to the poor’s, middle class’, and people of color’s narratives to be neglected.
ReplyDeleteThe other articles describe how grassroots movements and activism allows for the narratives that “do not count” to be heard. The “New” Social History, Local History, and Community Empowerment” article discusses how combined efforts from neighborhood and community partners can get their goals accomplished. Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 discuss the power of local knowledge and getting the community members involved. “Popular education” is a method to give community members a voice to share their experience and knowledge to change social conditions. This expert local knowledge can be used in conjunction with traditional professional knowledge to create policy change.
Engaged journalism could provide a means for the marginalized groups voices to be heard by listening to grassroots movements. When engaged journalists go into communities and ask for questions, it would allow groups outside the hegemonic’ s voices and concerns to be heard. It is important that the journalists do not just enter the wealthy and white communities and they enter communities where people’s voices are not traditionally heard. Engaged journalism could provide a means where local knowledge is combined with professional knowledge to allow for a larger range of narratives to count.
This answer to this question is very different if we are to discuss the ideal of journalism versus the reality. As a young journalist (and perhaps also a bit of an idealist), I’d like to say that everyone’s narratives count and should be reflected in the media. It is our job as reporters to tell a fair story about all people and give a representative view of the goings on in the world. Especially in a world where much journalism is free to access, it is important that we be aware that our consumer base has the potential to be everyone. As such, it seems to me that we should be trying to tell the stories of as many people as we can and with as diverse of voices as possible. Obviously, there must be some editorializing as all stories cannot be told, but in deciding what to focus on, we ought to try to remain balanced in the types of stories we tell and who we are talking about.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, the reality of journalism does not live up to this ideal I have proposed. In the real world, journalism needs resources in order to be created. Much of this funding comes from advertising revenue. It is much harder to monetize the desires of the whole population and is therefore easier to pick a dominant narrative that not only tells the story of one group of people (namely educated, middle-class, heterosexual, and white) but also addresses this same group. By focusing on one more homogenous group, journalism is able to direct its writing better. Further, it is only useful to advertise to people who have the means to purchase the things being advertised, so, as Mantsios argues, it can be easy to ignore or vilify the poor while celebrating the middle-class. Journalists inherently are going to write from their own experiences, and this can bias their focus towards what they know. Thus, for the past few decades journalism has largely ignored diversity of ideas to focus on consistency.
But! It is not all for naught. In the computer age where ads can be targeted and barriers to entry for journalism are majorly decreased, there can now be a space to reach for the ideal. While traditional print journalism may decide to continue focusing on one narrative, new media can and have begun to tell the stories of people who were historically marginalized. Chambers, Johnson, and Wingo and Sullivan all talk about different approaches to diversifying the stories being told by the media. In all these cases, people are taking the telling of their stories into their own hands and breaking from the strict narrative that has been told in the past. Ideally, by bringing more voices into the conversation, more people will feel recognized in the news and everyone will be able to gain a better understanding of what is really going on in the world around them.
It goes without saying that any form of media iis going to be biased in its portrayal of any party; but it’s also become clear in recent years that there, regardless, is a very white, upper middle class skew. I believe that there has been a small effort by major media conglomerates to be more diverse in their coverage, but most of the progress, as illustrated in the readings, was through grassroots efforts. Remembering Rondo echoes High Ground’s In the Heights. The focus is not on the stereotypes which have been used of people in impoverished areas: bums, drug addicts, laziness. It is on the people and what they believe they need to change. Groups which have been under the thumb of such believed “white superiority” in America, primarily African Americans and other black citizens, have a reputation in news media for being the comedy relief to everyday tragedies. Memes like “ain’t nobody got time for that” and “hide yo kids” are funny in the moment, but the choice of the media to portray the reaction to what is genuinely a tragedy is, in my opinion, irresponsible. They perpetuate images of poverty mostly being black people in urban areas, when, as asserted by Mantsios, the majority of people who are classified as “impoverished” in the United States are white and live in rural areas. Coverage of white people in rural areas is typically farmers or small business owners, middle class people. So even their stories are not covered properly. Overall, it seems, money/influence on the immediate community is one of the deciding factors in portrayal of people and stories.
ReplyDeleteFurthermore, it is still white people who dominate the narrative. The quotes around “new” in The “New” Social History are a perfect representation of this. Just as addressed in earlier readings, the history of people of color in America is not new. It’s simply been covered up, in newspapers, school curriculums, etc. Continuing, Chambers acknowledges the way that traditional historians in the early twentieth century were educated: in a “traditional” manner of American history, which is to say, white, and even so, focused on Evangelicals or Protestants. Irish asylum seekers were discriminated against for a long period of time until they were considered “normal”; does the same tedious fate belie Mexican, Caribbean, and Middle Eastern asylum seekers? How long will it be until their perceived “otherness” fades away? Coverage of these issues is improving steadily without being sensationalized too much, but there is still a fine line of exploitation and coverage. The stories of the perceived “minorities” are being covered more and more as their issues are reduced to the decisions of people who will likely never understand how they feel.
Subscriptions are increasing in popularity, and the people who can afford these subscriptions are looking for certain hard hitting stories. Not to mention the ad revenue. However; Grassroots organizations’ efforts are becoming more and more important, as concerned families become determined groups. The colloquial term “street science” almost diminishes the impact which these groups have on their communities, particularly in the subject of environmental health, as discussed in Local Knowledge. The Love Canal issue is a perfect example of collaboration between journalists, citizens and the government in displaying their stories. But again, these stories were not something that would be taught to students later on in learning about influence; I’d never heard of it.
In short: the stories that matter are determined by the people who pay for them; and a large portion of stories have a white angle on them, though progress is being made to move away from this.
Whose narratives are seen as legitimate ultimately depends on who is doing the reporting, and the purpose of that reporting. Although it is important to report on news stories that impact large amounts of the population, it’s dangerous to assume the most popular narrative is the most important to tell. If that happens, the majority once again outweighs the minority and their issues are seen as more legitimate. “The ‘New’ Social History, Local History and Community Empowerment,” article speaks about the shift from a history education that only included the dominant narrative from the white male perspective to one that includes different experiences. Something I struggled with in this article is both the idea that this history is “new,” which the article definitely notes the irony of this term, as well as how white washed this “new” social history is. Although “professional historians” and “concerned citizens” teamed together to report a more holistic story, the way this article explained this shift made it seem as though the story of historically oppressed groups was being told from the outside more as white-guilt than a community engaged approach. This "new" social history does seem to recognize the complicated and diverse dynamics of different oppressed groups instead of emphasizing homogeneity, but it still seems as though this movement is merely a formality to alleviate white guilt. The article about “Remembering Rondo” seems similar to this but also emphasizes community engagement in a beneficial way. This History Harvest does a good job of first including a public apology about the separation of families and creation of a diaspora of the black community, and then moving forward with education and attempted solutions. The idea of a community liaison seems vital to any sort of work with a community that works within historically oppressed groups, especially if the journalist is not a part of that community. I’m not sure how exactly this would work, but if historians ensured that they had their own community liaisons for different parts of history that could make this “new” social history be more representative of the current issues and needs of the oppressed groups of people that are now being permitted to have their existence acknowledged in their history books. Overall, local and social history should innately have a community engaged approach, but whose narratives count really depends on the positionality of the reporter as well as the audience they are reporting to. Who gets to know relies on accessibility, language, and education of the audience.
ReplyDeleteOf course it would be nice to say that everyone’s narrative counts and that everybody is valued for who they are but that’s simply not the case. Governmental and journalistic institutions have repeatedly failed their constituents through tactics of willful ignorance, lack of value placed on non-power-holding groups, and straight-up lies.
ReplyDeleteThis power dynamic is well-represented through the case study of Rondo. The Department of Transportation had a choice in front of them when they were constructing a highway, between building atop an abandoned railroad and building straight through a majority black neighborhood. To no surprise given the American government’s history in inter-racial relations, the DoT built straight through the black neighborhood. This is as direct as it gets when talking about whose narrative counts. To the government and to journalistic institutions that failed to report properly on this event, those people in Rondo simply don’t count. It’s a blatant, in-your-face denial of any real human meaning. Police literally had to remove residents that were rightfully angry about their neighborhood being torn apart.
It’s crucial that in times of government-funded inequality, that journalists respond and report accordingly. Clearly, they didn’t do a good enough job. Journalism is an important part of recorded history, as well as current public opinion. Let’s expand on the public opinion piece.
“Of the various social and political forces in our society, the mass media is arguably the most influential in molding public consciousness” (Mantsios). And this was true before mass media. Newspapers have been extremely influential for so many years, and the fact that journalists have simply ignored or just not covered serious and impactful events reflects an overall failure to recognize humans as humans. If journalism was more serious about its principles, history would look different.
-Michael Gorman
DeleteQuite obviously, the goal of egalitarian, non-partisan journalism would be for all narratives to “count” and for everyone to "get to know". However, evidently, that’s not the way the world works, both on behalf of journalists and of their audience. Gregory Mantsios’ reflection on this concept in his piece “Media Magic: Making Class Invisible” opened my eyes to the extent of this partiality of visibility. “Unlike other cultural and socializing institutions, ownership and control of the mass media is highly concentrated...the number of media companies is shrinking and their control of the industry is expanding” (464). Along with this expanding power which an elite group has access to, comes the lack of representation within their coverage. Certain groups’ and certain individuals’ sides of each story are often times not told, both because the journalists may not bother to document these ends of a narrative and because the people who don’t want or care enough to hear it. It’s a chicken vs. egg situation of sorts.
ReplyDeleteWhile it seems as if there are strides being made toward framing new narratives, these marginalized groups are often focused upon, but patronized in a sort of way which still allows those in power to take control of their stories and shape them in the manner that they please. In Clarke A. Chambers’ “The ‘New’ Social History, Local History, and Community Empowerment”, he sheds light upon the fact that since the cultural changes which took place during 60s and 70s, many minority groups’ erased histories were often revisited and demanded justice. “The counterculture, evidenced in the lives of our daughters and sons and students, called into question a whole range of genteel, bourgeois virtues — work, thrift, prudence, tidiness, respectability, temperance, self-control, privacy, and ambition. Suddenly we had also to recognize a planet plundered by heedless exploitation” (15). However, that doesn’t change the fact that the groups in control of stories being told in the US and the main consumers of these stories are relatively the same as before: wealthy, straight, white males. And oftentimes, the people in power only want to benefit themselves and their image in their attempts to help groups of a lower status. Yes, these wealthy white Americans, who make up the majority of both major news outlets consumers and producers, do want to showcase a variety of different perspectives and lifestyles. But considering that they are the majority and do have the authority in the situation, they’d probably rather have their needs prioritized first and the stories which challenge their ideals left untold.
However, I can end this thought on a note of hope. Referring to this group as “they”, I do really mean “we”. WE are the ones in control of the future of journalism and WE have the opportunity to diversify OUR demographics. While eliminating bias and societal imbalance will always be a struggle, as journalists, it’s our duty to do what we can to truly make a difference in the “truth” that’s being told and who has the opportunity to hear it. As Johnson stated in his work “On Agency”, “I think that there is a thread in the way we write and talk about history that nobody has tugged very hard for quite some time: the idea that the task of the social historian is to ‘give the slave back their agency’”(114).
After tonights readings, when thinking about whose narratives count, and who should get to know that a niche, wealthy privileged community fits both of these categories. This idea is explored throughout the piece “Magic” by Gregory Mantsios. Mantsios discusses how singular companies own so much of the news, that the result is no diversity in the news that gets spread and consumed. In fact, 23 corporations own more than half of newspapers, magazines, movie studios, radio, and tv.
ReplyDeleteHowever, that is not the way that journalism should be. Journalism is supposed to inform and educate ALL people on ALL topics. As we know, mass media is one of the most powerful ways to influence and shaping the public’s views. Thus, when the news is only covering a disproportionate amount of the population, then they are failing their job. The media is supposed to lack bias and merely inform. But, as Corey mentioned in class all journalists have bias and it is extremely hard to eliminate these biases. Thus, one way journalists, and the media in general should be mitigating this problem, is by actively reporting on situations that generally lack coverage; this includes poverty and poor people. Additionally, rather than victim blame and portray these people in a harsh light, they should rethink the way they report on these issues. Considering very few wealthy people get painted in a bad light in the media (for example, Trump), it doesn’t make sense that those who are impoverished should be. Furthermore, the media needs to stop equating affluence to intelligence, and report objectively and to all.
To continue, the article “Remembering Rondo” by Rebecca S. Wingo and Amy C. Sullivan discuss is an extremely relevant article, especially for our class. The article discusses how students from Macalaster College in Minnesota worked with the Rondo community in a project called “History Harvest”. Rondo’s community was essentially torn apart when in an act of ignorance (and racism) the state built the I-94 highway in the middle of their community destroying their business district. Thus, the Rondo Ave. Inc. (RAI) and Macalaster students worked with the community to explore and shine a light on the history of African Americans in Minnesota, digital/ theory and methodology, and innovations. However, the students ran into some issues when they offered a shuttle to the elders during the winter to transport to the event, but ended up insulting them. Additionally, after this project, many students cut ties with the community which wasn’t thoughtful or considerate. However, one thing they did do well was they kept the focus on the RAI and didn’t make it about the college.
We as a class can follow this example and hopefully learn from their successes and mistakes.
Overall, after tonights readings I feel even more strongly that the news should EQUALLY cover everyone and be EQUALLY accessible to everyone. Because, in reality it is absolutely not today. Rather than continuing to desensitize people to issues and victim blame those in need, we should work towards a world of journalism that is not influenced by large companies, and one where people take action to improve the world we live in.
At first, I was a little confused reading the articles for last night, especially the article on environmental risk. As I continued reading, however, I realized the procedure for their risk management is to our preparation on this project. Our class had to go through very similar steps - even if on a smaller scale - to prepare for our interviews, surveys, and questions.
ReplyDeleteAnother powerful piece from last night that really resonated with me was the Rondo article. I found so many similarities within the steps they took to ‘history harvest’ and how Madeline and her team does their neighborhood journalism for the High Ground. It also displayed how trial and error is common in these approaches - the section on transportation showed this. It made me feel a little better about our project because it was easy to find so many similarities among these articles talking about professionals doing the same steps and making the same mistakes as us. My only question while reading this is, why didn’t we read this earlier? I found it so reassuring in parts, and would have liked that reassurance last week when we were planning our campaigns.
Ideally, everyone deserves to both know and be heard. I don’t think some narratives count more than others, although they some may be more representative than others and I do think narratives should be represented proportionally- not an easy task, but an important one. This may be an idealistic notion but I think it’s an important one to hold on to as an engaged journalist.
ReplyDeleteAs we’ve discussed in class and as I thought about more reading the Mantsios reading, capitalism is a barrier to this. However, non profit models like high ground news can and I think do push to at least work towards this ideal.
The Rondo case study is just one example of how narratives are Ignored. I know there are countless situations like this and countless communities that are aware that their story isn’t being told. Thinking about this is somehwhat disheartening, but thinking about efforts to do better is inspiring. Thinking
about high ground news and how they go into these neighborhoods whose narratives is ignored gives me hope for the future.
I think this needs to be a key facet of a framework of engaged journalism - attempting at least to engage with everyone. To tell whole stories, and instead of ignoring the stories of those who are often ignored, or harder to reach, focusing hardest on telling these narratives.
More traditional Journalists and journalists more focused on a philosophy of a more engaged type of journalism seem to agree that truth is a top priority, and a backbone of good journalism. No matter how truthful a story is, if narratives are chosen for convinience, or appearance, or ease instead of thoughtfully attempted to be represented proportionally, truth is lost.
Within the parameters of contemporary traditional journalism, those who are educated and serving as the “gatekeepers” of knowledge are bestowed with the choice of what it is that they want to present as the narrative of what matters. Often, this comes to mean that the stories of people who are more similar to them get amplified and less educated and less affluent groups of people are underrepresented in the journalistic world. As Gregory Mantsios noted in Media Magic, the media addresses its audience as if it were a group of like-minded individuals, giving less of a voice to those outside the majority opinion held by those who read a specific publication or newsource. While this condemnation of contemporary media can at times be true, many forms of journalism that we have studied and read throughout this course defy this categorization.
ReplyDeleteAs we have studied throughout this course, citizen journalism and engaged journalism often serve to give a voice to all of the members of the community it is addressing. As Jason Coburn noted in Street Science, citizens of local communities often have “local knowledge” that is often anecdotal and less scientifically based than traditional knowledge. This casual manner of knowledge, however, is in no way inherently less valuable and deserves to be presented with and as a an aide to other forms of knowledge. In this way, citizens who do not fit into the majority opinion reflected by traditional forms of journalism can still have the representation that they deserve.
If journalism does not retain its sense of perspective and loses sight of who it is meant to be representing, it becomes less functional as a tool in any community it reports on. Practices of citizen and engaged journalism can help it remain representative of the whole population.
W3D2 - What narratives “count”? - Isabella McShea
ReplyDeleteOne of my high school history teachers always noted that “history is always written by the winners”. Although my passion for sociology and examining the unique inequalities that exist in our society through large institutional structures was not yet clear, this concept resonated with me on a very visceral level. After taking this class, I have reexamined how perhaps journalist has historically been written by the “winners” in our societies and left our the voices, and therefor narratives, of those who are “losing” in our society. This has obviously not been completely accurate as many marginalized voices have created other methods of communicating their stories and experiences. The Black Press, for instance, has always advocated for and written about issues surrounding Black Americans in the United States. However, more generally, traditional press has seemed to stay in line with the concept that some narratives count and others do not.
As more news outlets are attempting to be more inclusive in whose narratives are included in their journalism, writers and editors must walk a very fine line. Including these stories is of the utmost importance, however, the motivation and execution must be very critically examined for essentialism and other forms of tokenism within journalism. Finally, it is equally as important to understand why we are focusing on marginalized people in journalism. Do we just want to make ourselves feel better by checking off a box? Are we actually attempting to dismantle the systems of racism, sexism, patriarchy, and white supremacy or do we just want brownie points for being somewhat “woke”? In Johnson’s piece, he notes that “I think that we must admit we are practicing therapy rather than politics: we are using our work to make ourselves feel better and more righteous rather than to make the world better or more righteous” (pp. 121). I believe anyone attempting to open up the space to more complex and intersecting narratives must marinate and deeply consider that quote. It is extremely easy to post your MLK quote on your instagram story and much more difficult to start to examine your own biases and racial privileges on a daily basis. Just some food for thought!
Not everyone fits at the table- that would be one very long, very loud table.
ReplyDeleteWhile as stated in class “everyone is an expert on their own story,” no one contains the knowledge to discuss all issues publicly. Journalists need to identify what perspectives merit recognition. In many if not all cases, this means the journalists talks to a wide variety of people and then critically funnels different perspectives for an audience making sure they encompass the issue fully. For example, in the essay entitled, ‘Media Magic, Making Class Invisible,’ Gregory Mantsios recognized that the impoverished perspective had been denied representation in mass media. Mantsios explains that the “poor is shown through middle class eyes” in the sense that the news follows a few distinct narratives to comment on the state of poverty in America. A responsible journalist would attempt to get more perspective to challenge the narrative. On a similar note, Street Science by Jason Coburn identified that the expert opinion does not always come from the expert. In an example examining the use of the pesticide named “2,4,5-T,” in Britain, farmers identified the a threatening health hazards despite what experts were saying. Not everyone’s perspective needs to be encompassed into a story. However, journalists need to critically analyze which voices should get featured.
Furthermore, everyone should have access to comment on the finished narratives. In this way journalism is ongoing. While a journalists job is to try and encompass all the perspectives needed, this job is impossible. As pointed out by Coburn, local knowledge can sometimes change at a fast pace. In this sense, people’s perspectives are always changing, and journalism should reflect the world it is trying to describe.
I think everyone narrative deserves to be heard. In order to make opinions I believe it is important to hear multiple perspectives first. And in a country where news sources and social media dominate the coverage, they get to decide the narrative. Mantsios elaborates on this point in his article “Media Magic, Making Class Invisible,”. He starts off by illuminating the immense amount of power the media has in our country, “The number of media companies is shrinking and their control of the industry is expanding,” (Mantsios). Mantsios explains how media oftentimes hides class divisions and inequalities, “We maintain these illusions, in large part, because the media hides the gross inequalities from public view,” (Mantsios). Not only does the media hide these class inequalities, but when it acknowledges the poor Mantsios describes how this is oftentimes an unflattering portrayal. In contrast, the media covers news in a way that appeals to those of like-mindedness and affluence to build “We-ness”. This coverage does not share every narrative equally and creates a sense of separation amongst our society.
ReplyDeleteIn Wingo and Sullivan’s article about recognizing the history of Ringo, they describe how the Macalester college students teamed up with RAI to preserve the history of what happened to Rondo residents when I-94 was built. I think this article is a great example of sharing others narratives that don’t normally get the chance to be heard. It was not until 2015 that somebody finally issued an apology for what was done to Rondo. The students worked to preserve the history of the city and celebrate it. Their project was about this city and not about the college students, and they built an important relationship with the residents.
In contrast to this idea of sharing information, the “Local Knowledge in Environmental Health Policy” paints a picture similar to that of Mantsios in where the public does not get to know everything. During risk management assessments the author illuminates how excluded the public is from this process in which they should be involved in, “In the best risk-management processes, the analyst consults with the public that is being asked to bear a ‘risk’ from the beginning of the hazard assessment. However, more often analysts—perhaps feeling that professional training give them ultimate discretion to carry out and implement decisions-- omit the pubic from the decision making process,”.
These readings gave light to ways news sources and media often times exclude certain groups from the conversation. I think, especially in terms of our class, we need to focus on making sure every narrative counts and is heard.
I feel as though we’ve discussed the main root of this in class: media is power; narratives are power. The narratives that are shared, and those that listen, are largely decided by socioeconomic status. The narratives that can be shared often (not always, these are, as a whole, many sweeping generalizations with wonderful exceptions) require things that one must have privilege to have: time, eloquence, informedness. Those who get to know require almost the exact same things. I found Mantsios’ point about the news creating classes, and dividing them even further, particularly poignant. That concept, that we not only have hugely divided lower, middle, and upper classes, but that we are actively choosing to perpetuate the generalizations of those, is not surprising. Upsetting and terrifying, but speaks to which narratives are heard. Why does every radio hour talk about the stock market, and the business deals of the day? To how many people is that interesting and relevant information? My guess would be the minority. But, by deciding that it is valuable content, media producers make a statement as to who they expect and desire as their readers/watchers/listeners. It ties in to the Street Science idea of maintaining a public peace -- if we assume that this is what everyone wants to consume, we can maintain the public peace. We assume everyone is happy with the media they can consume. We do not take into account the classism. So, most often, the common narrative is the one that is most peaceful. It is wealthy, white, and does not cause discrepancies. It is heard by those similar to it. It validates them in their state.
ReplyDeleteWhat concerns me is, even when the readings discuss breaking out of this and valuing the knowledge of experience and locality, there almost always needs to be an expert involved. Even if the goal is to empower a community, or to amplify its’ voice, there has to be some partner organization/school/person (like us, in this class), that harvests the community voice and, by our very existence, validates it in a way that would not be possible otherwise. Even if a pool of people has an answer to a question that an expert doesn’t have, does the expert have to be there to draw it out? I’m not sure how to create a more egalitarian way of collecting information and media, and I do believe that many of the projects that we read about are wonderful, valuable projects. However, I still find myself caught by the nature that a community cannot fully engage on its own. How can we break that?
I have emphasised this definition of truth before, however I feel it expresses one of the core truths of engaged journalism and so I am going to link it to yet another prompt. Journalists can report on the truth by 'negotiating shared meaning'. There is no one truth, and thus there is no one who can 'find' it by themselves and then use it to decide who or what are worthy of being covered. In Gregory's (wonderfully clearly formatted, I wish academics would take notes) article, he seems to point out that the shared meaning is negotiated only by those sitting at the table when the media is created; that is the wealthy, white, male owners of major media conglomerates. By his references to AOL and Time Warner, I would assume this was written more than a decade ago, and since then the consolidation of corporate power in media has only gotten more extreme. To find the real truth about class, Gregory's article translates directly into engaged journalism practices in his explanation of the communities that aren't allowed a say in the 'american' truth, making it not a truth at all, but simply propaganda. We all know whose narratives are allowed to 'count' the most, and who makes that call (shockingly, there's a lot of overlap), but we also know whose narratives should be allowed to count and therefore those voices that we need to work on raising up, which just means that we have some work to do as citizens and as consumers of the media and maybe even as journalists.
ReplyDeleteWho's narratives count? While I'd like to say that everyone's narratives count, it seems that in an age where national media outlets owned by a highly concentrated group of elites, as pointed out by Mantsios, the narratives of the upper and middle classes count, with special attention given to the upper class. I found Mantsios' paper "Media Magic" incredibly interesting as it articulates a suspicion of large media outlets that I think many of us share. The US is an extremely stratified society in which the poor are disregarded as insignificant and only having "themselves to blame." For example, it took years for the citizens of Rondo to see any recognition of the atrocities committed by the city of St. Paul in tearing Rondo's community center apart. Meanwhile, the concerns of the wealthy, such as stocks and international business news, are broadcasted to the nation. However, the wealthy, the upper class, is not acknowledged as such. It is blended with the middle class as portrayed in media, so as to hide the existence of such a distinct upper class. I should also include that, as pointed out in "Street science", the views of professionals and experts are often given heavy preference at the expense of local knowledge.
ReplyDeleteNext, who gets to hear? The wealthy and middle class - those who can afford to subscribe to these media outlets, and more importantly, those who find that this news actually concerns them. I imagine that lower classes quickly grow tired of being portrayed as the troublesome members of the society (especially in the light of incredibly corporate greed and injustice) and hearing about the stock market and ski reports rather than their local news. In order to alleviate this, we must, as outlined in "On Agency", "re-immerse ourselves in the nightmare of History rather than resting easy while dreaming that it is dawn and we have awakened".