Sonia 00:11
Hello, everyone, welcome to Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling mini pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. And today I am loitering at Crixa Cakes in Berkeley with a very special guest. Can you please introduce yourself?
Lewis Raven Wallace 00:27
Hi, I'm Lewis Raven Wallace. I am a freelance journalist based in North Carolina and the author of The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, which is also out as a podcast called The View From Somewhere.
Sonia 00:40
So the audience of this Loitering mini pod maybe a little bit familiar with who you are, but most people probably aren't. And without going into too many details, briefly, could you talk about what led you to write this book and what happened beforehand, who are you really in a little bit more detail, if that's ok?
Lewis 01:03
Sure. So I was a public radio journalist for about five years. I started out at WBEZ in Chicago, coming out of a long background of community-based activism around trans liberation and prison abolition, and then worked as a daily news reporter first at BEZ where I was trained, then at WYSO, and then finally at a national show called Marketplace, which is a business and economics show. Right around the inauguration of Donald Trump in early 2017, I wrote a blog post called "Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it," that was criticizing the ideal of journalistic objectivity, and calling for journalists to stand up and take a stance against white supremacy and transphobia, and to kind of clarify and define our values in this political moment. After a short dispute with my employer marketplace, I was fired for refusing to take that blog post down. And that whole sort of fiasco of being fired right after Trump became president led to me writing a book, The View From Somewhere, which is all about the history of journalistic objectivity, and how it has been used to gate-keep and deployed against marginalized and oppressed people.
Sonia 02:21
Okay, so that's like a lot. And I'm wondering, you know, reading your book, I also got the sense, though, that this thing called objectivity was something that you've been researching long before that incident happened. And so I was wondering, what were your main goals with writing this book, aside from really like proving that, you know, your blog post was in the right frame of mind. Can you elaborate on that a little bit?
Lewis 02:49
Sure. So when I got fired, I was contacted by a lot of journalists and former journalists, many of them queer and trans people and people of color, women, who said, "Oh, I've been thinking about this stuff, and I have either, you know, been punished in some way or pushed out of journalism or made to feel that I couldn't be a real journalist because I was committed to standing up for my human rights or standing up for my community." And in that moment, I felt pretty sure that there had to be other examples, other stories like mine, but maybe that hadn't been as well-publicized, of journalists kind of standing up in key political moments, and standing up for their communities and then being punished or pushed out.
And I didn't want to talk about my situation in a vacuum. I wanted to really understand sort of, where did this idea of objectivity come from? Why did it become such a fundamental tenet of journalism? Why is it still around when objectivity has really been debunked in a lot of other fields, and this idea of sort of an outside observer is not as important as it might have been, you know, in the middle of the last century? And so, just trying to understand what the history and purpose was of this ideal, and how it was originally intended, and then how it's been used.
Sonia 04:14
In the beginning of the book, you talk about something called the sphere of legitimate controversy. And it really sets the tone for everything else that you write about. And I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about what that actually is, like, what is this sphere? What is considered controversial? Who came up with this sphere of controversy?
Lewis 04:36
So the idea of the sphere of legitimate controversy is a really useful way to talk about objectivity in journalism. This professor named Daniel Hallin wrote a book about the coverage of the Vietnam War, where he coined this term. And so he describes it actually as, essentially three concentric circles
Sonia 04:53
Sorry, concentric meaning what?
Lewis 04:55
Circles inside of each other, like Russian dolls, kind of.
So the circle right in the middle is this sphere of consensus. And so that's ideas or concepts that supposedly, quote unquote, everyone can agree on. And that would be things that are presented in mainstream journalism without question, like, "Patriotism is good," or "Prisons are a solution to social ills." You know, that kind of thing. And then the sphere of legitimate controversy is ideas that can be debated in journalism. And then the third sphere outside of that is this fear of deviance. So, concepts, ideas, arguments that can't or shouldn't be talked about.
So an example that we give in the opening episode of the podcast is — well, there's a few examples. One of them is around women's suffrage. Another one is around slavery. So, currently, in the sphere of consensus is the idea that slavery is bad. Not 150 years ago in the United States, is slavery bad or good was in the sphere of legitimate controversy and being debated. And so a lot of the book looks at how social movements, alternative media, individual reporters based on their experience, push issues from deviance into legitimate controversy, and sometimes into consensus. And that doesn't always move in the direction of progress, right? So something can be a deviant idea, can move into the sphere of legitimate controversy, even if it's a bad idea. Like some of Donald Trump's ideas, you know — "Mexicans are rapists," or "Rape is okay." You know, these are things that we might have thought wouldn't be debated, but now they are being.
Sonia 06:28
So, I'm just going to repeat back to you what I'm hearing and what I read too, just to make sure we're discussing in a way that the audience can really understand. So, in the sphere of legitimate controversy, it's actually kind of like the middle sphere within three different spheres that are within each other. And the sphere of deviance is the outermost ring, the sphere of consensus is the innermost ring. And sometimes, what goes from the outside in is not always what we would call "progress." If these are really, like very deviant ideas that kind of go against human rights and are just like, not true. But sometimes too, the sphere of legitimate controversy — the ideas that would ideally want to be framed in that end up being stuck in this outermost ring where they're considered deviant because they're just coming from such specific perspectives, or maybe what people would call niche perspectives. But of course, niche, as I've been very much thinking lately and discussing with people, it's a word that's used by people in position of power.
Lewis 07:32
Yeah, exactly. So anything that's in the sphere of legitimate controversy can be debated and sort of, quote unquote, both sides journalism. But the reality is that journalists themselves, ourselves, are always shaping that. And so I come at that from the perspective of a transgender person. I came out in the late 90s when the idea of transgender sort of human rights or civil rights was in the sphere of deviance; it wasn't being debated as sort of a legitimate argument. The idea that gender might not be a binary was in the sphere of deviance. You know, it was just men and women and there might be transsexual men and transsexual women as well. But non-binary gender was a sphere of deviance issue. Now that's being debated and people are talking about it.
Sonia 08:18
That's a really great example. I'm wondering because in addition to this word called "objectivity," which even the Society of Professional Journalists has opted not to use anymore, there are other words have kind of come to signify the same thing, even if they're actually different words, whether that's "balanced" or "neutral." I think some people are also favoring this word "transparent," but sometimes it is kind of like filler words to mean I think what people had hoped objective means or objective had meant, and I'm wondering your thoughts about that and like, are there any words that are actually truly appropriate for this time in journalism and in our country today, especially?
Lewis 09:01
You know, I'm not invested in the word so much as I'm invested in the practices, right. So I think there's this idea that journalism can establish itself as credible by maintaining its claims to objectivity. That model has not worked. That's what Jay Rosen, who's a journalism scholar, talks about in terms of a theory of diminishing returns. Like basically, when you first sort of claim objectivity, people might say, okay, you're a fair and balanced news outlet, right and you're objective. But then each time that it's revealed that in fact, the journalists running this news outlet, have a bias or get something wrong, that objectivity claim leading to credibility is sort of diminished and so forth into eternity.
So I don't think that journalists establish credibility by saying "I'm objective. I'm impartial. I'm transparent. I'm fair." I think we establish credibility by checking our facts and doing our best to tell the truth and being transparent about where we're coming from in that process. And that that's an ongoing process that we also need to invest energy in helping the public to understand, invest in, feel involved with, and not just feel sort of talked at, right? Because right now the relationship between mainstream journalism and the quote unquote public is, in some ways very antagonistic. There's this idea that people can't trust journalists, and also that journalists can't trust people.
And so there's my friend, Alicia Bell, who works for Free Press talks about this in terms of actually healing relationships. That journalism is about relationships, and that where harm has been done, for example, in journalistic coverage of black communities, there's healing that needs to happen before journalism can just say, well, we're objective and so we should be credible. And so you should trust us. So trust, to me, is not about what we call it. It's about what we actually do.
Sonia 10:46
Right. And I think that's really interesting, because I think at one point in your book too, if I remember correctly, you talk about being invested in the process of journalism, and that that's where we can actually gather what we're trying to gather when we use words like balance. But, of course too, um. You know, we live in an environment where people want straight answers right away. They don't necessarily have much tolerance for this — this understanding that it is a process, and sometimes we aren't going to necessarily have a very stated claim at the end of the day. And so I was wondering if you can then talk a little bit about what maybe you can see as methods or tools for practicing journalists who, you know, they're very invested in the process, but maybe their audience, or even the editors they work with, don't necessarily have the breathing room or feel that they can make the breathing room, given the current state of journalism and politics and the state of affairs everywhere.
Lewis 11:51
So, that's a pretty complex question. And I think there's a couple of assumptions wrapped up in it that I want to push back on.
Sonia 11:58
Okay, great.
Lewis 11:59
First one is this idea that people want simple answers. I think that Twitter, advertisers, algorithms, Facebook, platforms — those structures benefit from clickbait and simple answers. I don't think that's what people actually want. And people are not being served by the journalism that they're getting when that journalism is focused on sort of the most over simplistic messages getting the highest distribution, right. That's actually eroding, continually eroding the relationship, again, between people and journalists, and the journalism itself. But the problem to me there is not about the people. It's not about the public. It's about the incentive to produce the work that gets the most clicks, right, or the work that gets the most shares, as opposed to the work that is the most helpful to people trying to figure out and give meaning to their lives and their communities. And depending on your community, that might not be the thing that is the most clicked upon, right, or the most shared.
And so there's a gap there between the stated desire for journalism that's about public service and the real sort of economics of the distribution of journalism. That isn't a gap that can be solved by individual journalists changing their practices. I actually think it can, to a certain extent, be solved by communities collectively, as well as journalists collectively saying, "Hey, we need different mediators here. We need to heal this relationship and actually mediate the distribution of journalism differently, and take ownership over that and the community," and there are a lot of efforts to do that.
My focus has been on sort of the ethics and practices of individual journalists, with kind of a recognition that the economic power structures of journalism actually benefit quite a bit, as it stands right now, from having us be distributors of simple answers and clickbait and one liners. But that is not good for people, and it's not good for journalists.
Sonia 14:00
Yeah, I actually really agree with you. But I do get the sense that in addition to there being groups of people who really want to handle this information that is complex and forces them to reckon with their own opinions and views with what's actually happening, there, there are some people who don't like to sit with discomfort. And so, like the economic motivation, the algorithms, the structures that are in place to make it easy for us to kind of produce journalism that is click-baity or one sided, there's also the tolerance levels of different people around the world now. And so, do you have anything to say to that, or like any wisdom as to how we can better equip myself -- equip myself, Freudian slip — or any, um. Yeah, any feedback as to how we can better handle that reality too, and try to get — I mean, we can't maybe necessarily convince everyone that "no, you have to sit with this discomfort," because maybe they have their reasons for why they're like, not ready or unwilling, but yeah. Any thoughts on that?
Lewis 15:06
Well, I think that the idea that we can sort of purchase or click our way away from discomfort is a capitalism problem.
Sonia 15:16
Tell me more.
Lewis 15:19
I mean, you know, to me, the question always comes back to like, "Who benefits, right, from that mindset?" And there's never going to be a day for me where I wake up and just sort of give up on people, right, and feel like, "Oh, you know, people don't want better for themselves or their communities or their world." I think the matter of how to move all of us towards a place where we're more comfortable with curiosity and discomfort is a question for educational systems. It's a question for social justice movements. It's a question for journalists. You know, what can we do to sort of invite people into deeper curiosity and more engagement. What is our role as journalists in that conversation?
And just, you know, I feel strongly that the answers or the solutions to these problems are systemic and therefore, collective in nature, not sort of an individual act. But I do think we can each individually be asking ourselves every day like, what am I doing to cultivate curiosity, to be comfortable in my own discomfort, to analyze power structures, to look at my own privilege and the ways in which I might oppress or silence others, to look at my own oppression with nuance. You know, those are questions I think, for all of us that can help us to develop solutions collectively.
Sonia 16:44
I'm wondering, in your book, you have these different case studies. And I was wondering if there was any one case in particular that really stood out to you for one reason or another, something that was completely unexpected, or that you think could really help illuminate what we're facing right now in one way, or maybe something we can pick up on?
Lewis 17:06
Well, over the last 50-60 years, there's been this assumption that in mainstream journalism, that you're either a journalist or an activist, and that activists aren't real journalists, right. And I looked at many examples of journalists who are doing fact-based and meticulous work, who are also activists. But the one that stands out to me is the story of Marvel Cooke. She was a black woman, born in Minnesota. She worked for The Crisis, which was the NAACP paper run by W.E.B Du Bois at the start of her career, and then she worked for the Amsterdam News, which is a more mainstream black paper cover in Harlem. And while she was there in the 30s, she organized one of the first chapters of The Newspaper Guild, and they actually conducted a successful lockout and shut down of Amsterdam News, and ended up later being rehired at the wages that they had asked for in their unionization. effort. And so she organized essentially one of the first successful labor struggles of journalists in the 30s.
She also covered labor. She covered what she called the Bronx slave market, which was black women day laborers doing domestic work in the Bronx for often very little or no money, and they were heavily exploited. And so her investigative journalism was focused on labor, her organizing was focused on labor. She was ultimately called before the McCarthy hearings in the early 50s. And after that happened, and the paper that she'd been working for shut down, she never worked in journalism again. And she lived almost another 50 years. In many ways, her story was pushed out of kind of the canon of journalism.
And so, to me, there's something just deeply important about knowing Marvel Cooke, about knowing that some of our earliest labor leaders in journalism were black women, about knowing that some of our earliest investigative reporters doing first person undercover work were activists and labor organizers, and kind of tying all those threads together. We did a podcast episode about her. And there's a chapter about her in the book as well, that, to me, has just been a chock full of lessons about kind of the costs of erasing black women's work, and the costs of erasing activism and dismissing it as not journalism. And I think there are heavy costs when it comes to the labor rights of journalists.
Sonia 19:29
Yeah, thank you for that. Just to wrap up, I like to ask people I interview if they have any recommendations for things they've been reading or listening or coming across. And I'm just wondering if you have any recommendations, whether or not it has to do with these topics or some other things that you're thinking about these days.
Lewis 19:47
I read a lot of science fiction and fantasy. And so, of all the things that I've read in the last couple of years, I would say, N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy is the best. And you might not think that you're a fan of science fiction or fantasy, but you might become one after reading N.K. Jemisin's Broken Earth Trilogy. So that's my recommendation to people.
Sonia 20:10
Wow, anything in particular that is drawing you to that, or that you think others might be, like, enchanted by?
Lewis 20:17
She builds sort of worlds upon worlds that, for me, helped me to think about kind of the nature of being a human being, the nature of race and genetics, the nature of power, differently. And I think journalists should read fiction, and especially should read, you know, speculative and fantastical fiction because it helps us to ask questions that, in some ways, journalism often assumes can't be asked, right. Like, how else could things be? What else is possible? And, ideally, I want to work in journalism that is also about asking those questions.
Sonia 20:57
Yeah, well, thank you so much. So, that's all we have for today of Loitering, the occasional, but lovable traveling me pod I am currently testing in newsletter format. Thanks for listening and have a great day. Goodbye!
Links to books, podcasts and other writings mentioned in this episode:
The View From Somewhere: Undoing the Myth of Journalistic Objectivity, by Lewis Raven Wallace
The View From Somewhere Podcast, created and hosted by Lewis Raven Wallace, and produced by Ramona Martinez, with editorial help from Carla Murphy, Phyllis Fletcher, and Hideo Higashibaba
"Objectivity is dead, and I'm okay with it," by Lewis Raven Wallace
The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam, by Daniel C. Hallin
The Broken Earth Trilogy, by N.K. Jemisin
And if you’re interested in what Sonia has been up to lately, here’s a recent piece she wrote for the Religion News Service.
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