Documentary, Journalism, and Storytelling as an Art

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Grace Golembiewski

Are documentary and journalism two separate mediums? I think it’s a question many in the industry grapple with, including myself. But for veteran photojournalist and editor Michael DelGiudice, his work melded the two mediums and blurred the line many often see when it comes to documentary and journalism.

Since 2006, DelGiudice has worked for WNBC-TV in New York City. The native Long Islander is an eight-time winner of the “Photographer of the Year” award from the National Press Photographers Association. He also won an Emmy award for his work on the documentary “Long Island Lighthouses” in 2001.

However, the long-time photog is also a father of two, a die-hard Mets fan, and has a soft spot for reality TV. Before our interview, he had just returned from shooting a water main break in New Jersey and was making the long trek back home through Manhattan and Queens, a two-hour drive in standstill New York Traffic.

“Literally, I got there, and within two hours, we were live on the air, and that’s adrenaline pumping, exciting, and whatever. But if I’m being completely honest, it’s not my favorite thing. My favorite thing is to work on projects.”

Throughout his career, between the hard news, DelGiudice shot four other documentaries, including one in Guatemala and another in Mexico. As someone who has shot for hard news and documentaries, I couldn’t help but wonder what he thought about the differences between the mediums; however, the photographer sees them as almost the same, including their ethical standards.

“I think because I have such a lengthy news background, I treat my time as when I was shooting documentaries as if I was doing news… Whether I’m telling someone’s story or telling the audience about something, whether it’s an event or someone’s life, or any of those things, I feel like I need to have the same ethical feel,” said DelGiudice. “So that line where it’s documentary as opposed to telling or giving the news to a viewer, to me, there’s no difference.”

Additionally, for the photojournalist, there are other similarities the two mediums share. He believes that documentary is art, yet journalism can also be art, just as a documentary can be as truthful and accurate as journalism.

“I truly feel like documentary is an art form, but there certainly are news elements to it, there’s no doubt. I think that’s honestly the best kind of documentary is that mixture of art and news,” DelGiudice said. He concludes that news and documentary are different forms of storytelling. I want to go one step further and say that since news and documentaries are different forms of telling a story, they are both art in their own ways.

The editor sees his work outside of the documentary framework, such as news features, as still being documentaries. He states these news features are almost mini documentaries. Because of the editing process and thoughtfulness it takes to create short news pieces; I can understand why he thinks this way.

The work I have done in my classes leads me to agree. Documentary and journalism go hand in hand. While some may see the two as separate mediums, I agree with DelGiudice that some of the work is the same. We both want to create an accurate representation with thoughtful sources and excellent imagery and, most importantly, tell an audience a captivating story.

At the end of the day, documentarians and reporters are storytellers who, like DelGiudice, use their viewfinders to capture the most beautiful imagery to bring a narrative to life.

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The More Your Known, The More Likely You’ll Get the Story 

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

by Juliana Pelaez

If you watch big news stations like NBC 5 or ABC News, you’ll notice that a lot of reporters have been there for quite some time. None of them are your fresh-out-of-college reporter. With this it leaves the question of where they can go to get that first job.

John Quinones, an ABC news correspondent, whose name today is one that will spark the eyes of many, had trouble finding a place in the field after he graduated. He still holds many of those letters of rejection.

“Fifty letters of rejection that I got when I wanted to be a local reporter in Texas. When I was getting started. I had to go back to graduate school. I went to Columbia University,” Quinones said. “I couldn’t get a job in television, even though I wanted it so desperately. And I was applying everywhere.”

But even after graduating from Columbia and getting his foot into the door, some still pushed him away.

Quinones career went from starting out as a radio news editor at KTRH in Houston, Texas from 1975 to 1978 and he also worked as an anchor and reporter for KPRC-TV in Houston. He later reported for WBBM-TV in Chicago. Then in 1982, Quiñones started as a general assignment correspondent with ABC News based in Miami.

“Oftentimes, when I was getting started, I would be out in the field for weeks reporting on a story. And then as the story got bigger, they would send a more seasoned reporter to take the story basically away from me,” Quinones said.

Even though his passion lies within broadcast journalism, the lack of experience compared to a seasoned reporter apparently lacked credibility for the bosses in his news outlet. And his move from place to place to New York created a reluctance from others to allow him to initially gain that trust.

“So, when you’re young, you have more of a hesitancy in New York, people who don’t know you. You don’t have a proven track record…So, you wind up having to prove yourself more often. When as you gain experience and your stories continue to ring true,” Quinones said.

As a current graduate student, I had some struggles right off the bat after I finished my undergraduate degree. I was ignored and rejected from some positions, so I went to DePaul to advance my education. But among my peers here they said that people only hire if you have the experience from student media rather than the work you put in the classroom.

While that may be true for most, Quinones shared that what matters most is that your curiosity trumps experience. You want to find the truth and share it from your own experience. It may take some time to gain that credibility but what matters is that you can and want to do the job.

Or as Quinones said, “you will get big footed until you become a bigfoot.”

Innovation in journalism: Stephen Stock on how data supports investigations

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

by Lily Lowndes

CBS National Investigative Correspondent Stephen Stock says that innovation set him apart from his peers.

Stock started in broadcast journalism in the 1970s and has seen how much the industry has changed, from social media expanding the number of media outlets, to the popularization of data-driven reporting.

When you work in an innovative industry like broadcast journalism, you must be innovative yourself.

“Innovation fits with me,” Stock said. “I’ve been innovating for 10, 20 years because I came to realize that as a journalist and as a reporter, especially on TV, you need to stand out.”

Stock learned how to report with numbers and data before the practice was commonplace. Even as data has become a popular method for storytelling, Stock says that it is especially important today.

“Data has become one of the foremost tools that I think journalists can and should use,” Stock said.

The right data analysis can yield a powerful story. Stock does not bend the data to his needs, but in his investigations, he finds “the truth among the numbers.”

Knowing how to innovate and find key information from datasets is crucial because numbers do not lie, or as Stock said, “data can be an unimpeachable source.”

If step one is finding the data, the other half of innovation is finding the right story that reflects said data.

Stock gave an example of a story he completed recently about young children being arrested in school by resource officers. The team found data that exposed and supported the fact that this was a national problem, but the team also had to talk to a young person who was arrested to humanize and illustrate the problem.

Innovation is combining hard data with the touch of a human story.

“Innovation includes using data and music techniques to tell unimpeachable stories, investigative stories, while still maintaining the human character and finding people who experienced or live what the data shows,” Stock said.

To Stock, broadcast television is the journalistic media channel with the widest reach. When an important event occurs, whether it be a triumphant event like the moon landing or a catastrophe like 9/11, people want to watch and witness history.

Using this powerful medium to innovate and inform the public is crucial.

Stock has created a reputation for innovation in his career. Combining creativity with investigations has led stations to recruit Stock for building investigative teams in Orlando, Miami and San Francisco. He talks with newsrooms across the country about how they can innovate in their storytelling.

When he talks to these newsrooms and editors, Stock emphasizes that journalism is a calling. Journalists are called to do important work by telling stories that hold the powerful accountable, bring justice, uphold the forgotten, change policy and give voice to the voiceless.

Telling stories in innovative ways is the function of a good journalist. Learning new technology and pushing oneself to be creative helps journalists give their audiences compelling stories that can make a difference.

The data is there, the skills are waiting to be learned. We must continue to innovate in this innovative field.

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Journalists are news consumers too. Do we value our local journalism enough?

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Emily Soto

If the local news outlets in Long Island had the support it needed, would George Santos be in office today? White House Reporter Aamer Madhani said, maybe not.

“But that’s crazy, right? Like, somebody got that far,” Madhani said. “And just basically, because he didn’t go through the typical vetting that the news media would put their candidates through…They just didn’t have the ability to cover it.”

As a White House reporter for the Associated Press, Madhani is now witnessing the fallout of Santos’ election, but he isn’t blaming the local journalists of Long Island for not learning of his obscure history earlier. In fact, Madhani is saying that with more resources in the local newsroom, the congressman’s campaign might have been exposed before he was elected to office.

Chicago’s news landscape is adapting to this need for increased local coverage. Outlets like South Side Weekly and Block Club Chicago have emerged to fill in these gaps. This isn’t new though. Madhani, a Chicago native, remembered growing up with a variety of publications to choose from.

“When I was a teenager, the Chicago Reader was an incredible place to figure out like, what to go listen to, or what was interesting and movies that was a little bit less stuffy than, like, reading about in the in the Tribune,” Madhani said. “I felt like [that] was a really great conduit for me, and all those types of places are gone now.”

So, all these years later, as he lives in Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C., Madhani finds himself looking for that same coverage ─ but this time, with no luck.

“I’m a White House reporter now, but I care about how my local government is working, like, I have a child, how the school system is working, I care about the public transportation system I use, I care about the culture of this place…I want to know about the place I live, and I find it much harder than it should be,” Madhani said.

But to be a local journalist today, requires some pretty substantial sacrifices, according to Madhani. When he started at the Tribune nearly 25 years ago, journalists could spend their whole career in one place. Today, not so much.

“I heard these stories, more often than not, of like, reporters well into their career that were very established, doing side hustles just to make ends meet,” Madhani said. “I feel for that generation of reporters that are basically just 10, 12 years younger than I am, and how much it’s changed in that sense and how, perhaps, unless you’re willing to make some pretty substantial sacrifices, that being a local journalist is going to be a lot harder.”

So as journalists who recognize the need for local coverage, is there anything we can do to help these publications?

Madhani left Chicago 3 years ago for his current job. Yet to this day, he still pays for a subscription to Block Club Chicago.

“There’s zero reason for me now to need to know, like, what’s going on in Lakeview,” he said. “But [my wife and I] feel this need to like, at least support it because we as journalists, we understand the value of it, but it’s going away.”

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A Real News Approach Avoids The Simple Easy Approach

dmoseley Student Perspectives

by Juliana Pelaez

From movies to the classroom setting, you are told that if you want to be seen first, before other news outlets, you must be first on the scene. You want to be the one reporting on the story before anyone else. But in wanting to be first, reporters must be careful to separate fact from fiction.

Big time news outlets like CNBC, Bloomberg, The Daily, and NBC were tricked into believing that two men heading out of Twitter headquarters, in October of 2022, were employees. Aftera large number of officials and employees were laid off from their positions it was assumed that they were a part of this group. In fact those two individuals were pranksters posing as Twitter employees with devised names.

CNBC’s reporter, Deirdre Bosa, was the first to interview them, asking how they were dealing with the aftermath of their termination. “They are visibly shaken,” Bosa stated. “Daniel tells us he owns a Tesla and doesn’t know how he’s going to make payments.”

ABC7 Bay Area reporter Suzanne Phan tweeted out the story stating that one of the men said he was terminated after a zoom meeting.

Other reporters on the scene and online were hounding the two individuals for a story. In the absence of contacting Twitter management to understand what happened and questioning if these men were who they really said they were, the story is mere words. It then had become something that these reporters were wanting, not something they tried to find. While it does make sense that reporters are always on a deadline and editors want a story, the facts must come first. And in this instance, the facts came second.

Another report related to the Twitter aftermath comes from what we wrote as one of the deadline writings in our final last quarter. A group of men boarded a school bus carrying Jewish grade-school children in West Rogers Park, yelled antisemitic slurs and gave the Hitler salute, according to officials with the Simon Wiesenthal Center (Chicago SunTimes).

The incident occured on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom that destroyed almost all synagogues across Germany in 1938. Several people were interviewed about the incident citing this anniversary and how it was harmful to the Jewish community. The story was reported by both the Chicago SunTimes and NBC Chicago—two news operations that people rely on for daily news—and turned out to be fabricated.

Personally, when reading through the story, I thought it was true. I remember I wrote it in a way to explain what was wrong in the situation. Attempting to add the minor details that weren’t added in the story beforehand. It wasn’t until near the end of our time that I discovered that the story wasn’t true and I couldn’t change the direction I already had.

The difference though in what I wrote to what reporters put out was that they shared this to the public without fact checking. They didn’t wait for the footage from the bus to tell the factual story.

Being in any news outlet, the public depends on you to have the news be factual and true. But, in some cases the truth falls wayside to the rush to puiblish.  What must be done to prevent this is to take the time on getting the facts and reporting the story that is available. Not what we want to have.

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Ethical Standards in Documentary and Journalism 

dmoseley Student Perspectives
By Grace Golembiewksi 

 One of the first things I was taught in multiple journalism classes was the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics. The Code is a thorough and descriptive list explaining the four principles it believes journalists should abide by in the field. These are seeking truth and reporting it, minimizing harm, acting independently, and being accountable and transparent.

 In some of my film classes, I was taught to take pictures/film until you were told not to be there anymore and to always put my camera behind me so security guards would not take it from me. On the other hand, this would not fly in a journalistic piece. I truly believe that documentary and journalism overlap in several areas, which was one of the main reasons I pursued both for my studies.

 However, it made me think while journalists have these pillars to use as their moral guide, documentary filmmakers do not have a set guide of ethical standards within the industry. 

In a conversation with DePaul University film Professor Susanne Suffredin, she stated that “there are no hard and fast rules for the ethics around what you end up filming or making as a documentarian. It’s usually case by case, and it’s often up to the individual, which makes it more complicated because you’re asking the individual to bring a certain amount of integrity and ethical awareness, and behavior to what they’re doing. Because it’s not strictly defined, not everybody adheres to it in the same way.” 

 Like in journalism, documentarians hold a lot of power, specifically the power of a trustful audience, but with great power comes great responsibility. Sadly, an audience’s trust can be easily exploited. One example from the Center for Media and Social Impact is the film Plandemic (2020), which continued the spread of misinformation about Covid-19. I even remember when the docuseries Tiger King was released, sitting in film school questioning why this was labeled as a documentary when it was filmed more like a reality show, even going as far as to speculate a murder.  

While chatting with me, Prof. Suffredin stated that even though there may not be a set of guidelines documentarians must refer to, she found similarities between the journalistic Code of Ethics and ethics emphasized by many documentary filmmakers. Documentary filmmakers often seek truth, film it, and go even further to examine the meaning of truth. While they might not attribute each fact presented, filmmakers often tell the audience the point of view that the film focuses on. There is a strict yet unspoken rule that documentary filmmakers must never pay their subjects, with exceptions such as life rights, just as you never pay a source in journalism. Suffredin believes and hopes that documentarians seek to do no harm or, if they do, explain the reason behind this potential harm. 

 Suffredin stated, “you [the filmmaker] give the audience some guidelines to let them know what to expect. As long as you adhere to those guidelines, I think the audience both trusts you and trusts the film…And then ultimately, once the film is out, or whatever you’ve made is out, it gives the public, the audience, whatever venue that it’s being viewed in, the opportunity to come back with questions and say, ‘well, wait a minute, you said this, is this true?’ So, it does become a conversation.” 

The Center for Media and Social Impact suggests that journalists and film critics become part of this conversation, and I could not agree more! By using watchdog sites to actively report on documentary topics, increasing journalistic coverage of the documentary film industry, and film critics analyzing the documentary form, these methods can hold documentarians accountable for the information provided in their films. As the documentary film audience expands, the Center for Media and Social Impact believes it is the journalist’s and critics’ duty to hold documentary films accountable through discussion. 

 As a journalist and documentarian, myself, I find it essential to recognize the different ethical standards for journalism and documentary, written or unwritten, and ensure accountability within the documentary film community. 

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Audiences Deserve Local News

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By Emily Soto

I participated in a summer journalism bootcamp in 2021, hosted by a small, hyperlocal newsroom in the Chicago suburbs. The team of three journalists ─ yes, just three reporters ran the entire newsroom ─ taught us about the importance of preserving local news and the responsibility it has to the people in a community. They showed us how to use our reporting to reflect and support a neighborhood in a way that empowers its people to engage with each other. They stressed that local journalists were able to hold officials accountable, especially the ones who typically slide under the radar.

But isn’t local news dying? At least that’s what I heard in journalism school. A few professors even advised me to stay away from certain forms of media for fear of no path forward.

Are they right? The 2022 State of Local News report from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism said that since 2005, the U.S. is on track to lose a third of its newspapers by 2025. When the large chains which own much of the nation’s newspapers need to make cuts, the locals are the first to go.

The report added, “The loss of local journalism has been accompanied by the malignant spread of misinformation and disinformation, political polarization, eroding trust in media, and a yawning digital and economic divide among citizens…Even in their diminished state, newspapers still provide most of the news that feeds our democracy at the state and local level.”

This is just as I was told at the bootcamp. So, with such a big responsibility, how do we ensure a future for this news source?

Local news has the ability to do things the legacies and national networks can’t do and it’s time we realize this.

We’ve already seen it happening in Chicago when Block Club Chicago and Borderless Magazine partnered to publish a series of profiles called “After The Busses” which followed 10 of the Venezuelan migrants bussed to Chicago from Texas as they figure out life in the city.

We’ve seen it when publications like the Harvey World Herald are the only source of media coverage on their municipal elections, or city council meetings.

But what we are really seeing from these and many other local news sources are journalists who are fulfilling a duty that has been taken for granted. As the SPJ Code of Ethics puts it, they are “ensuring we remember that public enlightenment is the forerunner of justice and the foundation of democracy.”

During the bootcamp, the publication’s Editor-in-Chief also shared with us one instance when he met a young journalist on the job for a legacy paper. When my instructor mentioned he works for a hyperlocal news organization, the young reporter responded saying, hopefully he might see this Editor-in-Chief in his major newsroom someday.

As long as we continue to have this mentality that local news is for the journalists who “didn’t make it,” those publications will continue to crumble, and journalists will keep failing to fulfill their duty.

It’s time to take the small newsrooms seriously.

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Tread carefully with salacious stories involving private individuals

dmoseley Student Perspectives

by Lily Lowndes

I have always believed that journalism is a function of justice. As journalists, we are truth-tellers. We seek to bring injustices to light, whether those injustices come from a company, government body or an individual.

What I also believed was that the harmful actions of these companies, government bodies and individuals were indicative of their characters. I was at peace with any consequences they might face after reporters brought their stories to light. If they did something wrong, there were no excuses.

Of course, the reporting must be fair, but it should not cushion the harm that was done. Justice must be enacted through tough, no-nonsense coverage.

These were my beliefs until I read an article where I knew the subject facing no-nonsense coverage. Having a real connection to this person and reading the subsequent articles about their actions changed my outlook on how journalists report on private citizens.

As journalists, we must take extra care to ensure to be fair when covering a private citizen and their actions.

Last fall, Block Club Chicago and the Chicago Tribune both ran stories about a DePaul student distributing fliers to a homeless encampment announcing free housing at a nearby hotel. These fliers not only turned out to be false, but they were a publicity stunt for the student’s mayoral campaign.

If a reader did not read beyond the headline of the story, they might assume terrible things about this student, that they likely had malicious intent, they are against the unhoused, or they do not have empathy for others.

When Block Club and the Tribune shared their coverage on social media, the backlash this student received was severe. I am not condoning what they did, but I will never support online attacks.

Twitter users commented on the Block Club and Tribune posts writing that the student was a horrible person, calling for DePaul to expel the student and one user even wrote that they should be kicked out of Chicago.

At the time of the incident, the student was a freshman in a class I was mentoring. I was in class with this student, talked one-on-one with them and gave feedback on their assignments. The person that I grew to know was kind-hearted. They did not seem like they would act with malicious intent, nor did they seem like they should be kicked out of Chicago.

Instead of gunning for hard-hitting coverage, for the first time, I was yearning for the reporters to take a more compassionate lens. This student was a minor, only 17 years old. They were not malicious, naive maybe, but I thought that this coverage broke a golden rule of the Society of Professional Journalists: minimize harm.

After reading the articles, I was worried for the student’s well-being. I was angry at the reporters because I could tell what questions they asked and what questions they did not ask. At the end of the article, I had even more questions that were unaddressed in the text.

Even if someone read beyond the headline, they would not find a clear answer to why the student chose to distribute the fliers. Yes, it was a part of her mayoral campaign, but I found it shocking that the reporters did not ask how it would help her campaign or if she had an action plan for the unhoused.

A person is more than their actions. It is imperative that we know not only what a person did, but why they did it. We cannot treat private individuals like they are government bodies or major corporations. These are real people with a backstory and a life before the covered event that happened because there is a difference between enacting justice and reporting something that brings harm and needlessly ruins someone’s life.

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How Twitter and opinion can hurt a journalist’s brand, and how sometimes it doesn’t matter

dmoseley Student Perspectives

by Patrick Sloan-Turner

As I’ve begun to apply for jobs in my final year of undergrad, I’ve found myself increasingly thinking about my own journalistic “brand.” I hate that word, but many journalists will say it’s a necessary part of the business. The idea of cultivating a journalistic persona has commanded my attention.

“How does the language in my writing read? Do I put too much of myself on my Twitter feed? Does the font choice on my resume accurately depict my vibe?”

Most of all, I’ve tried to keep my opinion to myself. For a journalist finishing up his degree, that means to Tweet carefully.

In all honesty, it hadn’t been that hard. Then, an issue came up in my college newsroom that was overwhelmingly difficult to not publicly share my thoughts on. It was tough because I was part of the story.

Last year, I started an initiative at DePaul for students to be offered a university-sponsored health insurance plan. Quickly, administrators asked me to join a task force to create a proposal to bring to the university’s board of trustees.

It was a big story that DePaul’s student newspaper, The DePaulia, obviously needed to cover. As a journalism major writing for student media, I of course disclosed my involvement to The DePaulia’s leadership, and told them there was little I’d be able to share with anyone covering the ongoing story.

A year later, I’m now a managing editor of the publication. The task force’s work ended after the board of trustees approved our plan, aiming to implement a student insurance plan by Fall 2023.

Then, things changed.

One of our reporters heard that the board changed its mind. I was disgusted to hear that the plan would now be delayed indefinitely. Immediately I felt an urge to use my platform at the paper to broadcast this issue to anyone who would listen.

I wanted to write a front-page op-ed, telling our readers that more than 90 percent of 4-year schools in the U.S. offer its students health insurance. I wanted to use the paper to call out the board of trustees for disallowing nearly 2000 students the option to receive health insurance.

But I couldn’t. Doing so would hurt The DePaulia’s credibility. It would likely hurt my own credibility as journalist. I kept quiet as the talented reporters working for our paper did the work and confirmed that the plan would indeed be delayed. It took a few days, but The DePaulia broke the news and Tweeted a link to the story on Twitter, all the while, I continued to keep my thoughts and anger at bay.

The New York Times doesn’t like its journalists to Tweet their opinions. Still, there’s countless journalists on the platform who have cultivated careers sharing opinions on whatever is in the ethos in between their unbiased work.

Twitter for journalists is still somewhat uncharted territory – at least in the academic world. We haven’t spent any lectures on how we should use Twitter. There’s no stylebook for journalism social media guidelines. For someone who would like to be a hard-news reporter, I always thought it best to keep my thoughts off it.

In my case, I decided to Tweet a thread sharing my perspective close to the situation, calling out university administration and sharing my disgust with how the university was treating its students. I’m not sure it was the smart move, but I told myself that maybe sometimes things are more important than my own personal “brand” or career. Attention to the issue was more important than brand.

Maybe that’s my brand.

From local to network, producers have the final say

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

BY: Kate Linderman

Sally Ramirez had reached the peak of a producer’s career. With decades of experience, she was tasked with building CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” from the ground up. The show aired for two years before the network announced the show’s cancellation last month putting Ramirez out of a job.

While one might think she’d join her husband in retirement, Ramirez said her career isn’t over. She said, “I would do it all over again,” referring to the CNBC show, and she said she is taking time to consider new job opportunities.

Ramirez has been a producer her entire career and says she was “born to be a journalist.” She started at USA Today’s The Television Show after completing her degree at DePaul University, worked her way through local networks across the country and ultimately ended up as the executive producer at CNBC’s ‘The News with Shepard Smith.’

Working with reporters throughout her career, she says the relationship is critical. “You have to trust your reporter and the reporter needs to trust you,” she said.

There are discrepancies between producers and reporters about what ultimately ends up on TV. Reporters may be in the field working on their own story, but Ramirez is behind the scenes curating the entire show.

“It’s a team who puts a show together. It’s not an individual,” she said, adding, “I would line produce the story that you’re telling from this, you know, open your show till the goodbye. The reporter is just part of that story. They have a story within a larger story that you’re trying to tell.”

From the show’s start to the end, Ramirez’s top priority is producing the truth. In the age of social media, she finds that to be more critical than ever. Misinformation, incorrect or misleading information, and disinformation, false information indented to deceive people, have constantly circulated social media since its inception.

Social media creates the buzz for potential stories, but false information is rampant on social media. In newsrooms, “When do you cover a story, you know, as a true, circulating everywhere?”

While a breaking story may get caught in misinformation that should be later corrected, Ramirez says that on-air TV is no place to address disinformation.

“Those are really hard to justify giving them any airtime,” she said. “They’re so ludicrous, it’s like really like that too. They’re looking for more attention. They’re way more extreme.”

Though Ramirez says she does not know what comes next, she knows that her journalism career will continue.

“I tell everybody that I work with the best of the best on that team, to a person, their true professionals, excellent journalists, and I have zero regrets,” she said.

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