Thoughts and sentiments from a professional journalist

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By Ariana Allen

Picking a career in journalism is often a case of what if’s. What if I don’t like my station? What if the city isn’t a good fit? What if my starting pay isn’t where I want it to be? These questions and more went through the mind of multimedia journalist Danielle Church of WGRZ in Buffalo, New York, and for Church, some of the what if’s came true.

A DePaul alum, she spent time mulling over her career decision before choosing a place to begin her professional life.

“I wasn’t sure I was going to actually do it because I didn’t want to leave Chicago,” Church, who grew up in Chicago’s Northwest suburbs, said of her feelings at the time. She eventually decided to go for it and started a career in journalism in Fargo, North Dakota.

For a lot of students finding a place or as those in the business say, “news market”, the move is often one of the biggest challenges, as first markets are usually in smaller, less familiar towns. Many students are taught that the way to make it to a bigger market like Chicago or Los Angeles, is to work their way up gradually…still, this process can be daunting.

When it came time to leave Chicago’s Lincoln Park and move to the upper midwest, Church had some reservations.

“I’m not going to lie, it was pretty tough…It’d be different if you were moving to a place that you really wanted to go but Fargo, North Dakota is very, very cold. Like -40 degrees [in the winter],” Church said of the move she ultimately made.

While in Fargo, she wanted to familiarize herself with all aspects of the job so she asked her news director if she could try something new.

“I’d really like to learn to produce and learn to anchor,” Church said, and he partially obliged, allowing her two days a week to produce. While Church did gain experience, she realized producing wasn’t really for her.

“I don’t like producing at all. I think it’s very boring,” she said of the behind-the-scenes newsroom job.

When her contract was coming to an end, Church began looking to land elsewhere, but the job search did not go as smoothly as she wanted.

“It took me about six months to find my next job in Buffalo. It wasn’t my first interview, but it was the first station to call me back,” she recalled.

During her interview in Buffalo, the job wasn’t exactly what she hoped as it did require some production, but Church still decided to go for it.

“I was like well this is a good station. I can put in the work and show them I’m a team player and hopefully I’ll be out of [producing] soon.”

Church did eventually work her way through producing and doesn’t do it as frequently anymore, but after almost five years in the business, Church’s future in the career is undecided.

“I just don’t know if I’m going to stay in it to be honest with you,” she said.

Her uncertainty stems from feelings of being underappreciated in the newsroom.

“You work your ass off to get these story ideas…and sometimes I don’t feel like I’m listened to or like my ideas are always on the back burner.”

Church continued, “Everybody is so excited [about going into their first market] which is great. But I really wish somebody would have sat me down and been like, listen, this is what it’s like.”

After listening to her talk about the business, her story rang out as one that is not shared nearly enough as it should with future on-air reporters. The reality is, the starting pay is low, hours are unusual, and most will be far from home if they weren’t already while in college. Being a reporter is a job for those who have a real passion for storytelling and who are willing to take on the responsibility of having such a crucial role in society. Church’s vulnerability allows others to see the truth behind being a new reporter, ultimately showing how good of a journalist she really is by revealing the other side of a story not many are willing to tell.

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Separating the reporter from the cause

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By: Abena Bediako

The SPJ code of ethics is clear and direct. Fred Brown wrote them as a guide for professional journalists and made it a point to leave nothing open for interpretation. Whenever they are faced with a difficult decision concerning a story, their reporting skills, or their character, the codes should lead them down the right path.

Former executive producer for ABC News “Nightline,” Tom Bettag believes the standards for journalism are set and clear.

“Journalism is a profession with very specific standards for what you can and what you can’t do,” said Bettag. “And I think they’re pretty well laid out. And pretty well agreed.”

However, there are situations cloudier than others. The code reads journalists must seek truth and report it, minimize harm, act independently, and be accountable and transparent. Some of these principles have become more difficult to follow than others – specifically acting independently.

I’m not referring to reporters publicly aligning themselves with political parties. It’s clear that should never be a topic of discussion. However, there are other movements and acts they might find difficult to separate themselves from.

Journalism is one of the few professions where separating the worker from the occupation is not an option. Frank Whelan, a features writer, participated in a Pride parade in 2006 as a co-grand marshal. Whelan and his partner chose this day to celebrate themselves and their relationship. But does participating in a gay parade contrast with acting independently?

Gay pride might fall under a political issue for some, and others see it as part of their identity. Supporting gay rights doesn’t have to affect your reporting skills, but the audience may not see it the same way. Other journalists might question the act as well.

“I think if you’re a journalist, you’re a journalist, and you can’t take your journalist hat off,” said Bettag. “You know this whole thing about to what extent can you go marching in a parade, like Black Lives Matter, these are really tough issues. And each one of us has to decide that for ourselves.”

Whelan decided and chose himself. He took two days off, considered unpaid suspension by his employer, and never looked back. He felt his job’s reaction to being in the parade fell under the category of sexual discrimination, age discrimination, and defamation. And he proved this with three lawsuits. Whelan was faced with the challenge of choosing between his humanity and his role as a reporter. For issues like this one, reporters must consider things like objectivity and credibility.

“Credibility is so rare that we are in the credibility business. If we are more than anything else trying to be accurate, then we have a chance of being credible,” said Bettag.

While Bettag agrees that credibility must always play a role, he has different views about objectivity.

“The word objectivity, I think, is not a good one. I don’t think journalism ever tried to be objective, that’s an impossibility because we are all brought up with different backgrounds. The goal is to be fair and open-minded. The journalist is saying, ‘I will always keep an open mind.’”

Journalists are not activists and vice versa. A reporter’s opinion and stance on a specific issue should never interfere with their work. They need to remain open-minded because they don’t work to serve themselves. They work to serve the public. Acting otherwise could tarnish their integrity and credibility.

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The social media strategies of newsrooms affect their stories

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

By: Monique Mulima

 Like most people I know around my age, I get most of my news from social media. As more people cut the cord and get rid of cable they’re turning to social media sites like Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok or Facebook rather than sitting down to watch the nightly news.

Although younger people may associate public media like NPR or PBS with their parents or grandparents’ generation tuning in on their car radio or watching afternoon television, publicly funded news organizations are also adapting to the world of social media news.

Geoff Bennett, chief Washington correspondent for PBS NewsHour spoke about how public media has had to think about how and where people will see their stories.

“The way that people consume news now is completely divorced from the way we program it,” said Bennett.

When news stories appear on social media it’s usually just a couple minute clip. Twitter, Instagram and TikTok have limits on how long videos can be and on social media users are more likely to engage with short videos.

This means that when people see news online, they won’t be seeing it in the context of a full broadcast or previous coverage. Bennett explained that because of this it’s important to think of every story as a distinct segment on its own that should be “accurate, engaging and tell the full story.”

With more staff and larger budgets corporate for-profit media like CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox etc., are able to invest more money into breaking stories and expanding their digital outreach compared to public media. But Bennett, who has worked at both NBC and PBS, believes that public media has strengths that can help them excel on social media too.

Bennett explained that the time public media has to put together stories allows them to provide more context and tell a more complete story, even if they’re not the ones who broke the news .

“The approach, quality and content of public media is unmatched,” said Bennett.

One example of a recent public media news story I saw on Twitter that did this well was a social media video by Chicago’s local PBS station, WTTW, about why Chicago’s recycling program problems persist. This video was just over 2 minutes long and told the story through animations and graphics touching on issues with the system, the history of it and how it compares to other cities. Although recycling may not always be the most interesting topic, the video’s graphics and pacing made me want to keep watching.

The video told a full story and provided context in a visually engaging way, but it’s also a story that would have taken time. To animate this would have taken from a few days to a week, and then there would have also been time needed for research and writing. This isn’t a story that could be turned around on a short one-day deadline, which would usually be required for breaking news. But since public media is often given more time to work on stories, they were able to put together this piece and still peg it to America Recycles Day.

These types of opportunities that public media has to offer much needed context to stories and stick with them longer is what Bennett thinks public media should be doing more of.

“Public media needs to find new ways to innovate and own the lanes that they should own,” said Bennett.

In contrast, corporate media focuses more of their social media strategy on breaking news. One example of this is how NBC Chicago was able to quickly turn around videos from election night like Darren Bailey conceding, and post them to social media. Breaking news online like this on tight deadlines is something corporate media is able to do well because they have more staff.

The two approaches of longer storytelling with more context and breaking news are both needed on social media. Users want to know what’s happening in the moment and also want to know the context of why it’s important.

As where people get their news continues to change, newsrooms need to think about how their stories stand on their own, so that the public can have sources where they can get reliable and fact-checked information both on television and online.

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Guns, peanut butter, and first-person reporting

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

by Erik Uebelacker

Neil Steinberg has been at this for a while – 35 years to be exact. He was shocked to learn that college kids are still reading his work.

“As a rule, I just imagine that all my readers are 80 years old,” Steinberg told me. “I would never have imagined that you existed.”

The longtime Chicago Sun-Times columnist has, what he describes as, a dream job. Getting paid to share personal opinions and experiences with readers is almost an unattainable dream for recreational column writers like me.

In fact, I’ve often been taught to sway away from this kind of sharing. The idea that “true reporting” requires us to completely remove ourselves and our experiences from a story has been drilled into my head after nearly five years of journalism school.

But sometimes, following this golden rule can leave out the most interesting parts of a story.

“The idea that journalism is only some sort of factual list of something – I mean, that’s stenography or something,” Steinberg said.

Steinberg’s ideas come from his own observations and curiosities. At times, his pursuit of knowledge the topics he selects leads him down some interesting paths that he chooses to share with readers in first-person. In these cases, he doesn’t remove himself from the story. His journalistic process becomes the story.

I remember reading a column of his last year titled, “Why does peanut butter taste so good?” It was one of his zanier concepts for an article, and one that led him down a rabbit hole as he sought answers from “big peanut butter.”

“I didn’t set out to be part of that story,” Steinberg said. “I like peanut butter, and it was my perception that it tasted better than it used to. That was when I went to Smucker’s to ask about it. This was something which they could have just responded to, but they didn’t. And it was maddening.”

Steinberg’s received a lackluster response from the Smucker’s organization and was ghosted by other big players in the peanut industry. His relentless pursuit of knowledge eventually led him to Jordan Powers, food scientist at the University of Georgia, who gave Steinberg the answers he’d been looking for.

There was no crunchy revelation; the simple answer is adding more fatty acid that preserves flavor for longer. But for peanut butter-enjoyers of a certain age, that makes a big difference in taste.

This story had a big impact on me at the time, not because it was groundbreaking investigative journalism, but because Steinberg engrossed me in a topic that I never thought I cared about and brought me along on his reporting mission through his first-person writing.

Steinberg has even proven this writing strategy’s effectiveness with more serious topics. One of his most frequented issues is gun control. He once went to a gun store to rent and shoot a gun for one of his stories.

“When I first went, they said, ‘We can’t rent the gun to you,’” Steinberg said. “’Why?’ I asked. He said, ‘Because people who rent the gun commit suicide, so you need a second person.’ So, I brought my 11-year-old son in.”

That’s a hell of an anecdote, and one that would have likely been left aside if Steinberg was too worried about removing himself from the story. I, for one, am glad he wasn’t. When the reporting process is as engaging as Steinberg’s was, no one should be.

After all, opinion writing is still journalism, despite what detractors may say. Steinberg went to the edge of the earth to find data on peanut butter. If Smucker’s was a public institution, I bet he would’ve filed a few FOIAs, too.

Presenting found information in a first-person column doesn’t detract from the journalistic value a story holds, so long as that information is vetted and correct.

“I think, to have trusted sources and to have people to mediate that information is essential,” he said.

Mediator of information – that’s a liberal definition of “journalist” that I can get behind.

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The role and responsibility journalists have to misinformation and disinformation on social media

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By Abena Bediako

Journalists don’t need a license to practice journalism. The profession does not fall into the same category as being a doctor or a lawyer. Journalism requires a method, almost scientific in fact.

But one major obstacle often hindering reporters is the internet, where a high volume of misinformation and disinformation circulates. Almost anyone can tweet a picture of a disaster or event and claim it’s credible.

The pressure of being first with breaking news sometimes takes precedence over fact-checking and ensuring the validity of the story “journalists” report on. And all it takes is one person to spread the inaccuracy to gain some real traction.

Before going further, I feel it’s important to distinguish the difference between misinformation and disinformation. Disinformation is when people intentionally create false or misleading information to make money, have political influence, or maliciously cause trouble or harm. Misinformation is when people share disinformation but don’t realize it’s false or misleading.

 The current war in Ukraine is a great example. BBC Monitoring posted an article on their site, the headline reading, “Ukraine invasion: False claims the war is a hoax go viral.” Below the byline is an image of a man who appears to be a wounded soldier. However, upon further examination, the photo derives from a Ukraine TV series titled Contamin. 

The photo comes from the production set taken in December 2020, more than a year before the Ukraine war. Fact-checking goes beyond words. Images and videos require equal scrutiny, but things get difficult when the article and images accumulate 1,000 plus “likes” and retweets, making the story seem credible.

It does not help journalists either when people with political power openly discredit the work of reporters and claim they are solely responsible for spreading lies and inaccuracies.

The media holds a bad rep, especially for those it does not favor. The term “fake news” became extremely popular during the Trump administration. It even went as far as providing inaccurate information about COVID-19 and claimed there was massive fraud during the 2020 election.

Journalists are the watchdogs of democracy, and if people can’t trust news publications to keep them informed on society, who will they turn to?

There is a continuous development of unqualified “reporters” creating blog websites that only serve to spread misinformation. This issue needs to be addressed more.

There is a clear line between tabloid news and actual reporting, but the internet has made some of the lines a bit murky.

In Misinformation and Herd Behavior in Media Markets, written by Bartosz Wilczek, the author states, “tabloids will allocate more attention to political and business misinformation than rival broadsheets. Thereby, they will make the misinformation more publicly available and, therefore, put more pressure on broadsheets to allocate attention to the misinformation as well.”

Publications and media outlets feel pressure to generate more attention. The media lives to serve its audience, therefore they need to find ways to keep them engaged. Some of their tactics show in the speed of a published story or the sensationalism of a story. However, neither of these should take precedence over the truth.

You don’t need a license to practice journalism, but you do need to stick with the journalistic method. Journalists need to be the ones to remind the public what good reporting entails.

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Journalism Can’t Become More Diverse Without Changing Hiring

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By: Monique Mulima

When I started my master’s in journalism, I was excited to embark on my new career path. Having only been out of school a year, I figured it was a reasonable time to go back, but little did I know, that to some I seemed late.

My classmates were already well-versed in skills like the inverted pyramid, AP style and had connections in the industry, while I was still getting my footing. Although this could sometimes be frustrating, I figured since we were all in the same program, we were still on track to have the same opportunities. But as I began to apply to internships and attend industry panels, I started to realize that many news organizations were not interested in someone without prior journalism experience.

It’s the job seekers paradox, you are supposed to have experience to get a job but can’t get experience without a job. I worried about whether I was already too late to get into journalism, and I wasn’t alone in having these thoughts.

Journalists, particularly those of marginalized backgrounds, have pointed out that companies only seeking people with experience limits the applicant pool by excluding those without industry connections and those who historically made not have had access to the same opportunities.

This was a particularly large online conversation in August 2021 when The Washington Post posted their summer internship applications, which included the requirement for “previous experience in a major newsroom.” People within the journalism industry pointed out how this can be a barrier to many students who do not have connections in the industry to get into a major newsroom or who may live in smaller towns that don’t have major newsrooms.

Journalist Soledad O’Brien tweeted “If you are currently a college junior who is looking for a newsroom internship and has already had prior experience working ‘in a major newsroom’ your daddy is probably employed there. Good luck!”

Austin-American Statesman reporter Nicole Foy pointed out on Twitter that The Washington Post isn’t alone in have these requirements. “The thing about everyone dunking on the ‘major newsroom’ part of this tweet is that even local newspapers with like 25 people are this selective despite definitely NOT being the Washington Post,” she wrote.

Following the backlash, The Washington Post did remove this wording from their job requirements, but just because it is no longer listed, it does not mean that they are now actually interviewing people who don’t have that experience.

Teen Vogue Interim Managing Editor Jewel Wicker wrote a Twitter thread about how The Washington Post including this wording in the first place purposely discourages certain students from applying, and how even if those students apply they may just be wasting their time and not be considered anyways. “As someone who works to place interns in newsrooms, this makes me so sad. Every single day this industry shows us they’re not serious about fixing the inequities in journalism,” she wrote.

Oftentimes journalists propose that aspiring journalists get their start in smaller media markets and newsrooms to gain experience. However, these positions are often low paid (if paid at all), and students of marginalized backgrounds may not be able to afford to work for these salaries, especially if it may require relocation.

Another concern with some smaller markets is that a number of these places may not be as welcoming to people of color and LGBTQ+ people. This limits even further how and where marginalized students can gain industry experience. The Nieman Journalism Lab compiled a thread of dozens of tweets of journalists of color’s experience with racism in newsrooms across the country. The Nieman Lab also did research into racism in newsrooms, and found that journalism has a clear racism problem and put together a list of peer-reviewed studies that point to some of these issues.

Even if students can overcome all these barriers and get their start in the industry, it still may not be enough to advance when so many news outlets like The Washington Post will only consider applicants who have worked in larger newsrooms.

Huffington Post politics reporter Liz Skalka tweeted about how this is an industry wide problem. “If you’re pissed off about the Washington Post’s “major newsroom” requirement for interns, wait till you hear how this industry treats people who have spent any significant amount of time in ‘local news,’” she wrote.

If journalism truly wants to reflect the makeup of America and become more equitable, it cannot keep in place the same barriers that have always existed. It has to become more open to people with other experiences like freelance, student newsrooms and non-major newsrooms. Journalism shouldn’t just challenge the status quo in our reporting, we should also do it within our newsrooms.

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The transparency of objectivity

dmoseley Student Perspectives

by Erik Uebelacker

I was the opinions editor for The DePaulia for the entirety of my senior year. I have dozens of op-eds published under my name, available for the whole world to see with a simple Google search. As a result, my personal beliefs on politics, social issues, world events, etc. can be easily discovered by anybody who is curious.

It’s disheartening that the very stories that it was once my job to write could prevent me from future employment opportunities within the journalism industry.

This certainly isn’t a given. But due to the constantly debated and ever-changing definition of journalistic objectivity, I know I have to prepare myself for this possibility. All journalists should, not necessarily because of a readily available library of opinion stories published under their name, but because of a near-unanimous growth of individuals’ digital footprints that makes it harder to keep their true beliefs secret.

In theory, preferring unbiased journalists to produce objective reporting makes sense. These journalists don’t exist, however. It’s not a profound epiphany to discover that nobody is without personal biases or beliefs, even reporters. In fact, journalists may have even stronger opinions on their areas of coverage than non-reporters, due to the fact that they are constantly speaking to sources and engrossing themselves in their beat.

Walter Lippmann admitted this as far back as 1919 in his famed writing about journalistic objectivity. The American Press Institute later summarized Lippmann’s findings, stating in their objectivity guide that, “The method is objective, not the journalist.”

Under this century-old explanation, my op-eds shouldn’t come back to bite me. If the journalist can’t be truly objective, then having my personal beliefs so easily accessible shouldn’t hinder my reporting potential, so long as the reporting itself is done objectively and truthfully.

That’s still not the reality, though. I’ve heard stories from friends and colleagues about hiring managers scouring their social media accounts and general web presence, making employment decisions based on how much opinion they express online. The New York Times discourages their journalists from sharing beliefs on social media. I can only assume they wouldn’t be happy if their reporters had columns or op-eds out there as well.

These industry leaders know that all reporters, and all people, have biases. I’ve read The American Press Institute’s “The lost meaning of ‘objectivity’” countless times in numerous journalism classes at DePaul. I’m sure other journalism schools require the same. Even so, many in the public and in the industry still expect reporters to operate under this veil of true objectivity that prohibits them from expressing how they truly feel outside of a story.

In this process, I can’t help but feel that some transparency is lost. The American Press Institute calls for “a transparent approach to evidence” in the reporting process. As a young reporter, I’d like to know the beliefs of the journalists behind a story. Shielding those from the public, when we all know that they are there, is not in the best interest of preserving that transparency. This is even more applicable today, as the spread of misinformation is rampant in the world of politics and media, with much of it done anonymously.

After all, it’s not a journalist’s job to be an unbiased person. Their job is to separate those biases from the reporting they do and the stories they share.

 

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Crime Reporting: is the mugshot necessary?

dmoseley Student Perspectives

By Kate Linderman

 It’s common to see someone’s mugshot during the crime report on the local evening news. Growing up in Lincoln, Nebraska, I have distinct memories of watching KOLN’s crime reports as a young child — mugshots always displayed. Today I went to KOLN’s website, and it didn’t take long to find another mugshot on their website published just a few hours earlier.

In the last couple years, journalists have asked whether or not it is ethical to publish someone’s mugshot, especially after arrest and prior to conviction. The criminal justice system in the United States uses the presumption of innocence principle, meaning a person accused of a crime is innocent until proven guilty, however, the common news consumer is most likely to associate guilt with the mugshot, depicting the pictured in a more humiliating matter compared to sharing other identifying characteristics such as name, age, physical description, location of alleged offense and/or arrest and any past offenses.

It can be argued that removing mugshots from the media closes a door on transparency and that the public has the right to know who the arrested person is and if they recognize them. While removing a photo provides less context compared to a description, the arrested person is either still detained or, if released, is not considered a threat to the general public.

And these mugshots, whether or not the person is eventually deemed innocent or guilty by the system, have a lasting effect years later. The Marshall Project published an article discussing this issue back in 2020. The author, Keri Blakinger, had a personal connection.

“In 2010, I was arrested with heroin and still sitting in jail when my own “faces of meth”-style mugshot began spreading across the internet, from the Huffington Post to Gawker to the Ithaca Journal,” she wrote. “I didn’t like it; I was struggling with drug addiction and the entire internet seemed to be making fun of my appearance. But I didn’t fault the news organizations. I knew I’d screwed up, and mugshots seemed like an unchangeable part of the media landscape.”

Since Blakinger’s arrest in 2010, the then “unchangeable” standard for publishing mugshots has changed at some publications including The Houston Chronicle during Blakinger’s time as an employee. The Associated Press did not entirely stop publishing mugshots, but they no longer release mugshots and suspect names in minor crime stories.

The practice of publishing mugshots is old, yet the ethical discussion around them is new and more media outlets may change this once-traditional standard. It is something Blakinger, once the subject of a published mug shot, would applaud.

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Just when you think you know, you don’t.

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

by Tiffany Payton

Journalist at NBC News and DePaul alumna, Chloe Atkins, has always had a love for writing. But Atkins notes, that this “road to success” was nontraditional and “not as glamourous as everyone thinks.”

Atkins currently covers abortion access and breaking news. Atkins’ wide array of storytelling began during her time as a college student. She started her career as a fashion and women’s health writer at Vogue and credits her time at DePaul as what shaped her into the reporter she is today.

“For me, during my experience, the professors at DePaul were so gracious to those who wanted to learn. This business is all about learning. Just when you think you know, you don’t. I try to keep that same inquisitiveness with every story I’m on. It’s a part of it.”

During her time at Vogue, Atkins pushed out stories every day under tight deadlines. Atkins would begin her day talking to activists, women, and reproduction experts on both sides of her story. Those connections with Vogue helped her cover the abortion care debate in America by understanding how to cover a topic that encompasses many oppositional voices. Today, she covers abortion access at a critical juncture with the possible overturning by the U.S. Supreme Court of the landmark legal decision of Roe vs. Wade.

Topics of women’s health can be daunting when you’re a woman reporting it because it affects you directly.  There are two very different sides to the abortion debate and Atkins says she reports the truth “no matter what.”

“At the end of the day, a job of a journalist is to stand on the truth and include a variety of opinions,” Atkins said. “Everyone  will have an opinion. Your job is to include these opinions, but fact-check everything you get from a source and report. You cannot weigh your personal feelings in your reporting. The truth and the truth only,” Atkins added.

Truth-telling is the heartbeat of journalism, our audiences trust us to do just that. “If someone tells you it’s raining, as a journalist, you can’t just believe it’s raining. You have to go outside and check to see if it’s raining,” Atkins remarked.

As a journalist, there’s no limit to what you’re going to report on, but you must do it. “That’s your duty. You can’t get too emotionally involved in a story. Truth-telling is not about emotion, it’s about the truth and what affects the general public.”

Atkins stresses how crucial objective reporting is, and how you must balance your personal life with that. “Don’t get involved in a story because it can affect you. As reporters, we all have stories to tell, but audiences, do not have the same experiences and that’s important so you must be cognizant of that. But regardless of how someone personally feels, each day you go home you will feel great that you told the story in truth.”

The truth in storytelling should always enable the reader to fully understand all the information and facts as well as opposing sides of any story. The truth is what the audience deserves and that’s how you build trust with your audience. You cannot build trust without the truth.

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Journalists need to be ‘good’ at telling ‘bad’ news

dmoseley Journalist Profiles

Fox News’ John Roberts sheds light on how to let viewers down easy

By Hayley DeSilva

When the pandemic first broke out in 2020, our eyes were glued to our screens.

Trying to get whatever information we could, trying to predict the unpredictable, trying to figure out ways to keep ourselves and loved ones safe.

Soon after, we saw a summer filled with violence after the murder of George Floyd sparked civil unrest across the country. Up next, a highly controversial election that had us all on the edge.

As we all know, so much more has happened since. Currently, we find ourselves in the wake of another horrendous mass shooting in Uvalde, TX–and all the news that comes with it.

Simply said, the past two years have hardly been a time of ‘good news.’

The New York Times published a study last year that revealed U.S. media had the most negative coverage of Covid-19 compared to any other source, such as scientific journals or international publications.

The study found that this was true across all national networks, from MSNBC to Fox News.

For so long, everywhere we turn, there is something new to punch us in the stomach.

As a journalist, you get paid to readily receive and dissect those low blows.

While many in our country have been encouraged to limit their news intake for their mental health, those in our profession can’t afford that luxury.

So, in the midst of trying to make sense of the seemingly endless atrocities happening all over the world, how can we do better for our audiences? How do we give them the information they need without sending them into turmoil?

John Roberts, co-anchor of ‘America Reports’ on Fox News and a former senior national correspondent for CNN, believes that it comes down to providing more context.

“Myself and Sandra, and our team for America Reports, try to give people added value, context and perspective on whatever the big story is,” Roberts said. “So, it’s not just, ‘Oh, here’s the horrible news.’ It’s, ‘Here’s what the news is now. What does it mean to you? What can be done about it? How do we change things?’”

Roberts further believes that viewers broadening their media horizons, so to speak, can be another way to avoid being inundated by negativity.

“In this day and age when people have access to so many different streams of information, awareness is becoming more and more important…You need to be able to take a look at something whether it’s online or whether it’s a report from somewhere or wherever you get the information and compare that to other things that you have heard otherwise,” Roberts said. “It’s very easy for you to get drawn down a rabbit hole. So, the broader your platform of information is, the better able you are to have an understanding of where you sit in the universe and what’s really going on in that universe.”

But journalists don’t have to go down that rabbit hole either, according to Roberts.

“Just like anybody who deals with a lot of data, whether they be a stock trader, or whether they be the CFO of the company, they’re being inundated by figures every day,” Roberts said.

What he suggests is that we do our best at compartmentalizing our information, focusing on one subject at a time.

“If you’re trying to grasp everything all at once, you can feel overwhelmed, but if you put it in silos or buckets…it’s much easier to digest and focus on and much easier to compartmentalize,” Roberts said.

One of the authors in the Covid-19 media coverage study, Bruce Sacerdote of Dartmouth University, shared that the issue wasn’t with accuracy, the negative things being reported were true. The issue, he believed, was with what facts were being emphasized.

Perhaps, if we can keep ourselves from feeling overloaded by the news of the day, we won’t feel the need to over-emphasize. Maybe if we try to see the whole picture, good and bad, our audience can too.

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