In this post: Fired: National radio’s “only out transgender reporter”; How journalists should respond to Trump’s attack on news media: more on “objectivity”; Mario Garcia on news designers feasting on Trump; Sanctuary colleges can’t shield data from feds; problems with NY Gov Cuomo’s free college tuition plan.

Fired: National radio’s “only out transgender reporter”

They’ll even censor the poet Horace for making political comments. Charles Vernier, Le Charivari, 1848.

“Objectivity is dead, and I’m OK with it!”

That was the title of a short essay reporter Lewis Wallace posted on his blog on Medium. Wallace reports for Marketplace, the public radio program you can hear daily on WBEZ, with a segment on Morning Edition. Wallace soon followed with  “I was fired from my journalism job ten days into Trump.”

Marketplace fired its only out transgender reporter — maybe the only out transgender reporter for a national outlet — for saying that while he stood for “truth and fairness in reporting,” he questioned whether journalists could be or should be “neutral.” Neutral about whether transgender people have a right to exist, neutral about racial persecution … or any other atrocity.

He published “Objectivity is dead”; then he was suspended without discussion and told to take the piece down. He took it down, but he wasn’t reinstated, and when he wrote a letter “asking for a chance to debate the issues,” he was fired with no opportunity for discussion. Maybe there’s more to the story, but the timing and sequence of events support his version.

“Neutrality isn’t real: Neutrality is impossible for me, and you should admit that it is for you, too. As a member of a marginalized community (I am transgender), I’ve never had the opportunity to pretend I can be ‘neutral.’ After years of silence/denial about our existence, the media has finally picked up trans stories, but the nature of the debate is over whether or not we should be allowed to live and participate in society, use public facilities and expect not to be harassed, fired or even killed. Obviously, I can’t be neutral or centrist in a debate over my own humanity. The idea that I don’t have a right to exist is not an opinion, it is a falsehood. On that note, can people of color be expected to give credence to ‘both sides’ of a dispute with a white supremacist, a person who holds unscientific and morally reprehensible views on the very nature of being human? Should any of us do that?” (Wallace, “Objectivity is dead, and I’m okay with it.”)

It’s not surprising that the Marketplace bosses wouldn’t discuss Wallace’s comments with him. Their response was corporate: they fired him by email. But then, it could be embarrassing to dispute any of Wallace’s arguments.

Note that the firing was not about whether Wallace’s reporting for Marketplace was “objective”; Wallace published his opinion pieces not in Marketplace, but in Medium. Marketplace bosses didn’t respond to his challenge to show that there was any problem with his reporting, and he made clear he believes in meeting Marketplace’s standards for reporting. His firing was about whether a reporter has the right to express political or moral views on his own time and dime.

Critiques of “objectivity” aren’t new, and there are ways of talking about “objectivity” that do not equate it with “neutrality” and do not assume it is values-free or “balanced.”

Marketplace could just as easily have said: OK, let’s not argue about words. By “objectivity,” we mean what most people mean: Reporting as honestly and fairly as possible, basing factual claims on evidence, not letting your values or wishes get in the way of telling the truth. You’re just misusing the word “objective” and what you mean is something like “neutrality,” against which you make a respectable argument. But saying you reject objectivity is easily misunderstood; so just adjust your language and we’ll all be fine.

So why did they fire Wallace without offering any opportunity for discussion? First, because that’s their corporate culture; don’t think public radio’s is any better than the rest. No “thank you for all the fine reporting you’ve done for  us,” no “sorry.” But they also fired him for another reason: because they adhere to the orthodoxy in mainstream journalism, which some say is part of journalism’s “professional ideology.” That orthodoxy requires the appearance of “neutrality,” the pretense that the reporters have no opinions.

Many readers don’t realize that if you report for a mainstream news organization, you could get fired if you go on the Women’s March. Or if you hang a sign in your front yard supporting the guy running for local dogcatcher. Or if you say in social media, on your own time and on your personal Facebook page, that the President is a sexual predator. (But it’s OK to quote someone else saying he is.)

Marketplace bosses told Wallace he violated their “code of ethics.” Their “code” is a good statement of the orthodoxy. Keep your politics private, don’t say anything on social media that could give the impression that you have any political or moral views. (Of course, in practice, that only applies to views that are outside of bipartisan consensus — in other words, you can say anything about politics and morality so long as it is uninteresting and without any practical meaning.)

This is less about “objectivity” than it is about claiming trust and legitimacy for journalists, protecting the news organization from criticism.   Not that anyone seriously thinks the “liberal media” can do anything to avoid criticism from the right or the left, or that any amount of genuflection will dissuade Republicans from defunding the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Objective reporting is supposed to mean values-free reporting, even though any fool knows that someone’s values select what newspapers report on and what they ignore, who they think is a credible or newsworthy source and who doesn’t count, what goes in the headline, what goes in the lead, what is buried inside or cut before publication.

The camera has a cameraman. What it records depends on his standpoint. Image: Dziga-Vertov, Man with a Camera (1929).

NYU Journalism Prof. Jay Rosen has been writing about this for years. In one widely-read blogpost, he uses the title of philosopher Thomas Nagel’s critique of this concept of objectivity, which Rosen calls “The View from Nowhere.” “In pro journalism, American style, the View from Nowhere is a bid for trust that advertises the viewlessness of the news producer. Frequently it places the journalist between polarized extremes, and calls that neither-nor position “impartial.” Second, it’s a means of defense against a style of criticism that is fully anticipated: charges of bias originating in partisan politics and the two-party system. Third: it’s an attempt to secure a kind of universal legitimacy that is implicitly denied to those who stake out positions or betray a point of view. American journalists have almost a lust for the View from Nowhere because they think it has more authority than any other possible stance.”

How necessary is this “professional ritual”? Here is one of my favorite leads: “The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it’s everywhere. The world’s most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.” (Matt Taibbi, “The Great American Bubble Machine.”)

Let’s distinguish between “objectivity” as style of writing (no “editorializing” or first-person, “just the facts”) and objectivity as a practice of reporting that places honesty, fairness and accuracy above personal values and wishes, that acknowledges subjectivity but commits to seeking truth above all. Objectivity as practice can give us the “objective” style of the NY Times front page, or Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone.

Readers’ practices and expectations have changed, but, realistically, you can expect the old guard to maintain its professional rituals.  Public radio’s flagship reporting, no less than the New York Times, guards its “strategic rituals” of objectivity; “neutrality” may be a pretense, but it remains useful as a feature of this factual style of writing. Yet readership and trust has shifted to include the point-of-view journalism Taibbi exemplifies. Reporters like Wallace may be good enough for the most prestigious, the most “respectable” outlets, but, realistically, those media organizations are not going to change their rules any time soon. The Wallaces have a good critique of the flaws in the code, but so long as media is a battlefield in the struggle for power, the “respectable” media will purge any journalist who is transparent about personal values.

But then there is the rest of the media, and there Wallaces are welcome, and there my eyes and yours go daily.

“Oh, so, you want to mess with the press?” Daumier, La Caricature, October 3, 1833.

How journalists should respond to Trump’s attack on news media: more on “objectivity”

How should the news media answer the Trump-Bannon regime’s assault? It’s a mistake to underestimate Trump. His people have made clear that their goal is the delegitimization of all news media they can’t control, so that only their messaging will be trusted.

Reuters editor-in-chief Steve Adler gave us as good an answer as we can expect from mainstream professionals. When he said that Reuters reporters would follow “the same rules that govern our work anywhere,” he put the “land of the free” in the same class as the dictatorships they report from: “Turkey, the Philippines, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Thailand, China, Zimbabwe, and Russia.” The letter is worth reading in its entirety. It’s rules are a succinct expression of the professional journalist’s conception of what objectivity means under a hostile and repressive regime. 

One of Adler’s rules has long been a subject of media criticism. “Give up on hand-outs and worry less about official access. They were never all that valuable anyway. Our coverage of Iran has been outstanding, and we have virtually no official access. What we have are sources.”

Over-reliance on access has given too much power to official sources. The offer and denial of access is used to intimidate and control reporters, and you see that power in play in the timid questions in press conferences and softball interviews, and in shallow reporting that leaves out background, context and the perspectives of critics. Jay Rosen said it well in his Pressthink blogpost with the title: “Send the interns. Put your most junior people in the White House briefing room. Recognize that the real story is elsewhere, and most likely hidden.”

Trump’s first press conference. La Presse, via CJR.

“News designers worldwide feast on Trump”

News designer Mario Garcia surveys images of Trump in global news media in The Columbia Journalism Review: How news designers use headlines, typography, news photos, infographics, and, most of all, illustration and caricature. The era of Trump poses a new challenge to fine artists; let them match these high-impact images.

Sanctuary Colleges can’t shield data for international students

Many colleges are committing to protecting undocumented students, but they have been providing data on international students since the Patriot Act. The Chronicle of Higher Education gives some of the details. Among the data they have been supplying:  visa holders’ enrollment status, leaves of absence and withdrawals, drops from full course loads, off-campus jobs, changes in address, information about spouse and children.

Free college tuition? Sleight of hand, feint to the left

Gov. Cuomo gets a branding op with Bernie Sanders as he presents his free tuition plan. 

Today’s NY Times interview with Bernie Sanders on free college tuition reminds us how quickly our foolish utopian demands can be adopted by a realistic (and worried) Democratic establishment. The Times credits Sanders for plans like New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Excelsior Scholarship, offering free tuition at public colleges for students earning $125,000 or less. (Bernie deserves thanks; too much to expect the Times would also credit Occupy Wall Street’s radicals.)

A close look at the plans shows they are still far from what the activists (and Bernie) wanted. Some only cover community college (so far four states), or only two years (Rhode Island), and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s plan for New York is less than meets the eye. Its claim to fund all students with incomes of $125,000 or less is deceptive. Many of those students already get almost full tuition covered by federal and state programs. (Pell grants can provide up to $6000, and tuition at SUNY-Albany is $6470.) It’s really “a gift to the middle class,” says the Urban Institute’s Matt Chingos. Chingos points out a big difference between Cumo’s plan and the Sanders and Clinton proposals. Sanders and Clinton would have eliminated tuition but still left poor students with federal and state grants; Cuomo’s plan would deduct existing grant amounts from the new scholarship. That means most poor students would get nothing. Chingos points out, “At SUNY Albany, students from families making between $75,000 and $110,000 currently receive less than $700 in grant aid, on average. That means they face a bit under $6,000 in tuition payments each year, which the Cuomo plan would cover for them.”

This is also a good example of  the difference between progressive and centrist reforms. Centrists (and some on the right) like to apply means tests so benefits will go only to the “needy,” while progressives want them to go to everyone. A means test sounds reasonable, no? why do those spendthrift leftists want our tax money go to the wealthy? But universal benefits is strategic: If a program benefits everyone, it will be hard for opponents to chisel away at it. That’s why the chiselers have been able to cut public aid but not Social Security and Medicare, which benefit all taxpayers and have a broad and scary voting base of middle class support.

Other problems with the New York tuition plan, aside from the challenge of passing through the legislature, are that it doesn’t cover fees, which can add almost 50% to the cost of attending; living expenses pose a significant debt burden, especially for poor families where everyone needs to work, and that’s why the Dept of Education includes them in their data on the cost of attending colleges; and the state continues to defund public higher education even as costs rise. City University, for example, depends heavily on state support, which has dropped 17% in the last eight years while enrollment and costs continue to rise. City College of CUNY, my alma mater, a legendary “engine of social mobility,” now has an engineering school in danger of losing accreditation.

As protest movements challenge the political class, the smart centrists will feint to the left. The smart activists won’t be overly impressed if one of our standard bearers gives them a photo op.

Note bottles at lower left, a reminder that the progressive free tuition plan is considerably watered down by the time it reaches the governor’s desk. Photo: Kevin P. Coughlin / Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo