We Should Redefine Journalism as the Pursuit of Equitable Justice

Originally published on October 21, 2021.

TRANSCRIPT: This is Baffled with David DesRoches, and this is episode 4: “A New Journalism Philosophy: The Pursuit of Equitable Justice.” 

So at the end of episodes one and three, after ranting like a loon about journalism problems and headline concerns, I ended with this simple idea, which is this: Journalism should be defined as an equitable pursuit of justice. So what exactly do I mean by that? Of course it's what this episode is all about, and we're going to dig into that question. 

Before we do that, I just want to say that in the previous three episodes, I did a lot of criticism and almost all of it was targeted at journalists and the practice of journalism, which is only part of the reason for this podcast. But I haven't spent so much time critiquing consumer habits, which, at least to some extent, influencing what journalists write about and how we write about. 

It's a bit of a chicken and egg problem if you think about it. Do news consumers drive journalistic practices or do journalistic practices drive news consumers? The answer is probably both. Both of those things are true. So, if you're not a journalist, if you're at some level, a consumer of news, you are also responsible for ensuring that your consumption habits do not feed poor journalistic practices.  

For us to get better, as journalists, we all need to get better. So don't click on clickbait. Don't share stories because you agree with the headline, or because it makes you afraid. Support good journalism with your wallet whenever possible. Those are just a few things you can do. 

Journalism and consumers need to change. I'm willing to bet the farm that most of you listening right now could tell me all about what happened to Gabby Petito (reminder: this episode published in late 2021). I bet most of you all listening could tell me what she was wearing when she went missing and what her boyfriend's name was. 

But how many of you could tell me about Akela Thomas? How many of you know she went missing from California in the summer of 2020? Maybe it's because if you search for news stories about Akela in google, there are actually 0 news stories about her. 

Guess how many Gabby Petito has? 2.47 million. 

Now, I'm not blaming you for not knowing Akela’s story and knowing Gabby's. OK, maybe I'm partially blaming you because you click those stories and journalists want clicks, so journalists write more of those stories. 

Missing White Woman Syndrome is a real thing. It's been proven journalists more frequently cover missing white women, and the intensity of that coverage is higher for white women than it is for women from other racial groups. 

And the story of the missing Black or brown woman rarely gets written. We can cover both of those stories, but we first need to redefine journalism again, as the pursuit of equitable justice and not the blind pursuit of truth. 

I'll try to tackle news consumption practices and its impact on journalism in another episode. For now, let's dig into this one, this new definition of journalism that I'd like us to think about. 

First, let's talk about how most journalists define their role today. The American Press Institute defines journalism as “storytelling with a purpose,” which I definitely like. Journalists basically tell everyone else what's going on. They provide information – hopefully it's fact-based and hopefully it's supported by evidence. 

You might also think of journalists as truth seekers. They tell you the truth through presenting the facts and using evidence to support the facts. But, as I've discussed before, the truth is always in constant flux. And as journalists pursue truth, they hardly, if ever, take that hard fact about truth seriously. 

And here's the dirty truth about truth – or maybe a better way to put it would be to say: Here's the lie about being a truth seeker that journalists want you to believe. Now, I don't think journalists are out there saying, “I want you to believe these lies,” but I think it's something that they tell themselves that's not completely accurate, because what journalists actually do is they seek truths that they also want you to believe. Now, this is certainly not always the case. Some journalists are more objectively minded than others, but generally speaking, journalists don't go out and seek a truth that they don't like. They do not seek truths that they disagree with. 

And they don't seek a truth that challenges their worldview. Or you could think of it like this. They don't seek a truth that would please people who have a different worldview from their own. And that's exactly why we have partisan media. It's not like Fox News or MSNBC are lying all the time or never telling the truth. 

No, they both tell the truth. How often is debatable, but there is usually some truth in most of what they discuss. 

But Fox's truth is going to look different from MSNBC's – both networks might be talking about the same Immigration bill, but Fox is going to focus on language from the bill that fits their messaging and their ideology. And on the flip side, MSNBC will focus on the bill language that fits their messaging and ideology. They simply never explore a topic from the angle of an opposing ideology, or more importantly, from a neutral ideology. 

For example, when was the last time MSNBC ran a story that took a critical look at illegal immigration? Or has Fox ever covered a story about climate change fairly, or, dare I say, without a climate denier present? 

That's because neither network blindly pursue truth. They pursue only the truths that support their political or ideological agenda. This is the truth, in virtually all news outlets, Fox and MSNBC, are simply more blatant about it. So don't let a journalist lie to you and tell you that they're a truth teller or a blind truth seeker, because they're not. They're seeking the truths that they already believe in. They're not seeking the truths that challenge them or challenge their worldview. 

And here's the kicker, and the thing that probably is going to make some of you mad. Maybe this is OK... but just bear with me for a second before you hit stop and go over to NPR or Joe Rogan. The point of this whole episode is this: The only truths journalists want to share are truths that serve their sense of right and wrong. They're driven by their sense of justice. This is how it is right now. 

Now, again, I'm not arguing this is a bad thing, but what makes this reality a challenge isn't so much that we're driven by justice, it's that we all have different definitions of justice, and it's these different definitions that drive partisan coverage, which then in turn deepens our distrust of each other. 

But maybe, just maybe, if we shared a definition of justice, maybe that could change. Obviously it's not that simple and we need to do more. We need to stop oversimplifying, stop dumbing things down, start seeking out complications like journalist Amanda Ripley says. Yes, journalists should be doing those things. 

But if we admit that it's likely impossible to approach all stories with such depth by virtue of the 24/7 news cycle, and shrinking attention spans, maybe on top of complicating things as much as possible, we should recognize and be openly honest about what drives journalists, and that's this: a deeply rooted sense of justice. 

Now this is not my idea, really, because a lot of modern journalists are already open about this. There are a lot of journalists who already pursue truth in the name of justice, like Nicole Hannah Jones, Matt Taibbi, Ta’Nahesi Coates and Glenn Greenwald, and many others. These are journalists who are open about their deeply-rooted sense of justice. And, to me at least, it seems like it's this sense of justice, it’s what drives their journalism. And that sense of justice is what determines their inclusion or exclusion of certain facts.  

Of course, I could be wrong if y'all are listening, please call me out. This is just the sense that I get from reading and consuming your work and from your public statements. 

Now here's where things get a little shaky, or very shaky, as I'm sure some of you listening will definitely disagree with me on this point, but if journalists are going to be omitting facts, which they do all the time, they should be doing so in the service of justice and not simply in the service of a narrative or political bias, or even, dare I say, in service of the truth, because, as I've said, truth changes and unless every single story changes with the truth, blind seeking of truth should not be the primary aim. 

The primary aim should be the pursuit of equitable justice. I think it's the sense of justice that drives a lot of journalists, actually today, to get into the field. As a matter of fact, our producer, Grace McGuire, I think that's one of the things that's drawing you to journalism, isn't that right? 

GRACE: “I want to go into investigative journalism just for that simple fact. I'm really interested in sociology and social issues, so I think going into journalism, I can expose a lot of social issues in our world and bring justice to the people that suffer from it.” 

DAVID: Right. And that's that sense of doing something right or exposing a wrong is what draws you to do the work right? It's not necessarily you just want to blindly pursue truth for truth’s sake. You actually see things that are wrong and you want to fix them, right?  

GRACE: “Yeah, it seems like a much more noble pursuit than just being like someone with statistics and the facts about the world.” 

DAVID: And I feel like a lot of journalists get into it for those reasons, but it's hard for them to actually talk about it in that way, again, because we're told to not be biased, right? We're told to not sort of have this agenda, but we all do. So if we agree that the agenda could be pursuit of equitable justice, then maybe we were operating at a level of transparency that people would respect, and maybe it would go far toward rebuilding the trust that we've lost over the years. Anything else you want to add?  

GRACE: Well, then it becomes the whole problem of what Is justice? 

DAVID: Right? That's we're going to get into in a minute. And again, you know, before we do jump into that, I wanted to talk a little bit about if we are omitting facts in the service of justice, how is that different from omitting facts for a political bias? And there really isn't much of a difference, to be honest with you. I mean, if you leave out a fact for any reason, it kind of does the public disservice because they're not getting the whole truth in that moment in time. And that's a really strong argument. And I actually agree with that. I mostly agree with that. 

But just as a thought experiment, just to make us a little uncomfortable, because why not? We should think about human nature. Like I've said before in an earlier podcast, people tend to openly believe a lie if it means they'll fit in a group. In other words, conforming is more important than believing the truth. Or you can think of it like this. Our need, our biological imperative as social beings, is to be social, to fit in, and that biological need often trump's our desire to know the truth. Our biological need often trump's our desire to know the truth. 

So, I don't have an idea about how journalism can actually tackle human nature, at least not something that's inextricably rooted deep in our minds and has arguably gotten worse over time. The simplest or easiest thing we can do is to simply recognize these facts about human nature at all times in our reporting, and by extension, let this knowledge guide the framing of our story so that hard, difficult, facts are contextualized and presented with respect to those who are likely to not believe it. 

Getting those people to actually read it, though? Well, that's a whole other episode. 

What also might help in addition to adding context and sensitively presenting hard facts, is that journalists pursue stories out of a sense of justice and not simply in the pursuit of truth that supports a narrative. 

The obvious rub here is that we all have different definitions of justice, just like Grace mentioned before. And I'm not going to get into all of them. I'm only going to try to defend one that I think maybe we could agree on, hopefully, naively. Hopefully, I don't know. I guess we'll see. 

Again, here's the definition I think we should go with: Justice should be based on the equitable distribution of fairness. 

Whether the narrative is objective or not, it doesn't really matter because justice has little to do with objectivity. Justice is supposed to be blind, of course, but we all know that it's not: a wealthy person steals millions of dollars from taxpayers or investors and pays a fine as a punishment or as a poor person steals a watch so they can buy food, and they spend three years in prison. 

So, if objectivity is more of a process, than an end result, in both journalism and justice – let's be real about how journalism can be used to equitably distribute justice. And of course, I can't speak authoritatively on justice as much as I think I can. I'm not a legal scholar. In fact, I'm pretty sure I barely passed media law in college, so let's turn to somebody who is a legal scholar, someone who literally wrote the book on what I'm talking about.  

John Rawls is often credited for the idea that justice should be defined as how his society distributes fairness. He talked all about this in his book, “A Theory of Justice,” and also in his essay, “Justice As Fairness.” Here's a bit about Rawls from the YouTube channel, The School of Life.

It was the publication of a theory of justice in 1971 that properly made Rawls’s name. Having read and widely discussed this book, Bill Clinton was to label Rawls the greatest political philosopher of the 20th Century and had him over to the White House for dinner on a regular basis. What, then, does this exemplar of fairness have to tell the modern world? Firstly, that things as they are now are patently unfair. The statistics all point to the radical unfairness of society; comparative charts of life expectancy and income projections direct us to a single overwhelming moral. 

Rawls understood that debates about unfairness and what to do about it often get bogged down in arcane details and petty squabbling, which mean that year after year, nothing quite gets done. What Rawls was therefore after was a simple, economical and polemical way to show people how their societies were unfair, and what they might do about it. 

Rawls was talking about how society metes out justice through laws and other systems, but I think it's time journalists consider our role in this process as well, because clearly journalists are already a huge part of the justice system. Unofficially, yes, but still integral. 

Now I don't want to get too deep on the philosophy here, because again, I'm not nearly qualified enough to talk about it. But the concept here is pretty simple and I can break it down into three parts.  

First, understand what fairness is. Well, the dictionary definition says it pretty well. It says, “impartial and just treatment or behavior without favoritism or discrimination.” 

And as I'm reading it, I realize the word “just” is implied in the definition of fairness. 

So let's take a step back for a second and put fairness into context with the other values that a lot of people hold. In his book, “The Righteous Mind,” NYU social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talks about how there are essentially six values that people think are the most important. They are: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. 

Liberals and conservatives value these six things to different degrees, and it's these six values and how they're distributed that generally drive a large part of our political ideology. Of those six things, I would argue that fairness and liberty are the most important things for a journalist to consider.  

Liberty is one of the things that everybody values. I mean, except obviously for the filthy rich, you know, authoritarians who want everyone to bow to their power. 

Fairness matters, because journalists already try their hardest to be fair. Now we just need to focus harder on the idea of doing journalism in the service of justice, which again could be defined as the pursuit of fairness. 

I'd like to pose a question to you. When you were growing up, did your parents ever tell you that life isn't fair? Did anyone ever say to you, “Hey, deal with it. Life isn't fair.” It's a lesson that a lot of us learned pretty early on, that life isn't fair. Deal with it. Now, look, I don't have any delusions that journalism can make the world a fair place. But maybe if the pursuit of fairness took top priority above truth, which again, is fluid and almost always changing, maybe we'll have a better chance at restoring trust and, by extension, maintaining that trust over the long term. 

This isn't a huge leap. In fact, the very first line of the Code of Ethics from the Society of Professional Journalists is this ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. Now the first part of the code is seek truth and report it, and the first line under that says what I just said. Ethical journalism should be accurate and fair. 

In other words, in the pursuit of truth, accuracy and fairness are the most important things to consider, and I agree 100%. So why not just flip that? In the pursuit of fairness, accuracy, and truth are the most important things, or even better, accuracy and contextualized truth. Or maybe even accuracy and the truth of any given moment. 

Many of us agree that fairness is an important end result. Why then can it be a driving force? 

Again, the world will never be fair, and I'm not sure it ever should be. I only admit that because I believe the important thing here is to strive for fairness. If we ever attain it, there would be no need to strive for it, and society would essentially be perfect. So why don't we strive for it in the meantime, work ourselves out of a job? How awesome would it be if we actually attained a fair and just society? There would be no need for journalists. But until we reach that day, which is likely never, let's strive for fairness.  

But this is the important thing. It's not an unending striving for fairness for the sake of being fair, we strive for fairness in the pursuit of justice, because if we define journalism, again, as the pursuit of equitable justice and define justice as the equitable distribution of fairness, then, by extension, journalism is pursuing justice by pursuing fairness. I know, I know, I know this is a mouthful. It's getting very philosophical, I’m repeating words. Please forgive me. I hope you're not turning this off because it's too academic-sounding and not practical. I just really think it's important to literally redefine journalism to more accurately actually reflect what we are already doing and speak to people where they are instead of where we think they should be. And that last bit is actually pretty important to repeat because even if we don't agree to redefine journalism, I hope we can agree, at least on this: Journalists should speak to people where they are and not to where the journalists think their audience should be, in terms of what they think and how they think about it. 

Where someone is in life and where someone else thinks they should be are often very different places, and to presume that someone wants to be where you want them to be solely because you call yourself a journalist and claim to be a provider of the unvarnished truth. Well, can you think of anything more patronizing and presumptuous? I can't. 

So now we've talked about fairness, there's another word that we should also dig into, and that's the concept of equity. Because again, if we are to redefine journalism as the equitable pursuit of justice, what then does equitable mean? And I think equity is often conflated with equality. And no, we're not talking about a type of asset class here. We're talking about equity in the sense of how resources are distributed. In our case, journalistic resources, which equals time, space on the front page, you get the picture. 

I like to think of equity like this. Take a classroom, a classroom where every student has equal access to a service and where every child has the same computer and gets the exact same amount of facetime with the teacher. Sounds great, right? 

But what about a student with a visual impairment? Will they likely need something additional on their computer so they can access the lesson? Or what about a smart student who struggles paying attention? They might need more facetime with the teacher or an alternative lesson so they can stay engaged. And that's equity. It's distributing resources based on need, not on equal access to resources. 

In fact, the concept of equity is the foundation of any law dealing with discrimination or equal protection. I'm sure some lawyers would probably disagree with me, but that's how I say it. Simply put, some people need a little extra than others to get the same result. 

So, let's then apply equity to justice. If journalism was defined as the equitable pursuit of justice, what would that look like? Let's just take a daily newsroom as an example. How do they operate today? Under the current definition of journalism, as the pursuit of truth? 

So, here's how a daily news operation works. Generally, there's a morning news meeting, the news director or editor leads the conversation about what's happening that day. The reporters chime in, the plans are made for the evening deadline. Assignments are doled out based on specific beats, but also more importantly, based on what can be turned that day into a story by the evening or afternoon deadline. 

Now the 24/7 news cycle is its own monster that I'm not going to get into here, but suffice to say, the general rule of thumb in deciding what will be covered are these two things: is the story newsworthy, and can we cover it by the deadline. Now obviously, if you're an online-only outlet, the deadline issue might not be that important, but you're likely driven by your own deadlines, which are, “Let's get it out as fast as possible.” 

But that word, newsworthy, that's the crux of everything in journalism. What is worthy of being news to one person certainly isn't to another. But the trick to being a great editor, I think, is to think about what do most people care about, and balancing that with what should most people care about? And unless you have a very hyper-specific audience, most editors think in terms of a broad audience. You really don't want to alienate anyone, so you focus on stories that have a broad appeal. Some stories are certainly targeted to specific audiences, of course, but daily stories usually have a broad appeal. That's what makes them possible to be turned in a single day. 

Now let's take this newsroom example and flip its definition of journalism. If this newsroom was operating under the idea that journalism is about pursuing equitable justice, the story assignments for the day would look more like this: Instead of thinking about which story has the broadest appeal, stories would be weighed against each other to determine which stories serve the pursuit of justice to the most disadvantaged among us. 

Weighing would be simple: if a story could have a significant impact on a marginalized population, it should be given top priority. That is equity. Any story that impacts a privileged population should only be given priority if that story adversely impacts a marginalized group. 

For example, as I'm writing this, the Pandora papers are all over the news. The story should be a top priority for many newsrooms and journalists. And it is. But yet we're still seeing headlines that talk about the fourth death from a rare blood clotting disease as a result from the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine. What makes that story so silly is the virtual insignificance of it. And yet it's still given attention by the major media outlets. 

As of early October (2021), nearly 15,000,000 Americans have been given the J&J vaccine. Fifteen million... and four people have died because of a rare blood clot. It is, of course, tragic that these deaths happened, no question about it. There's no need to minimize what happened. But in the grand scheme of stories that people really, truly need to know about... is that a headline, or is it merely fear-based clickbait? 

Does every single story about the coronavirus or the vaccine warrant coverage solely because of that fact, or does all that unnecessary incremental coverage numb us to the pandemic reality? Under a new definition of journalism, a story like that would not exist. Instead, the fact of these deaths occurring would instead be included in a more contextualized story about what we know and what we don't know. And importantly, what we cannot know about the health impacts of the vaccine. 

Now, none of this matters if we don't make some other changes as well as a profession. I talked about these things in the first two episodes. I don't want to get into that here, but I think ultimately there are two forces preventing big change. First news consumers, maybe that's you listening now. News consumers need to stop clicking on garbage. Stop giving journalists a reason to not change. Demand, better work by consuming the best work.  

Second, journalists need to reevaluate how we understand truth, if and how we defend democracy, and how we define the work that we do every day. We all depend on it. 

I'll leave you with this final thought, the \bottom line of this episode. Journalists are biased. There's no getting around that. Why, then, don't we stop pretending to be objective while pursuing narratives and openly pursue equitable justice? Again, many journalists are already doing this, but we're often conflicted because of traditional values that eventually turn us into hypocrites. 

Justice is fairness. And journalism pursues justice, all with the concept of equity at the forefront.  

All right, Earth citizens. That's all the ranting I have for you today. We are four episodes deep in this podcast, and we're not hearing from anyone. Please, we need your help. Tell us what you think. Am I completely off my rocker? Is there something I've really gotten wrong?Or maybe I've missed a really important detail. I want to know. I want to get better and I need your help again. I don't have all the answers. I don't pretend to. I need your help. Find me on Twitter @savingEJ or you can email me at david.desroches@qu.edu 

This podcast is a production of the Quinnipiac University Podcast Studio. Our producer is Grace McGuire, our social media coordinator is Jillian Catalano. And our videographer is Jake McCarthy 

Please subscribe to the podcast on the app of your choice, to learn more about this podcast and others, visit qu.edu/podcast and thank you so much for listening to Baffled with David DesRoches, until next time.