NOT A 'CRIME OF PASSION' - Covering domestic violence as an urgent social crisis, not a private family matter
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NIEMAN REPORTS NOT A ‘CRIME OF PASSION’ Covering domestic violence as an urgent social crisis, not a private family matter
Contributors
The Nieman Foundation
for Journalism at Harvard University
www.niemanreports.org
Susan Stellin Paula Molina Christine Mungai
(page 18) is a reporter (page 26), a 2013 (page 27), a 2018
and an adjunct professor Nieman Fellow, is a Nieman Fellow, is an
in the Journalism + host and editor at editor of The Elephant,
publisher
Ann Marie Lipinski
Design department Cooperativa, one of an online publication
at The New School, Chile’s major news based in Nairobi,
editor teaching a course on radio broadcasters. In Kenya that examines
James Geary
ethics and the history addition to broadcasting the African condition.
senior editor of media. She recently the news since 1999, She also freelances for
Jan Gardner completed a master’s she is a contributor for various publications.
editorial specialist degree in public health BBC News Mundo, the Previously, she worked
Eryn Carlson at Columbia University. Spanish section of BBC. at africapedia.com.
staff assistant
Shantel Blakely
design
Pentagram
editorial offices
One Francis Avenue, Cambridge,
MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308,
nreditor@harvard.edu Jiqui Luo (page 29), a Tara Pixley (page 30), Jon Marcus (page 8)
2014 Nieman Fellow, is PhD, a 2016 Knight is higher-education
Copyright 2019 by the President and
Fellows of Harvard College. the head writer of the Nieman Visiting Fellow, editor at The Hechinger
Periodicals postage paid at Noonstory section of is a Los Angeles-based Report, a foundation-
Boston, Massachusetts and the news organization visual journalist, writer, supported nonprofit
additional entries Jiemian.com, which and professor. Pixley’s news organization based
is a narrative writing photographic work and at Columbia University.
subscriptions/business
platform. She writing on photography He has written for
617-496-6299, nreports@harvard.edu
OPPOSITE TOP: CL AUDIA JANKE BOT TOM: VIVIEN KILLILEA/GET T Y IMAGES FOR BUMBLE
previously worked as has appeared in The The Washington Post,
Subscription $25 a year, senior legal reporter New York Times, The New York Times,
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add $10 per year for foreign airmail. Media Group. and elsewhere. and The Atlantic.
MOLINA HEADSHOT: TITI SANTOS COESTER HEADSHOT: NANCY ANDREWS
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P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 Dana Coester Lewis Raven Eryn Carlson
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(page 16) is executive Wallace (page 32) is (page 38) is the editorial
Postmaster: Send address changes to editor for 100 Days in a contributing editor specialist at Nieman
Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, Appalachia and is an at Scalawag magazine, Reports. She also does
Manchester, NH 03108 associate professor and the writer and occasional freelance
at West Virginia creator of “The View writing, primarily for
Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650) University College from Somewhere,” a The Boston Globe, and
is published in March, June,
of Media where forthcoming book is currently working on
September, and December by
the Nieman Foundation
she also serves as and podcast about her master’s degree in
at Harvard University, creative director for the history of library and information
One Francis Avenue, the College’s Media objectivity and justice science at Simmons
Cambridge, MA 02138-2098 Innovation Center. in journalism. University in Boston.
In the United Kingdom, two women a week on average are murdered by a husband, partner, ex-boyfriend, or family member. London-
based photographer Claudia Janke’s project “Two Every Week” puts the focus on women who were killed in 2016 and 2017. The victims
are memorialized on candles with a picture provided by their loved ones, the date of death, the woman’s age, what each died of, and who
is suspected, charged, or jailed as the perpetrator. She writes, “‘Two Every Week’ draws attention to the women and brutality behind
the chilling statistics of domestic violence deaths in the UK attempting to shift the narrative to the damage and misery caused by male
violence and the impact it has on the freedom of women and society as a whole.”
Contents Summer 2019 / Vol. 73 / No. 3
Features Departments
“When You See Me on the 8 coveR From the Curator 2
News, You’ll Know Who I Am” Ann Marie Lipinski
Journalists often withhold details of Covering Domestic Violence 18
mass shooters and suicides to discourage Covering murder and assault by intimate Live@Lippmann 4
copycats. Should that “strategic silence” partners as an urgent social crisis Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein
be exteded to extremist speech, By Susan Stellin and editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery on
misinformation, and propaganda, too? their magazine’s growth and success
By Jon Marcus Chile, Kenya, China: How the 26
Media Covers Domestic Violence Niemans@Work 6
Covering White Supremacy 16 Paula Molina, Christine Mungai, Jieqi Luo Documenting the climate crisis across
and White Nationalism generations, overturning a murder
Establish a community of practice, “To Witness and Show 30 conviction with help from students, telling
focus on people exeriencing hate, Audiences Uncomfortable Truths” stories of friendship and connection
share and corroborate data By Tara Pixley between Israelis and Palestinians
By Dana Coester
Nieman Notes 48
Writer Meredith Reporting While Trans 32
Talusan is How trans journalists are changing— Sounding 52
among the and challenging—journalism Laura N. Pérez Sánchez
small but
By Lewis Raven Wallace
growing group
of transgender
journalists in Journalism and Libraries: 38 cover: Photos by Claudia Janke
the U.S. “A Community Need from her “Two Every Week” project
and a Strategic Fit”
How—and why—libraries are stepping in cover design: Arthur Hochstein
to help news organizations promote media
literacy, spur civic engagement, and even
assist with reporting projects
By Eryn Carlson
from The president’s forgiving embrace of One of the unfortunate consequences
the Saudi authorities in the wake of columnist of this hostile environment is that it com-
curator Jamal Khashoggi’s murder and dismember- promises the possibility of genuine reflec-
ing last fall marked a new low. “The level tion about journalism’s failings. In the U.S.,
of violence used to persecute journal- the “fake news” complaints clotting public
ists who aggravate authorities no longer discourse are now so suspect, and the skep-
seems to know any limits,” said Reporters ticism from journalists so heightened, it is
“If You Want to Save Without Borders. hard to imagine how the conversation is
Gone is the historic role that U.S. presi- bridged. Honest response to legitimate crit-
Democracy, You First dents played in defending the essential role of icism is difficult when the criticism comes in
Must Save Yourself” journalism in a democracy, replaced by White a torrent of false accusations. It’s like trying
House succor for autocrats and authoritari- to separate raindrops.
With the U.S. president ans seeking to silence independent reporting. I recently watched a video of a 1962 Oval
no longer defending We are now—in the words of Stalin, Mao, Office interview that three network news re-
Nazi propagandists, and Trump—“enemies porters held with President John F. Kennedy.
the essential role of the people,” language weaponized during The civility is nearly unrecognizable and a
of journalism in a some of history’s darkest hours.
“Trump inhabits the global showcase,”
reminder of how distorted our discourse
has become. Kennedy, like every president
democracy, news outlets said Salvadoran author and journalist Oscar before and since, took umbrage at some
Martinez. “In attacking the U.S. press, he at- White House coverage. He refers to the press
worldwide step up tacks all of the press and puts it at risk.” as “abrasive” and implies that news can be
their fight for survival The kinship Trump exhibits for fellow distorted for political purposes. But his fun-
enemies of independent reporting was damental respect for its role in a democra-
by ann marie lipinski evident during this March exchange in cy is sufficiently strong that he says Nikita
Washington with newly-elected Brazilian Khrushchev, then premier of the Soviet
President Jair Bolsonaro. Union, is disadvantaged without it.
Bolsonaro: “Brazil and the United States “Even though we never like it, and even
stand side by side in their efforts to ensure though we wish they didn’t write it, and even
liberties and respect to traditional family though we disapprove, there isn’t any doubt
I
lifestyles, respect to God our creator, against that we couldn’t do the job at all in a free
n their press freedom ranking of 180 the gender ideology or the politically correct society without a very, very active press,”
countries, Reporters Without Borders attitudes and against fake news.” Kennedy said.
this year named Norway its valedicto- Trump: “I’m very proud to hear the presi- How do we get back to that discussion?
rian. So free is the country from cen- dent use the term ‘fake news.’” Are we as journalists doing enough in our
sorship, political pressure, or violence Bolsonaro wasn’t bluffing and in his brief work and in our communities to advance that
against journalists, that the headline atop tenure has used social media to attack re- conversation and earn that respect?
the annual report’s section on Norway read, porters whose coverage he doesn’t like, sup- Although there are countries that never
“Faultless or almost.” pressed government advertising to weaken tolerated an independent press, the retreat
So I was surprised, during a recent visit the press, and, most recently, threatened in places that once did have such a press
from several Norwegian journalists, by a con- American journalist Glenn Greenwald with shows how precipitous the change can be.
versation about the demagoguery and denun- imprisonment for stories questioning the Hungary’s free fall in world press freedom
ciations of journalism emanating from U.S. ethical conduct of Brazil’s justice minister. rankings—down 14 positions to 87 this
politicians. It was dangerous, I agreed, and Some of journalism’s harshest antag- year—mirrors the country’s overall decline
encouraging that countries like theirs per- onists—Turkish President Recep Tayyip across other measurements of democratic
sisted in defending press values. Erdogan, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, health, including treatment of the courts,
“Yes,” said the woman from Norway, “but Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, schools, and religious organizations.
this rhetoric, it’s contagious.” Myanmar state security officer U Kyaw If you seek a playbook for how to weak-
As President Trump and his allies have San Hla, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor en and eventually erase a free press, turn to
amplified their attacks on journalism, the Orban, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Hungary since the 2010 election of Prime
impact has spread beyond the U.S., with Netanyahu among them—have all parroted Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party. The
even stable democracies wary of its polluting Trump’s cries of “fake news” to advance harassment and shuttering of independent
influence. This rhetoric is contagious, and their own press wars. media alongside the creation of a pro-Orban
is now one of our leading cultural exports. “[I] would like to send a message to the consortium of private TV, radio, newspa-
While the nation’s own press freedom rank- president that your attack on CNN is right,” pers, and websites have virtually strangled
ing fell to 48—the result of physical attacks, said Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, critical voices.
the deadly shooting at the Annapolis Capital dismissing reports of corruption and sex “When Mr. Orban came to power in
Gazette, and threats requiring some media trafficking in his country. “American media 2010, his aim was to eliminate the media’s
companies to hire security guards for their is very bad.” role as a check on government,” a former
reporters—Trump has found an eager chorus Said a shameless al-Assad, one of the public radio anchor told The New York
among other world leaders and applauded world’s most murderous dictators: “We are Times. “Orban wanted to introduce a re-
their ominous echoes. living in a fake-news era.” gime which keeps the facade of democratic
2 n iem a n r e p or t s s um m e r 2 019
Gazeta Wyborcza, Poland’s most widely circulated broadsheet, is a prime target of President Andrzej Duda
institutions but is not operated in a demo- Trump @realDonaldTrump just stressed example that there is no red line, there are
cratic manner—and a free press doesn’t fit again the power of fake news. Thank you. We no limits.”
into that picture.” must continue to fight that phenomenon. The paper has also been attacked by the
Last year I visited Warsaw’s Gazeta Poland experiences fake news power first government-controlled State TV Network,
Wyborcza, a newspaper founded in the late hand. Many European and even US officials run by Jacek Kurski—the brother of Gazeta
’80s out of the Solidarity movement. After form their opinions of PL based on relentless Wyborcza’s deputy editor. What is that like
years of success, the independent daily flow of fake news.” for you? I asked him. “Not good,” Jaroslaw
has emerged as one of the prime targets of Jerzy Wojcik, publisher of the Gazeta Kurski said. “We mostly don’t talk any-
President Andrzej Duda and his Law and Wyborcza, and Jarosław Kurski, the deputy more, only about our mother who died a
Justice Party, elected in 2015. Like Hungary’s editor-in-chief, described a relentless gov- couple of years ago.”
Orban, Duda and party leaders have sought to ernment campaign of economic suffocation. The paper is racing against time and
mute the press as part of their dismantling of They say this has included stripping tradi- government forces to create new, more lu-
Poland’s hard-won, post-Soviet democracy. tional government advertising from their crative subscription models and increase
In doing so, Duda has displayed a familiar pages; diminished access for the paper to the revenue from other company enterprises,
fealty to Trump, earning him a description national network of government-controlled including cinema, book publishing, and
in Foreign Policy as “perhaps the savviest of gas stations (long a source of single-copy outdoor advertising. They have also joined
all Trump’s ego massage therapists.” Using newspaper sales); and government pressure with a European news consortium to share
Trump’s preferred communication channel, on the private industry to pull advertising. stories without cost.
Duda has tweeted his alignment: “President Wojcik said the paper lost approximately “If you want to save democracy,” said edi-
ART UR WIDAK/NURPHOTO VIA GET T Y IMAGES
$5 million during the new government’s first tor Kurski, “you first must save yourself.”
year and had to lay off 170 employees. Wojcik and Kurski were almost apolo-
“Censorship would be too obvious,” said getic at one point, saying they don’t want to
“
Wojcik. “The main strategy to kill us is to kill sound like they’re complaining, even as they
our revenues.” describe journalism as “the last obstacle” to
The newspaper has been the target of or- authoritarianism in Poland.
The attacks on journalism ganized protests, including one outside the “I wake up here, I read the news from
by Trump and his allies building that began with a priest performing Poland and around the world, and think
an exorcism of the Gazeta Wyborcza. “What no, no, no, no,” said Wojcik, with a resigned
are contagious, and the does it mean when people are shouting and smile. “But next I drink a coffee, smoke a
rhetoric is now one of our singing and praying for your soul?” Wojcik cigarette, and say, ‘Okay, try to do something
leading cultural exports asked. “We give you this description as an good, something to make a difference.’” 2
niem a n r ep or ts SU MMER 2 019 3
live@ ence, making them feel that they are a part
lippmann of us. That’s in order to get them to share
and spread your work, but it also has this
ancillary benefit of many of them financially
“Have more faith and trust in supporting your work.
the public to be able to digest On not catering to preconceptions
Bauerlein: As journalists, we were trained
challenging information and to to believe [that if you seek member support,
actually be looking for that” you are under pressure to serve their pre-
conceptions and beliefs]. That’s why it took
Mother Jones CEO Monika Bauerlein so long for newsrooms to orient themselves
toward the audience—because we assume
and editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery on that if you do that, then you’ll be catering to
growing their audience and revenues the lowest common denominator and you
will not be making these august decisions
about what’s important and what people
should hear about.
That’s a sad statement about our relation-
M
ship with the people on whom we depend
other Jones, the 43-year-old San 19-hour day that each of us had many times. and for whom we do this work. Have more
Francisco-based publication named Thanks to the amazing team at Mother faith and trust in the public to be able to di-
for the intrepid activist Mary Harris Jones and the faith that our board and oth- gest challenging information and to actually
Jones, has been reinvigorated since ers put in us, we’ve grown exponentially. Our be looking for that. We get a lot of feedback
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery organization has three times the budget now. from our audience saying, “I didn’t like this
took over as co-editors in 2006. Under the pair’s It has 10 times as many people in the news- or that or the other thing that you wrote, but
leadership, the nonprofit magazine’s audience room, 15 times the audience. We now reach I’m glad that you did [it].”
has grown, with a large digital presence and about eight million people a month and we’re
print circulation stable around 200,000 sub- fortunate enough to employ about a hundred Jeffery: I think that it’s true always, but
scribers, and its newsroom has expanded with of the best journalists in the country. more true recently, that you’ve got to plow
bureaus in New York and Washington, D.C. ahead and try and tell the story as best you
Mother Jones is a powerhouse of investigative re- Monika Bauerlein: It is an arc that we’re understand it, realizing that there are going
porting, and has been winner of several national not seeing enough of in news at the moment. to be people who legitimately disagree with
journalism awards, including being named It’s an incredibly tough time for our profes- you or attack what you’re doing to signal
Magazine of the Year by the American Society of sion, but journalism has tools to defend itself. something to their tribe.
Magazine Editors in 2017. Maybe the most important tools are these There’s more of that going on now than
In 2015, after nearly a decade as co-editors, values that we come from and that we have used to be visible. It can be a negative force
Bauerlein became CEO of Mother Jones while seen—that when you can communicate to in public discourse, but by steering the ship
Jeffery took over as editor-in-chief. Both have audiences that you stand with them, that as best you can and acknowledging these fac-
worked at the publication for close to 20 years— your alliance or your allegiance is not to tors, even in your own reporting, you can win
Bauerlein joined as an investigative editor in a hedge fund or a billionaire—even a nice people over.
2000, and Jeffery started as a deputy editor one—but that you are there for the public
in 2002. Jeffery worked at the Washington interest, wherever that may take you, that On making the value proposition of
City Paper and was senior editor at Harper’s. people do respond to that. giving journalism away for free but
Bauerlein has been a correspondent for the Public trust is actually rebounding. People asking people to support it
Associated Press and managing editor of the are engaging with journalism in ways that Jeffery: David Carr was an old boss of
Minneapolis-based alternative weekly City Pages. they haven’t for a long time. It shows us a mine. When he was at The New York Times
Bauerlein and Jeffery visited the Nieman path where the people who can save the jour- before he died tragically, we used to get into
Foundation to accept the I.F. Stone Medal for nalism that the public needs is the public. somewhat of an argument. I was like, “Why
Journalistic Independence in May, and, during doesn’t the Times start a nonprofit piece so
the presentation, discussed Mother Jones’s On being truly independent that people could give it money without hav-
success, covering the 2020 presidential election, Jeffery: There are many forces that you ing to get the dead tree shipped to them?”
and more. Edited excerpts: need to be independent of. One is to some- He was like, “We can’t do that because of
times challenge the folks who are more in- our advertisers.” We were already down
On the success of Mother Jones under clined to your publication. We’ve done that this road. So it was interesting to watch
their leadership a lot in the past few years. I think that that is the Times after [the election of ] Trump
Clara Jeffery: When we took the helm, something that is more and more fraught, at essentially make that proposition. They’ve
LISA ABITBOL
there was a lot of talk of a leadership vacuum, least online, sometimes to do. gone to a model that allows people to sup-
that we’d be in catfights, that we’d pull each It’s also having the financial and struc- port them whether or not they read them in
other’s hair, that we were job-sharing when tural independence from just one or two paper form because they know that people
that was never true, unless you can share a really rich people. It’s re-engaging the audi- want to support the journalism.
4 n iem a n r e p or t s s um m e r 2 019
to get into who’s making money on it, and
how this is affecting the political landscape.
Having staff writers and being able to
dedicate someone for a few years to, in
some ways, an esoteric kind of beat, has
been great. That’s when we’ve done our best
work, frankly.
On overcorrecting for accusations of
bias
Bauerlein: When you yell at the press long
enough and hard enough about the truth
being an exercise in bias, people start to
overcorrect for it and bend over backward
to appease the people who are often doing
the yelling in bad faith.
There are people who in good faith have
criticisms of the press. We need to engage
Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery of Mother Jones at the Nieman Foundation in May with that and listen to it and be made un-
comfortable by it. But there are also people
We all wish it were more people, but when On being transparent with audiences who are pursuing an agenda of making us
we make that clear to readers, they do re- about the cost of producing journalism less bold in pursuit of the truth. We don’t
spond. They know that journalism is needed Bauerlein: It’s a big bet born of a deep as- have that much time to get this right.
now more than ever. Whether it’s their local sessment of the factors involved, but also the
paper or national papers or any kind of media fact that when you’re a journalist, you have On covering the 2020 election and not
that they care about, many of them, when it’s a hammer. Every problem is a nail and your repeating the same mistakes
put to them in that way, will step up. hammer is explaining things in a story. Bauerlein: The question is have we learned
It occurred to us that, as journalists, we enough from what happened in 2016 in
On the business models of the future were having a relationship of depth and ex- terms of better covering a changed polit-
Jeffery: It’s not going to be advertising. It’s planation with the content, but not on the ical landscape? It would be a huge stretch
going to be subscriptions, or donor support, fundraising and marketing side. Might it to say that we’ve learned the lessons, as a
or nice billionaires, or a combination of make sense to have that same high-level con- profession. All of us made mistakes. All of us
the above. I think advertising is going the versation with our audience when it came to missed part of the story.
way of when Napster disrupted the music how the organization runs and the role that Some improvements have been made,
industry. Nonprofits and things that had to they play? but there also is a degree of defensiveness
be scrappier realized this earlier just because and allegiance to the way that we have his-
we didn’t get the lush six-page Versace ads. On the importance of following up torically done things that is particularly
If we could go back in time, certainly in Jeffery: I won’t say that we at all do a perfect powerful in the context of a presidential
the news business, we would have taught job of it, but that precise reason [of wanting campaign where muscle memory kicks in
our audience better why their paper was so to follow up on investigative reporting years and it’s very, very difficult for any of us to
cheap. Why you could get The New Yorker later] is why we went to our board in the confront just how flawed the traditions and
for $12 a year, whatever the price used to be. Mother Jones 2.0 initiative [when Monika and habits of the profession are.
It is not the price to produce the stuff that’s I took over] and said, we can’t do investigative
being made. reporting with the model that we had at the Jeffery: There were a lot of mistakes made
If advertising cannot subsidize it, and in time, which was mostly freelance investiga- and stories not told or not amplified well
this country, government is unlikely—and tive reporters and editors at Mother Jones. enough. One of the greatest problems we
probably at least for the moment, that’s a We need to go down rabbit holes we know have throughout the industry, but particu-
good thing—to help, then who’s going to might not be productive. We need to be able larly amongst the biggest, heaviest hitters,
do it? It has to be the public in one form to follow up. We need staff writers in a more is that there’s not a willingness to own up
or fashion. newspaper-like staff structure. That has paid to what happened and report out what hap-
off enormously in being able to follow up. pened.
Another thing that we’ve done is dedi- Eventually we’ll learn, but if journalism
cate reporters to beats that might be a little was more honest about when it screws up
bit more unusual. For example, Julia Lurie and why, our democracy will be better off.
has had a beat [looking at the opioid crisis If we could do one thing, it would be
“
from a different angle]. After the 2016 elec- bring back the ombudsmen and do more
tion, I was looking at a map of where Trump media reporting that was about that and
won and didn’t win. I had looked at a map really probative and thoughtful and not just
The people who can save of the worst parts of the opioid crisis, and “got you” or who got fired. That is one thing
the journalism that the I was like, “There’s something here.” We’ll I would like to see our profession invest
public needs is the public do a lot on the opioid crisis, but we’re going more time and money in. 2
niem a n r ep or ts SU M MER 2 019 5
niemans
@work
Watching “the true
saga of the climate
crisis unfold” in
global communities
big and small
John Sutter, NF ’19,
seeks to make a multi-
generational climate
change documentary Young people hunt for small birds outside Shishmaref, Alaska, in the
spring of 2019. They face uncertain futures because of the climate crisis
he most interesting stories last twice before while reporting for CNN, but it that time of year and in that location. Some,
T more than a lifetime.
This was especially apparent to me on a
recent visit to Shishmaref, Alaska, an Inupiat
continues to strike me how edge-of-the-world
and yet familiar the community feels.
The village’s problems are clear: The per-
including Shelton and Clara, blame the cli-
mate crisis for his death.
There’s a tradition in Shishmaref. Children
village near the Arctic Circle that is faced with mafrost is melting, the sea ice is disappearing, who are born after someone in the village dies
the prospect of relocation because of the and the now-fragile land is crumbling into the often are named after that person. It’s not just
climate crisis. I flew up there as part of the water like brittle cornbread. One house al- about family linkages. It’s about the commu-
“Baseline” documentary series I’m directing ready has fallen off the edge. The community nity’s story continuing.
with the support of Knight Visiting Nieman has voted repeatedly to move away from these The young Normans are in school now.
fellowship and a grant from the National climate-era dangers, but they haven’t come The older boy, 11, took me hunting outside of
Geographic Society. up with the money to do it. One point of the town. Spending time with him, I felt like I saw
The point of this series, which is still in “Baseline” series is to see what happens. Will a part of the Norman who fell through the ice,
early development, is to stretch the public’s the community move? How will people protect and of the future of the climate emergency.
collective memory of environmental change themselves? What aspects of the Inupiat iden- The generous spirit his neighbors talk about,
by filming intimate portraits of a few climate tity will morph or be lost as these shifts unfold? the deep interest in hunting and tradition.
hotspots—and then committing to revisit On my first trip to the village, in 2009, I The true saga of the climate crisis will
those same places well into the future. I’m in met Shelton and Clara Kokeok. They lived— unfold here, with Norman and his neigh-
my mid-30s, and, strange as it sounds, it’s a and still do—in a blue house at the very edge bors, and in communities big and small
project I hope will outlast me. of the land. On their coffee table is a photo around the world. Yes, it is a crisis. Yes, it is
I landed in Shishmaref on a tiny plane car- of their son, Norman, who died in 2007 after now, not only in the future. The loss of ice
rying only me, my colleague, our equipment, he fell through the ice. and culture and livelihood are present and
some mail, and the pilot. I’d been to the village Elders said the ice should have been solid past problems in Shishmaref. 2
as the tagline says. nist. And I have become attuned
Chasing Down the Sounds Each episode in the series, to the pitch of a voice, the peal
With a podcast, Dina Kraft, NF ’12, taps sponsored by Hadassah, the of a laugh, and how those make
OPPOSITE: JENIFER MCKIM/NECIR AT WGBH NEWS
Women’s Zionist Organization characters feel real. That felt es-
her inner audio reporter to tell stories of America, focuses on a differ- pecially true recording a conver-
of friendship and connection between ent pair who have become close sation between two prominent
through their work together. feminists and close friends, one
Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, and Arabs Where I once chased words, Palestinian Israeli, the other
I now also chase down sounds. Jewish Israeli, who together ask
In one episode I tried to po- why leaders of the Women’s
I
had long been a print re- an elusive dream. sition myself on the edge of a March in America think they
porter with a serious crush on Now I’m a year into creating stage to get the best audio of have to agree on everything in
JOHN SUT TER
audio. But until the opportu- and hosting “The Branch,” a pod- an Orthodox Jewish oud player order to work for the same cause
nity to host a podcast fell in my cast about Palestinians, Israelis, singing classic Arabic love songs and capturing one of them say,
lap, becoming lucky enough to Arabs, and Jews who work to- alongside his longtime musical with a laugh, “Why do we all
make audio stories seemed like gether, “even when it’s complex,” partner, a secular Muslim pia- have to be in the same ship? Why
6 nie m a n r e p or t s s um m e r 2 019
and police misconduct, he eventually vacated
After 32 Years, Free at Last Jones’ murder conviction.
Investigative journalism students In June of this year, Jones was retried.
His attorneys focused on the fact that wit-
taught by Jenifer McKim, NF ’08, play nesses described a shooter who was sig-
a key role in overturning a conviction nificantly shorter than the victim. Jones,
at 6 feet, is nearly the same height as the
man who was killed. A new, more diverse
A
bout five years ago, I received an We broke into groups, each focusing on a jury found Jones not guilty after barely two
unusual proposal. topic: The defense attorney who, in con- hours of deliberation.
A convicted murderer contacted nection with charges of stealing from a cli- One of his attorneys, John J. Barter, said
me to say he wanted to write for the New ent, was suspended from work after Jones’ that when he first reviewed Jones’ case he
England Center for Investigative Reporting, conviction; the eyewitnesses who wouldn’t believed the only way the conviction would
the nonprofit news outlet where I work. testify that Jones was the murderer; a deep- be overturned would be if something mag-
Darrell Jones sent a message through dive look at Jones himself. ical happened.
his wife that he was uniquely positioned The process went on months after the Barter said magic did arrive: First when
to report on criminal justice because of his class disbanded. Some of my students stayed the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision re-
30 years behind bars. He invited me to talk on the team as volunteers. Leading the group garding the right to have jurors without racial
about ideas at the maximum-security Souza- was attorney Leonard Singer, who started out prejudice and again when our reporting led to
Baranowski Correctional Center, about an as one of the most skeptical and emerged as information about such bias. New technology
hour outside Boston. one of the most dedicated to telling Jones’ also allowed development of proof that po-
I accepted the invitation. As we talked in story. His classmate Evelyn Martinez, an lice had altered key evidence and lied about it.
the prison’s visiting room, I realized the most Emerson College graduate student, also kept These efforts led to a Boston man’s exon-
interesting story to tell was that of Jones him- chasing leads to those who were near the eration after 32 years in prison for a crime he
self. He told me that at age 19, he was wrongly Brockton parking lot where an alleged drug always insisted he didn’t commit. Heading
convicted by an all-white jury of a fatal shoot- dealer died by a single shot in 1985. toward the new academic year, I’m excited
ing in a Brockton parking lot. After the class ended, WBUR news re- to think of where our students will focus
Jones said that the state’s case against porters Bruce Gellerman and Jesse Costa their attention next. 2
him included no physical evidence, motive, joined our project. Gellerman tracked down Darrell Jones celebrates with his lawyers
or eyewitness who definitively pointed to juror Eleanor Urbati, who said that she was
him in court. never convinced of Jones’ guilt and regrets
I took the question of whether Jones was her decision to go along with the 11 other ju-
innocent to an investigative journalism class rors to convict him. She told us that she be-
I teach at Boston University, where students lieved two jurors were racist—a statement
and professional journalists work side by key to Jones’ release.
side. Students learn investigative tools like The investigation led to an award-win-
filing public records requests, reading court ning five-part radio and video series.
records, analyzing data and interviewing After the stories ran, Superior Court
sources while working on real-world stories. Justice Thomas McGuire Jr., in a highly un-
During this semester, students read usual move, called back Urbati and other
court transcripts of the 1986 murder tri- jurors to hear about claims of a racist jury.
al and knocked on the doors of witnesses. Finding the case was tainted by racial bias
can’t we be on different boats ago and has endured wars and running networks of tunnels by the leaders, but the ground-
going the same direction?” heartaches and woven a path to underneath the Egyptian-Gaza work for that peace will be made
Every episode becomes my include their wives and children border showing them their by people like those interviewed
favorite one as I work on it, but in a place where people from wares—everything from Viagra on “The Branch.” To be sure, if
Episode 10: “From Gaza to Tel Israel and people from Gaza to KFC—to the time after the the political situation does not
Aviv” has special personal res- rarely, if ever, mix, let alone 2009 war between Israel and change, friendships like Jonathan
onance. It’s the story of a rare forge life-changing friendships. Gaza when Jonathan’s wife, who and Saud’s will go extinct. But
friendship made possible by In our conversation held had been sick with worry for that listener’s sentiment pushes
journalism and the captivat- in Jonathan’s living room—in Saud’s family during the fighting, me forward to search for more
ing personalities of Jonathan itself a minor coup as Gazans packs up a care package for them stories of connection that chal-
Ferziger, NF ’96, aka my first rarely get permits into Israel— that Jonathan then delivers. lenge and defy the fear and doom
boss (I interned for Jonathan in they tell me of times they saved One of our listeners wrote and give room for those cracks
Jerusalem as a college student) each other’s lives. that when peace one day comes of light that I, as a journalist, and
and Saud Abu Ramadan, his fix- The stories unfold, one more to this seemingly intractable my listeners, too, need to keep
er turned friend. It’s a connec- interesting than the next, from Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it going in what feels like an ex-
tion that began over 30 years the smugglers they encounter will be in agreements signed on tremely dark time. 2
niem a n r ep or ts SU M MER 2 019 7
“WHEN
YOU
SEE ME
ON THE
NEWS,
YOU’LL
KNOW
WHO
I AM”
Journalists often withhold details
of mass shooters and suicides to
discourage copycats. Should that
“strategic silence” be extended to
extremist speech, misinformation,
and propaganda, too?
by jon marcus
8 nie m a n r e p or t s s u m m e r 2 019Tom Teves holds a T-shirt with
photos of all 12 victims of the 2012
Aurora movie theater shooting,
including his son, Alex Teves, at a
press conference in Centennial,
Colorado in 2015. Teves is an
advocate of “strategic silence,”
and founded the organization No
Notoriety to push for starving mass
shooters of media attention
niem a n r ep or ts SU MMER 2 019 9New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern vowed to not name the man who killed 51 in the March 2019 mass shooting
WHEN A
activists and policymakers: Ardern pro- academic researchers—and a growing num-
claimed that she would never name the ber of readers, listeners, and viewers—to
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ANDY CROSS/THE DENVER POST VIA GET T Y IMAGES
shooter, and a judge ordered that photos downplay the names, images, and ideologies
of his face, when he appeared in court, be of perpetrators of mass crime. It was also
blurred “to preserve any fair trial rights.” an example of how media organizations are
They were, though some journalism out- struggling with this strategy.
gunman killed 51 people and injured doz- lets that complied with the order also It’s not clear where the expression “stra-
ens more at two mosques in Christchurch, published or posted images of the suspect tegic silence” originated as it pertains to
New Zealand in March, the official response in which his face was visible. When the journalism (it’s long been a term of art in
was swift. Restrictions were imposed on accused returned to be formally charged crisis public relations). danah boyd and Joan
military-style semiautomatic weapons and with murder and terrorism—his trial will Donovan, former colleagues at the research
assault rifles, and on magazines and ammu- begin next year—some of New Zealand’s institute Data & Society, are largely credited
nition. The ban was made permanent by major media organizations vowed “to the with using it most prominently last year in a
MARK TANTRUM/GET T Y IMAGES
an all-but-unanimous vote in Parliament, extent that is compatible with the princi- story in The Guardian about efforts through
followed by a $136 million allocation to buy ples of open justice, [to] limit any coverage history to “quarantine” the Ku Klux Klan, but
back semiautomatic firearms by December. of statements that actively champion white the two activists say it didn’t actually start
And the prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, supremacist or terrorist ideology.” with them. Among the earliest instances in
wore a hijab to console families of victims It was the highest-profile validation of an which journalists used those words were in
and other Muslims. idea that has come to be known as “strate- the mid-1990s to describe not something
But it was another gesture that most gic silence,” pushed by relatives of victims, they were doing, but that the Clinton ad-
caught the attention of a group of American law enforcement agencies, criminologists, ministration was, stonewalling the media in
10 n ie m a n r e p or t s s um m e r 2 019There’s another thrust of the strategic
silence movement: to stop journalists from Ardern’s decision
sharing not only shooters’ manifestos, but
incendiary political and cultural speech, and not to name the
to debunk it, even when it’s coming from the
White House. This has gotten much more
mass shooter was
limited momentum; a review by the progres-
sive research organization Media Matters
the highest-profile
for America suggests that, in the case of
untrue tweets by President Donald Trump,
validation of an
for instance, media outlets continue to more idea that has come
often amplify than filter or rebut them.
Political journalist Michael Barbaro, host to be known as
of The New York Times podcast “The Daily,”
said it would be selective about reporting “strategic silence”
Trump’s remarks on immigration before last
year’s midterm elections. “‘The Daily’ is de-
liberately playing down these events because ground and hope the danger passes.”
they are clearly not policy remarks or policy It’s a fraught and complex debate now be-
announcements,” Barbaro tweeted. “They ing played out in more and more newsrooms
are deliberate attempts to inflame the elec- with what some critics say are the highest
torate before the midterms.” And MSNBC possible stakes. Since political strategic si-
opted to not air a speech by Trump around lence ebbs and flows with the election cy-
the same time about the caravan of Central cle, it’s likely to present itself again as 2020
American migrants Trump called an inva- nears. To boyd—Data & Society’s found-
sion. “In an abundance of caution, we’ve de- er and president, who styles her name in
cided to monitor those remarks, fact-check all lowercase letters—the question isn’t
them … and then bring you the important whether or not the public should know,
news from them,” the anchor said. “but at what point are you reporting on
Proponents of strategic silence applaud something that’s happening and at what
depriving mass killers of the fame that some point are you aiding and abetting the con-
research has concluded helps motivate their spiracy?”
crimes. They also applaud media that decline There does seem to be consensus about
to publish or broadcast extremist credos or one thing: That this is, as Morris puts it, “an
false claims, stopping the propaganda from expression of enormous frustration that
finding wider audiences they say their pro- people feel—I might say including myself—
moters have become adept at manipulating that politics has gotten out of hand. That
journalists into supplying. it’s not just about right and left; it’s about
Journalists including Washington Post reason and unreason.”
media critic Erik Wemple respond that this Trouble is, he says, “if you curtail free
the midst of Whitewater and other scandals. is a path as dangerous as it might be well speech, who gets to decide? Who gets vest-
But the concept itself has been around for intentioned. Deciding that it’s not appropri- ed with the authority to say?”
almost a century. It was known as “dignified ate to post, publish, or broadcast an untrue Strategic silence isn’t necessarily en-
silence” in the 1920s, when the black press tweet from a person of national impor- couraging journalists to censor them-
used it to downplay news about the Ku Klux tance, or information about someone who selves, says Whitney Phillips, an assistant
Klan, and “quarantining” when Jewish or- shoots people in a school or church, “starts professor of communications at Syracuse
ganizations pushed journalists to give less to run into the public’s right to know,” says University and an expert on online trolling
attention to the ideas of white supremacists Wemple, “and that is in the extent to which who has studied how the media help am-
and American Nazis. it suppresses legitimate journalistic inquiry.” plify the ideology of the alt-right. “I under-
Whatever it’s called, it’s gaining traction. A For his part, filmmaker Errol Morris, stand the kneejerk response of, ‘Somebody
study of 6,337 stories about the Christchurch who couldn’t get U.S. distribution for his is telling me not to do my job any more,’”
attacks found that only 14 percent of U.S. 2018 documentary about Steve Bannon, she says. “That isn’t it.”
publications named the shooter and almost “American Dharma,” isn’t sure that hearing The focus needs to be on the “strate-
none linked to his manifesto or the forum contrary points of view helps people bet- gic” and not the “silent” part of the term,
where he posted it. A handful of prominent ter understand and therefore outmaneuver says Phillips, author of “The Oxygen of
journalists have said they’ve made a policy them—that “feel-good ideas will win out Amplification,” a report about this topic.
of this, including CNN’s Anderson Cooper. over bad ideas.” But he bristles at a strate- “There are ways to communicate stories
Media watchers say there’s anecdotal evi- gy of blocking or—as it’s also started to be without playing into a manipulator’s game,”
dence that news outlets no longer splash the called—“de-platforming” them. “I don’t she says: by focusing not just on the speaker
names and faces of mass shooters on screens think the ostrich approach here is recom- or the speech, but on the people affected by
and pages as much as they once did. mended—that I’ll just stick my head in the it. When journalists report about conspiracy
niem a n r ep or ts SU MM ER 2 019 11theories, political misinformation, and rac-
ist or misogynistic messages, says Phillips, “Why will you covered its resurgence in the 1960s than in
places where Jewish community groups per-
“what’s missing from that account in almost
every case is the perspective of the people do it for your own suaded them not to, say boyd and Donovan,
who is now director of the Technology and
who are being targeted by that offensive
speech. It’s almost always all about the
but you won’t Social Change Research Project at Harvard
Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on
speech and not about the victims.”
The controversial November 2017
do it for my child?” Media, Politics and Public Policy.
But the advent of social media has acceler-
New York Times story “A Voice of Hate in —Tom Teves, No Notoriety ated the phenomenon. As soon as journalists
America’s Heartland,” about the far-right started to report about how Pepe the Frog
Midwesterner popularly remembered as had become a symbol of white supremacists,
“the Nazi next door,” for instance, left out Neither advocates for suspects’ names searches for and shares of it only propelled it
the perspective of neighbors who might have to be withheld altogether; No Notoriety into the mainstream.
been the targets of his animosity, she says. says the facts about their backgrounds and Repeating Alex Jones’s assertion that the
“It didn’t consider what that framing is like motivations should be reported, but that 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shoot-
for them. That’s not balanced reporting.” journalists should resist “adding comple- ing in Newtown, Connecticut was faked
Phillips returns to the example that has mentary color to the individual or their helped it spread, boyd says.
so far dominated most discussion of strate- actions, and downplay the individual’s And when a 25-year-old Canadian rammed
gic silence: the person who commits a mass name and likeness” unless he’s still at large. a van into pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10
crime. “Why does the camera have to auto- Manifestos should never be shared, it says, and injuring 16, news coverage widely includ-
matically be pointed in the shooter’s face? while names and likenesses of people killed ed the fact that he subscribed to an obscure
You can engage with the stories with a shift and injured should be elevated “to send the misogynistic subculture of men who consid-
of the camera, and suddenly you’re talking message their lives are more important than er themselves involuntarily celibate; online
about people other than the shooter,” such the killer’s actions.” searches for it spiked, Google Trends data
as victims and responders. Don’t Name Them counsels law enforce- show, increasing 20-fold in one day, and stay-
News organizations practice on a daily ment officers to not sensationalize the names ing higher than before the attack.
basis even more complete strategic silence of shooters in media briefings, recognize me- Instead of giving audiences road maps to
than that, she says. Among other ways, that dia outlets that downplay the names, circu- these kinds of things, advises boyd, journal-
happens when they decide to withhold infor- late petitions encouraging journalists to shift ists should “talk about toxic forms of mas-
mation about suicides for exactly the same the focus to victims and people who inter- culinity. Talk about hate-fueled attitudes
reasons some people are advocating for stra- vene, and provide letters readers, listeners, that lead to terrorism. Just don’t amplify the
tegic silence in the reporting of hate speech or and viewers can send to media outlets. Once phrases and logics that hate-mongers are
mass crimes: to avoid encouraging copycats. the killers are captured, it says, the killer’s seeking to amplify.”
They’ve also held back information name is “no longer a part of the story.” Reporters say they can’t ignore, for in-
about journalists abducted abroad. The That there are life-and-death repercus- stance, the perversity of people who believe
New York Times led a media blackout about sions to what journalists decide to include that Sandy Hook was staged. Critics argue
the kidnaping of its correspondent David and exclude from their coverage is backed this perpetuates such theories, or sends au-
Rohde, along with two Afghan colleagues, in up by a 2015 study led by Sherry Towers, diences off to seek out further information
Afghanistan by the Taliban until he managed a research professor at Arizona State elsewhere. “Yes, there’s a reason to say that is
to escape. Several major media outlets knew University who uses mathematical and com- occurring, but there’s no reason to name Alex
about a prisoner exchange to win the release putational modeling to study such things as Jones or InfoWars and make the story about
of Jason Rezaian, Tehran bureau chief of The the spread of disease and behaviors. It found him,” says boyd, who prefers the term “stra-
Washington Post, but didn’t report it. NBC “significant evidence” that high-profile mass tegic amplification” to “strategic silence.”
kept secret the abduction in Syria of corre- killings using firearms provoke copycat in- In one case, two news organizations con-
spondent Richard Engel and his crew until cidents soon afterward in what Towers has fronted this in different ways.
they were freed. called “a contagion effect.” More recent re- The first, NPR, last year broadcast an in-
“Why will you do it for your own but you search, led by University of Alabama crim- terview with Jason Kessler, who organized
won’t do it for my child?” asks Tom Teves, inologist Adam Lankford, did not find that the Charlottesville rally and was organizing
whose, son, Alex, was among the 12 people short-term contagion had occurred, but that a follow-up in D.C., in which Kessler said,
killed in the Aurora, Colorado movie theater there may have been some imitators moti- among other things, that “as a matter of
GERALD HERBERT/THE A SSOCIATED PRESS
shooting in 2012 when he stood up to pull his vated over the longer term. science,” blacks were the least intelligent
girlfriend to safety. Yet after Aurora, Teves Something similar happens when radical among racial groups. In the resulting uproar,
said, “All the media showed was the killer, and racist ideologies are shared. This, at least, listeners reminded the network of that time
the killer. None of it was about the victims.” is not a new phenomenon; when the New when the New York World was turned into
Teves has established No Notoriety, one York World ran an investigation of the Ku an involuntary recruiting tool for the KKK,
of two principal organizations that have been Klux Klan in 1921 that included an image of says Elizabeth Jensen, the network’s public
pushing to starve mass shooters of media at- a secret membership application, according editor. “They were saying, ‘You’re no differ-
tention. The other is Don’t Name Them, co- to historian Felix Harcourt of Austin College, ent,’” Jensen says. She writes in a column
ordinated by the Advanced Law Enforcement thousands of readers ripped it out and joined. about the interview that the network was not
Rapid Response Training Center (ALERRT) The American Nazi Party recruited more necessarily wrong to run the interview, but
at Texas State University. members in areas where local newspapers NPR was wrong to not use facts to challenge
12 n iem a n r e p or t s s um m e r 2 019Kessler’s ranking of intelligence by race; There’s pressure, too, for journalists to suggest the copycat effect. There’s an abun-
he cited the work of controversial scholar do a better job of calling out the growing dance of evidence that the killers study and
Charles Murray, and the host responded only, number of instances in which Trump and are inspired by the actions and messages of
“Charles Murray? Really?” NPR did not air others misstate facts. In their own tweets, earlier offenders, such as the spreadsheets
the portion of the hourlong interview (it was they repeat the president’s misinformation of incidents with perpetrators’ names and
reduced to seven minutes) in which Kessler 65 percent of the time without rebutting it, body counts that was kept by the 20-year-
was asked about the death in Charlottesville a Media Matters study found, or 19 times per old who fatally shot 20 children and six
of counterprotester Heather Heyer. day. Matt Gertz, a Media Matters senior fel- adults at Sandy Hook. These also lay bare
The second, HBO’s “Vice News Tonight,” low who coauthored the analysis, calls this how many are motivated by a desire for
also covered the white nationalist protesters “privileging the lie.” fame. “When you see me on the news, you’ll
who had descended on Charlottesville. Yet He cites a good and a bad way to handle know who I am,” said the 19-year-old who
while it, too, got some criticism for provid- this. The bad: A “Face the Nation” tweet that allegedly killed 17 people and wounded an-
ing them with exposure, there was positive said, unquestioningly, “The chant now should other 17 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
feedback for the way that the reporting by be ‘finish the wall,’ as opposed to ‘build the School in Parkland, Florida.
correspondent Elle Reeve contradicted as- wall,’ because we’re building a lot of wall,” The strategic silence movement, as it ap-
sertions by Trump (“I think there is blame @realDonaldTrump said today.” The good, plies to tragedies like these, is “not suggesting
on both sides”) by showing persuasively that from The Washington Post: “Trump claims a hiding people from the public. We’re just say-
the white nationalists had been driven less wall is needed to stop human trafficking. No ing that the focus needs to be switched,” says
by ideology than by a determination to cause data back up his claim.” J. Pete Blair, a criminologist and ALERRT’s
violence. One of the white supremacists on These days, Gertz says, some longstand- director. “crime prevention 101 says there
whom she focused, Christopher Cantwell, ing journalistic practices should fall into are certain things we know can reduce crime,
was subsequently charged with and pleaded question, “and one is that what the president and one of those things is if we reduce the
guilty to two counts of misdemeanor assault says is inherently newsworthy.” If it is, and rewards for the crime.”
and battery for pepper-spraying people at it’s true, he says, “by all means tell the public This idea is finding widespread accep-
the rally; his Facebook and Instagram pro- about it. If it’s not true, do the work of point- tance from law enforcement officials on
files were shut down because of statements ing that out rather than amplifying informa- whom journalists depend for information.
he made about it, and he said Venmo and tion that isn’t accurate.” The International Association of Chiefs of
PayPal disabled his accounts. It’s those shootings that most directly Police, in a resolution, urged what it called
A candlelight vigil is held for the victims of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
niem a n r ep or ts SU MM ER 2 019 13You can also read
