REDRAWING THE LINE - Nieman Reports
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REPORTS
NIEMAN R EPORT S
REDRAWI N G T H E L I N E
CO VE RA GE OF TH E PO LI CE IS CH A N GI N G,
HOW IM A CC OU N TS
N S TO CE N TE RI N G VI CT
FROM CROWDSOURCED INVESTIGATIO S
CBS NEWS’ WESLEY LOWERY: REFEREE THE
PROCES
PAST
KANSAS CITY STAR: RECKONING WITH THE
ST ON GL OB E: CH AN GIN G CR IM IN AL JU ST ICE REPORTING
BO LISM
SOURCE DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVE JOURNA
Contributors
The Nieman Foundation
for Journalism at Harvard University
www.niemanreports.org
Madeleine University Scripps School of
Schwartz (page 6) is Journalism, Williams has worked as a
a regular contributor reporter for four other newspapers,
to The New York including Newsday and The Atlanta
Review and The New Journal-Constitution. She’s written
Yorker, among other publications. on the 2015 Black student protests at
She founded and edits The Ballot, a the University of Missouri and that
website that covered every 2020 year won a Gerald M. Loeb Award for
election except the American one. uncovering college rankings fraud at
the University of Missouri-Kansas
publisher Celeste Katz City.
Ann Marie Lipinski Marston (page 14)
has spent 25 years Jason Tuohey (page
editor
reporting for 30) is the managing
James Geary
newspapers, editor for digital at
editorial specialist magazines, and radio with a specialty The Boston Globe,
Eryn M. Carlson in politics, elections, and voting where he’s edited
staff assistant rights, and has been on staff at BostonGlobe.com since the site
Shelby Grebbin outlets including the New York Daily launched in 2011. Under his leadership,
News, Newsweek, and WBAI New the news site has received numerous
design
Dan Zedek York. She is the co-author of “Is This honors, including the Society of COVER: Following the police killing of George Floyd, a demonstrator raises her hands in front of a police line near the White House on
Any Way To Vote? Vulnerable Voting Newspaper Design’s “Word’s Best May 31, 2020 ABOVE: Police hold a perimeter near the White House during the same protest
editorial offices Machines and the Mysterious Website” award and the 2014 Pulitzer
One Francis Avenue, Cambridge,
Industry Behind Them” in Breaking News Reporting for cover-
MA 02138-2098, 617-496-6308,
nreditor@harvard.edu (WhoWhatWhy, 2020). age of the Boston Marathon bombings. Contents Spring 2021 / Vol. 75 / No. 2
Copyright 2021 by the President and Adeshina Melba Newsome
Fellows of Harvard College. Emmanuel (page 18) (page 32) is an award-
Features Departments
Periodicals postage paid at is the editor-in-chief winning health and cover Live@Lippmann 2
Boston, Massachusetts and additional
at Injustice Watch, a education journalist. To Change Its Future, The Kansas 28 Farai Chideya discusses culture war
entries
nonprofit investiga- She is a 2020 Pulitzer REDRAWING THE LINE City Star Examined Its Past communication, fatal beliefs, and more
subscriptions/business tive newsroom based in Chicago. His Center for Crisis Reporting grantee How Coverage of the Police 18 “The Truth in Black and White” forced a
617-496-6299, nreports@harvard.edu work over the past decade has and a 2020 Reynolds Journalism is Changing look inward By Mára Rose Williams Niemans@Work 4
spanned hyperlocal and national re- Institute Fellow. Newsrooms are moving away from privi- Examining the future of art critics,
Subscription $25 a year, porting with a focus on race, class, and leging police accounts over those of police Changing Standards for 30 elevating Black and brown media outlets,
$40 for two years; institutional injustice. Emmanuel pre- Rachel Ramirez violence victims Changing Times and adding a human touch to foreign
add $10 per year for foreign airmail.
viously was an education reporter at (page 34) is an By Adeshina Emmanuel With “Fresh Start,” The Boston Globe policy writing
Single copies $7.50.
Back copies are available from Chalkbeat, an investigative reporter at independent weighs the news value of older articles
the Nieman office. the Chicago Reporter, and a neighbor- journalist covering “What if the Process 26 versus individual harm By Jason Tuohey Nieman Notes 46
hood reporter at DNAinfo Chicago. environmental Itself is Unfair?”
Please address all subscription He also worked on the breaking news justice, race, and climate. She was Wesley Lowery on rethinking crime Diverse Sources, Inclusive Reporting 32 Sounding By Alissa J. Rubin 48
correspondence to: wire at the Chicago Sun-Times before born and raised in Saipan, Northern coverage, how the loss of local journalism Four ways to increase the diversity of
TOP: ALEX WONG/GET T Y IMAGEES INSET: DOUG CHAYKA
One Francis Avenue,
FRONT COVER : SAMUEL CORUM/AFP VIA GET T Y IMAGES
interning at The New York Times in Mariana Islands, but is currently affects the beat, and more your sources By Melba Newsome Afterimage By Anastasia Taylor-Lind 49
Cambridge, MA 02138-2098
2012 at the start of his career. He was based in New York City. You can find
and change of address information to:
P.O. Box 4951, Manchester, NH 03108 born and raised in the Uptown neigh- her work in Vox, HuffPost, Grist, The
ISSN Number 0028-9817 borhood on Chicago’s North Side by Guardian, Rolling Stone, Mother “A Climate of Fear” 6 Where Climate and Race 34
an African-American mother and Jones, and other publications. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is Coverage Meet
Postmaster: Send address changes to Nigerian father and studied journal- cracking down on the free press, and the free Environmental justice reporting chronicles Newsrooms
Nieman Reports P.O. Box 4951, ism at Loyola University Chicago. Clio Chang (page press is pushing back By Madeleine Schwartz how the climate crisis, racial inequity, and have long
Manchester, NH 03108
40) is a writer based policy impact vulnerable communities been the
Mará Rose in New York covering “We Live in an Age of Mini-Masacres” 12 By Rachel Ramirez traditional
Nieman Reports (USPS #430-650)
Williams (page 28) politics, culture, and Author Arundhati Roy on the state of India’s space where
is published in March, June,
young
September, and December by is an award-winning media. Her work can democracy, the role of the media, and more Connecting in a 40
journalists
the Nieman Foundation education writer for be found in The New Republic, The Time of Covid learn to
at Harvard University, The Kansas City Star, California Sunday Magazine, Jezebel, Rage Against the Media 14 With the loss of physical newsrooms, how report. Covid
One Francis Avenue, where she has worked for more than and more. Her biggest accomplish- Trump’s stoking of hostility is outlasting are young journalists faring? is changing
Cambridge, MA 02138-2098
20 years. A graduate of the Ohio ment to date is a profile of a dog. his presidency By Celeste Katz Marston By Clio Chang that
Live@ why people choose white nationalism over how people who hold the top editorial
Lippmann money and health and survival, you have power perceive the work of the people in
unlocked a whole Candy Crush bonus.” their own newsrooms, let alone outside of
The reality is that a sense of belonging, them. It’s a huge problem.
“You Can’t Fact-Check a a spiritual-cultural sense of belonging,
is something that people will die for, for
If the news media had listened to Black
and other non-white reporters more in
Culture War” many different reasons, good and bad.
People who died during the civil rights era
2016, I don’t think there would have been
this breathless clutching of pearls like,
The “Our Body Politic” host on culture died to make the world better for people of “Oh, my God. This isn’t the America I
war communication, what male white
color and everyone. know.” That’s because you don’t leave the
People who are dying for whiteness house.
editors ignored in 2016, and more also believe that they are making the
world better. You can discuss that without
Honestly, the reality is that people
who get to decide the news also have to
endorsing their point of view, but to not decide what uncomfortable truths we tell
understand it is part of the reason that about our nation. No group of people,
we are where we are, because we just Black, white, or purple, is perfect, but
pretended it wasn’t happening. there was a conscious stifling of narratives
F
There are a lot of people who are willing around white racial resentment out of the
arai Chideya is a journalist whose ca- than the truth. Journalists have been slow to die for a supremacist or nationalist misguided idea that somehow that made
reer has encompassed academia as well on the uptake about that. view of whiteness. Rather than saying, “All the news more fair. It does not.
as broadcast and print journalism. these Trump voters are stupid because What makes the news fair is listening to
She has worked at news organizations On mocking they won’t wear masks.” For the ones who people who use racial resentment as one
including NPR, CNN, ABC News, One of the things we talked about a lot this don’t, start asking what is more important of the indicators for who they should vote
FiveThirtyEight, and The Intercept. election cycle is the constant mocking of than life itself? Why are you following a for, and finding out why. Not to suppress
Chideya has reported from 49 states and working income whites by the American political ideology that is leading you to die? that they believe that but say, “Well, what
has covered every presidential election since press. In some ways, it’s more acceptable Which is what’s happening, measurably. makes you think that?” and get into the
1996. As a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein now to be mocking and scornful of That’s an interesting question, and it Journalist Farai Chideya has covered every presidential election since 1996 circumstances of their lives.
Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, working-class whites than it is to be so produces interesting answers, which is a Even when I interview a white
she studied the lack of diversity in American openly [mocking] of people of color. It’s lot better than just being snarky. America don’t intend to take the vaccine resentment in affinity for Trump [in 2016], supremacist, I don’t view them as people
newsrooms. Her books include “Don’t Believe completely unhelpful to mock working- When I’ve interviewed white because of fear of the scientific institution’s I was shut down by a lot of my editors without merit. I don’t view them as
the Hype: Fighting Cultural Misinformation class white Trump voters. It is helpful supremacists and nationalists, they talk racism, which is well documented. who were all white men. I have had one inhuman. I view them as human beings,
About African Americans” and “The Episodic to go and talk to them and understand about coming home to family when they Instead of saying, “Half of Black people of my former editors apologize to me for making a set of choices about their life,
Career.” both the realities that they face and the join active white supremacist movements. are crazy and don’t want to live,” you basically not paying attention to what I choices that I may not agree with, but
Currently, Chideya is the program officer manipulative messaging going on. It reminds me very much of what people could say, “Because of the long history of said. The reality is that I wasn’t just saying that I choose to understand rather than to
for journalism at the Ford Foundation, and have said about joining gangs. medical malpractice and deliberate use of this; I think there was an assumption that suppress the knowledge of.
she is the creator and host of “Our Body On potentially fatal beliefs You could have a guy who is black or Black people as test subjects, we find now I was saying this because I was Black. No, In many cases, media organizations
Politic,” a podcast by, about, and for Black The thing is it’s not disparaging of Latino who joined a gang in L.A. They may that 50% of African Americans don’t want I’m a Black woman who’s been a reporter basically said, “I can’t cover this, because
women and women of color. working- class white Americans to point have the same motivation for joining a to take the vaccine. What would it take to for three decades, and who’s been out in it’s too hot. I can’t talk about this.”
She spoke with Nieman Fellows in out where some of them have bought into gang that a white nationalist has for joining prove to Black people that this is safe?” the field, and who is out in the field now.
November. Edited excerpts: a culture war that also kills them. It’s doing a white supremacist movement. It is that One thing that was interesting is in My lived experience plus my reporting On knowing when to leave
good reporting, which is very different sense of belonging that transcends your Mississippi at first Black people were experience actually means I know things, If the place you’re working has no
On understanding culture war from mocking. In Jonathan Metzl’s “Dying day-to-day life. the most likely to die of Covid. Now it’s but in newsrooms, the truth that makes willingness to change, stop trying to
communication of Whiteness,” which I highly recommend, It doesn’t mean that having a sense white people because Black Americans the printed page, or the digital page, or change it. Get out. I am here to tell you
Farai Chideya: You have to understand the he talks about different policies including of belonging is wrong. The people who are wearing masks more than white makes air, is often shaped by what editors that it is better to break for the fences
dynamics of culture war communication. white Americans who are poor who have have done the most good to this world Americans. I think Black Americans know think is true. if there is no willingness to change than
I feel the political press and all press lost been against Medicaid expansion through have a passionate sense of belonging that that we’re dying disproportionately. If you come in with a totally true story to keep beating your head against a
touch with the idea that you can’t fact-check the Affordable Care Act, gun laws that drives their actions. What I’m saying is Also, in that question, it’s not, why are that’s a man bites dog story, to them, they cinderblock wall. That doesn’t mean to
a culture war. That’s just not how it works. empirically allow more white people to that the sense of belonging itself is neither white people in Mississippi so stupid? The may genuinely think, “Oh, that’s a man abandon newsrooms, or to give up too
You have to have the cultural competency kill and be killed, etc. It’s an embrace of inherently right nor wrong. question is “What political and cultural bites dog story, and it’s just not true. It’s easily. It’s to ask yourself, is your job to
to understand how you got into this culture cultural nationalism, which is also tied to You can have a sense of belonging to factors make white Americans not want got to have been made up.” try to use a toothpick to break through a
war, who’s perpetrating it, who are the so- white nationalism through public policy. any number of movements or affiliations to wear masks in Mississippi?” It’s about If you’re someone like me who’s a Black cinderblock wall, or to figure out where
called bystanders. There was a white nationalist, who that do harm or good in the world, and finding the right question. American who’s taken rental cars through the door is and get out?
The reality is no one’s a bystander I DMed with on Twitter for over a year. so to figure out why people feel that they A lot of times, we’re just not asking the 49 of the 50 U.S. states in America and It may not even mean getting out
in a culture war. You’re usually either Someone was like, “Why would you want have a sense of belonging rooted in racial right question, or we’re just saying, ‘people talked to white nationalists, and talked of a company. It may mean getting
a perpetrator, a resistance fighter, or to talk to a white nationalist?” I said, resentment and terrorism is important. are stupid.’ I think so much of dealing with to people working on labor rights, and out of a department, or it may mean
a victim. I feel there is a fundamental “To understand why so many people are information in a culture war era where immigration rights, and shutting down getting out of the mindset and saying,
DENEKA PENISTON
misunderstanding of how the act of telling attracted to an ideology that then can be On asking the right questions there’s racial tensions is not going for the evictions, and real estate speculators “All of us are overworked. Half of our
the truth through journalism is simply weaponized to gain political power like now.” When journalists cover science, we can easy mocking answer. who are buying buildings, and all these team is parenting from home. When
not enough without understanding why They were like, “Well, I don’t think there’s be culturally competent about the reasons different types of people, I haven’t seen a can we reasonably expect to have this
disinformation and lies work. They’re very that much you can learn from them,” and why people deny science. For example, one On what white male editors ignored man bite a dog, but I’ve seen a lot. discussion at a time where we can be
appealing, and they go viral much faster I was like, “Au contraire. If you understand study found that half of Black people in When I talked about the role of racial There is a question in newsrooms of more focused about it?” P
2 N IEM A N R E P OR T S S P RI N G 2 0 2 1 NIe MA N rePo rT S SPr IN G 2 0 2 1 3
NiemaNs purpose. Already, we have evidence of being
@work Local News Doesn’t Mean Parochial News early on stories around food insecurity,
With URL Media, S. Mitra Kalita, NF ’21, seeks to evictions, and small business closures and
adaptions.
elevate Black and brown media organizations
Making Of late, there’s been a lot of talk of
T
“saving” local news. We tend to define
Meaning in the he June primary to represent my
district in the state legislature in
mine (we live in bordering neighborhoods
of Queens) or the growing Bangladeshi
what we mean by geography. The reason
I prefer the term “community news” is
21st Century Albany was a crowded one. One
night, I received a text message
communities in Michigan and Pennsylvania,
or a perspective from back home (my
because it’s more expansive and defined
by seeking connectivity among each other,
With her documentary from a neighbor to tune into a de- parents are from Assam, right next to versus stopping at a border, a zip code,
“Out of the Picture,” bate on Facebook hosted by TBN24, a tele- Bangladesh). an imaginary line. To serve “local” is to
Mary Louise vision news channel for Bangladeshis living
around the globe.
TBN24 boasts 2.2 million fans on
Facebook. On the same platform, that’s
accept limitation. None of us works for an
internet that accepts the limits of scale.
Schumacher, NF ’17, It was like no local debate I have ever more than Newsweek and the Chicago Thus, serving a community feels like better
examines the future of seen before, and subsequently forced me
to reimagine the media’s role in elections.
Tribune combined. My guess is most business and journalistic practice.
journalists have never heard of it. URL Habib and I have a lot in common, as
the American art critic TBN24’s interest in the Assembly race Media is seeking to change that. fellow South Asians. But his viewers and
W
might have been initially stoked by the On the heels of our January soft WURD’s listeners do, too, as the radio
hen I first set out to make Mary Louise Schumacher (center) with Mark Escribano and Cindy Eggert Johnson on a fact that a Bangladeshi taxi driver and launch, Rahman was on WNYC’s “The station has a big Muslim listenership. His
“Out of the Picture,” a docu- shoot for a documentary about art critics at the Marlborough Gallery in New York labor organizer, Joy Chowdhury, was a Brian Lehrer Show” talking about another audiences care about immigration policy
mentary film about art critics, candidate. But moderators asked questions political race, a special election in Queens and the fate of DACA under President
my motivation was personal. and began capturing the lives, work, and focused attention after my own job was from the perspective of Uber drivers, small where four Bangladeshis were running. Biden, as does another network partner,
I wanted to understand a pro- thinking of a select group of critics. We eliminated in a systemwide downsizing businesses, Covid victims. The discussion TBN24’s formula is familiar across our Documented NY. I believe within these
fession that seemed to be collapsing as I followed Jen Graves through Seattle’s by Gannett in 2019, which, yes, we did was relatable, and they forced candidates partner organizations: we produce content overlaps lie great stories and opportunity.
was coming into it. underground art scene and Carolina film. Since then, I’ve been working with and their policy platforms to get personal in service of our communities. And that In January, I started my visiting Nieman
I wondered what would happen to Miranda to a mountain-top “dashboard our editor to cut scenes and an assembly, and precise. makes us more valuable to each other. fellowship. I am trying to experiment with
other art critics, consequential voices I Jesus” outside of Tijuana. We witnessed essentially a rough draft of the final film. Over the last few weeks, people have When Epicenter, my newsletter to help New coverage of New York City elections — our
cared about, at a time when newsroom Jeneé Osterheldt experience artful acts As I write this, I am preparing for asked me for the origin story of URL Media, Yorkers get through the pandemic, decides primary is in June — in precisely the manner
downsizings and critic departures were of memory at the site of George Floyd’s a cross-country journey to complete the network of community media outlets we need to do something on the Census, TBN24 did for the Assembly race. These
routine. I wanted to grapple with what was murder, and we were there when Hrag principal photography for the film. Over I launched in January with my co-founder we lean into being of service to our readers, overlaps in our current class are where I
happening to art and media, and what this Vartanian invented the term “blogazine” for the next few months I’ll work with local Sara Lomax-Reese. I think TBN24’s debate sharing how to fill out forms and why it am finding the most value. My colleague
period of change might mean for all of us. his then fledgling website, Hyperallergic. teams, using Covid protocols, to shoot is among those ‘aha’ moments where I matters. That approach proves to be equally Kyle Edwards of Native News Online, in
Back then, about a decade ago, I was Near the end of my Nieman year, I several of our subjects for the last time. realized the journalism we’ve always done useful for the Haitian Times, even though our introductory session, detailed a project
a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel art critic. also went deeper into this research and As our cameras have rolled over the deserves to be upended. our Q&A was rooted in a different immigrant on what Native communities are losing
What I was attempting would be hard, I conducted a survey of more than 300 visual years, some of the critics we’ve followed After that bottom-up debate, I tracked community. It republished our story. Our because of Covid. I seized on his language
knew. Art critics do not live inherently arts journalists, which revealed a lot about have risen to become essential voices of down TBN24’s co-founder, Habib Rahman, content is focused, but it is hardly narrow. of how to cover that which has been lost.
cinematic lives, after all. We look at things the power structures of the field. The a generation, and we witnessed a turning and have not left him alone since. I find By creating URL Media, we believe that, His outlet recently published a piece with
and quietly contend with our experiences findings, which were published in Nieman point for both culture and media. We hope myself gut-checking with him on so many by working together, we can break through the headline: “Elders are our memory
at keyboards. We fall into our beds at night Reports, informed the narrative we were “Out of the Picture,” slated to be complete matters from, say, the stimulus bill to a and achieve scale without sacrificing our banks. Taking the Covid vaccine can save
with laptops, exhibition catalogues, and shaping. We began to ask more questions this summer, will prompt a national candidate’s real chances of winning to authenticity and relevance to our core them.” As we near the one-year anniversary
swirling brains. It makes for a riveting about who is and is not equipped to engage conversation not only about an ostensibly how the vaccine rollout is going. What I audiences. Our other hope is that you will of the lockdown, I draw on lessons from
DARREN CAL ABRESE/THE CANADIAN PRESS VIA THE A SSOCIATED PRESS
internal life, but action adventure it is not. the work of today’s most relevant artists — esoteric subject — the American art critic appreciate about our conversations is that hear about certain story lines sooner, from entrenched communities like his, across
Still, my journalistic gut had kicked in. formally, culturally, and politically. today — but also the nature of art and how I never know if he will be relaying news the perspective of those most affected, time and generations, to foreshadow what
I took a leap of faith, put together a team, Ironically, the film got more of my meaning gets made in the 21st century. P from the few blocks between his house and rooted in a sense of place, people, and awaits us relative newcomers. P
Open Canada Covers Foreign Political candidates can ignore foreign with writing that’s pleasurable to read, personal essays about people coming to
Affairs with a Human Touch policy and still get elected. International
news stories don’t draw many eyeballs.
with commentary and analysis that’s
provocative and stimulating. I’m also
Canada for the first time, and about leaving
it. The first is by Zahra Nader, an Afghan
Editor Michael Petrou, NF ’18, invites people So why am I, as editor-in-chief, leading trying to broaden the conversation to woman who quit her job with The New
whose voices aren’t usually heard in foreign the relaunch of Open Canada, a digital include people whose voices we don’t York Times in Kabul so that her son could
magazine about Canada’s place in the typically hear in academic foreign policy have a better childhood in Canada than she
policy publications to tell their stories
OPPOSITE: DEAN JOHNSON
C
world? In part, it’s because I never stopped conferences, or in the journal articles and did as a refugee in Iran.
anadians haven’t had to worry too added international heft. caring about the rest of the world. In part, papers that come out of them. These stories reflect my belief that
much about the rest of the world Canadians recoil at being labeled it’s because I think Canadians should care I’ve published a package about the foreign affairs isn’t just about government
for the past 75 years. We’re sur- provincial or isolationist, and it’s true that more. 25,000 Syrian refugees who arrived in policy. It’s also about how all of us move
rounded by two wide oceans, one many of us travel, study, and work abroad. I’m trying to attract readers the Canada five years ago, written by one of through the world and interact with those
frozen one, and a powerful neigh- But trying to get Canadians to care about same way any good editor does: by them. I’ve started a feature called “Leaving who live in it. I hope it makes for rich and A gathering is held to welcome a Syrian
bor whose close friendship has given us what happens elsewhere is a challenge. respecting them and engaging them and Finding Home,” a collection of enjoyable journalism, too. P refugee family to Nova Scotia, Canada
4 N IEM A N R E P OR T S S PRI N G 2 0 2 1 NIEMA N REPO RT S SPRIN G 2 0 2 1 5
“A
CLIMATE
OF
FEAR Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi is cracking
down on the free press
— and the free press is
”
pushing back
By madeLeine schwartz
6 NIe M A N r e P or T S S Pr I N G 2 0 2 1 N IeMA N reP o rT S SPr IN G 2 0 2 1 7
he past few weeks
have been challenging for independent media in India.
At least nine Indian journalists found themselves ing independent outlets to continue doing their work. fied. “They might write on corruption in a small town. ABOVE: Journalist
facing criminal charges for reporting that police al- Modi’s government has intensively sued journalists They might write on sand smuggling [sand, used in Siddique Kappan (in
legedly shot a farmer during protests in Delhi at the end on charges of sedition and treason. Even when prose- construction, is an increasingly expensive resource in gray cap) and three
others are escorted
of January. The journalists reporting on the case were cutors are unlikely to win cases, journalists accused of India] somewhere or coal smuggling or the coal mafia.
by police to a court in
charged with sedition, even though the reporting was sedition or fighting an accusation under a terrorism law [But because] all those things are being also controlled Mathura, Utter Pradesh,
later found to be accurate. The police claimed that the must spend time and money rebutting allegations. “The somehow by the government, the next day you will find in October 2020
man had died from an overturned tractor. Footage and judicial process is very, very slow,” says Iftikhar — and somebody is being run over by a truck, somebody has LEFT: Journalist
an autopsy report showed he had gunshot wounds. expensive, a significant drain on independent outlets’ been shot. And those stories really don’t come out.” Mandeep Punia after
Twitter temporarily blocked the accounts of some already tenuous finances. One example is Siddique Kappan, a journalist based being granted bail in
100 activists, journalists, and publications that have Recent years have seen “criminal cases lodged against in Kerala who was arrested in October when reporting Delhi
been critical of the government, including that of in- journalists in India for their work, with a majority of cas- on a rape. He is still in jail, though in mid-February was
dependent magazine The Caravan, which specializes in es in BJP [Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party]-ruled states,” granted five days’ bail to visit his ailing mother.
long-form investigative journalism. Twitter blocked the according to a report by the Free Speech Collective, an Trolling from individuals and bots associated
OPPOSITE TOP: PRESS TRUST OF INDIA INSET: LIVEL AW/T WIT TER
accounts at the request of the Ministry of Electronics Indian freedom-of-the-press organization. “They are with Hindu nationalists has also become more com- scope of the new law’s long-term consequences remain
and Information Technology, according to Indian media going profession after profession,” says investigative mon. Hindu Nationalism has grown under Modi, bring- unclear.
sources. The accounts were later restored. journalist and Caravan contributor Vidya Krishnan of ing with it more abuse and violence against minorities The ministerial order, which goes into effect in
One Caravan freelance journalist, Mandeep Punia — the legal onslaught. “It’s not just journalists [but] poets and journalists from trolls and followers inflamed by November 2021, clarified that digital information plat-
PREVIOUS SPREAD: ANUSHREE FADNAVIS/REUTERS
who was arrested and jailed for more than two days after and intellectuals and comedians.” the BJP’s rhetoric. “Most of times they find your num- forms cannot receive more than 26% of their funding
posting a video of the farmers’ protests — interviewed Violence against journalists has also grown. The Free ber, they start getting into your WhatsApp inbox, your from sources outside India. Similar regulation already
PREVIOUS
farmers who had been jailed with him and, in the absence Speech Collective calculates that, in the last decade, “154 Instagram, Facebook, Twitter; you get hate mail in huge exists to regulate television and print media compa-
SPREAD:
Widows and of a notebook, took notes on his legs so he could file a journalists in India were arrested, detained, interrogat- numbers. And then there’s always this thing in your nies. This limits how much digital media can fundraise,
other relatives story after his release on bail. ed, or served ‘show cause notices’ [which indicate that mind, what if they find my address, and they just come restricting the size and scope of newsrooms. Legacy
of farmers These attacks on the free press come after years a party must appear before court] for their professional here and start doing whatever they like to do?” the jour- media in India are funded by government advertising
suspected of growing repression from Prime Minister Narendra work.” More than 40% of those cases took place in 2020. nalist who asked not to be identified explains. Trolls contracts, so reporters often find themselves trying to
of killing Modi’s government. “The Modi government has creat- The situation is especially dire for journalists in ru- “have this impunity, where they can just do anything investigate officials who are indirectly funding their sto-
themselves over ed a climate of fear,” says Aliya Iftikhar, who researches and then get away with it.” ries. Outside funding from investors gave digital media
ral areas, who lack the visibility and following of those
debt attend a
protest against
Indian freedom-of-the-press issues for the Committee to based in large cities. Rural journalists “are not neces- Most investigative and critical reporting in India is a sense of independence and protection from politics.
farm bills near Protect Journalists. For both Indian outlets and non-In- sarily writing against Modi or the government or these done by independent outlets, many of which are on- In October, the Indian government sent an email
Delhi, India, in dian outlets, the situation has become more dangerous, laws or on farmer protests,” says one journalist working line only. A recent ministerial order is having further to a number of online outlets informing them of the
December 2020 while new legislation makes it more difficult for remain- in India, who for safety reasons asked not to be identi- consequences for the country’s journalists, even as the new policy. Many of the sites that received the email,
8 NIE M A N R E P OR T S S PRI N G 2 0 2 1 NIEMA N REPO RT S SPRIN G 2 0 2 1 9
which was seen by Nieman Reports, were known for a now-deceased judge. The case has an uncertain legal
their investigative reporting, such as The Wire as well basis; Rappler has stated that the charge of “cyberlibel”
as Kashmir Reader, a site based in that contested region. did not exist at the time of the article’s publication. In
The email itself only referred to the revised legislation. January, Ressa faced a new cyberlibel charge concerning
Still, “it’s pretty clear from the [revised policy] that it is a story about students allegedly paying a professor.
meant to control digital media,” says Manisha Pande, Digital media platforms have anticipated this legisla-
executive editor of Newslaundry, which publishes inves- tion for several years. Last year, a group of digital news
tigative and daily reporting on Indian politics. “For us outlets, including Newslaundry, set up the DIGIPUB
to remain independent under these new rules … in my News India Foundation, a consortium that represents
mind it will make it tougher.” digital news media organizations and advocates on their
Founded in 2012, Newslaundry has reported deep- behalf. The organization works for the independence
ly on the Delhi riots last year, in which Hindu mobs of digital news media by encouraging different outlets
I
attacked and killed Muslim residents, and published to share resources. In the past few weeks, it has also
award-winning investigations into the lack of safety gear been tracking the arrests of journalists and raids against
for health workers during the coronavirus pandemic. As newsrooms.
the government attacks journalists for reporting on the Details on how widely the legislation will apply
farmers’ protesters, Newslaundry has continued to in- are still unclear, but its effects are expected to be
terview farmers protesting against the agrarian laws. In far-reaching, and some can already be seen. The legis-
a story published in early February, protesters describe lation may be used in the future to curb the expansion
how they look forward to voting out the BJP. of European and American media in India or may affect
“Like many legislations in the last few years, there tech companies that display journalistic content, like
have been clarifications and clarifications,” says Facebook.
Abhinandan Sekhri, Newslaundry co-founder and CEO. HuffPost India has already closed. Indrani Basu, who
“At the face of it, it impacts anyone who has taken in- worked as news and politics editor of HuffPost India
vestments and runs a digital information platform.” He from its launch in 2014 to 2018, was initially excited by
notes that even funds within India but have outside in- the independence of digital media. “You couldn’t take
vestments may qualify as “foreign” sources of capital. away our advertisement or funding,” she says. Over the
“We often crowdfund our reporting, and we can last six years, the site gained a strong reputation for
do that because we’re small,” says Pande. “And be- accountability journalism covering the Delhi riots in
cause we’re small, we can take on the big guys.” But February 2020, government corruption in the sand-min-
a cap on outside capital limits the eventual growth of ing business, and how the Indian government faked data
the site. Newslaundry receives much of its revenue to boost the idea of “Digital India,” a government cam-
paign aimed at strengthening India’s digital economy
through components such as connecting rural areas
F SUDDENLY YOU FIND with high-speed internet networks.
The future of this kind of investigative work is now
INDEPENDENT PUBLICATIONS IN in question, as is reporting done about the crisis in
Kashmir, much of which was also published by HuffPost.
INDIA DISAPPEARING ONE BY ONE, This work, done by local correspondents who “were liv-
ing that experience in Kashmir” and whose voices are
I’M NOT SURE WHAT JOURNALISTS rarely heard in legacy media, may now be harder to ac-
cess, says Basu.
IN KASHMIR WOULD DO” “In Kashmir, we were already witnessing intensi-
fied state intervention,” says Aakash Hassan, a jour-
nalist based in Kashmir who has written about how
In a conversation that took place at the end of
December, before the farmers’ protests and most recent
has faced a legislative onslaught: ten sedition cases
against him personally in five states, as well as against
A paramilitary
policeman swings his
the Kashmiri “cyber police” torture social media users. government crackdown, Caravan editor Vinod Jose said the publishers of the magazine for coverage of the pro- baton at an elderly
Sikh man at the Singhu
from subscriptions but has also raised money from the A few months ago, one of his colleagues working on a that four journalists from his newsroom had been at- tests.
border in northwest
Omidyar Network, an international philanthropic net- similar story was called to a police station and beaten tacked in the previous three months while reporting in There has been “no resistance from publishers Delhi. The photo went
work. “Individual organizations will now have to look at there. “They are trying to criminalize journalism. … It’s a Delhi neighborhood where Muslims were killed in ri- whatsoever,” Jose said of mainstream media in the viral on social media
their future growth plans,” Sekhri adds. becoming extremely, extremely difficult to operate and ots. “It’s a small newsroom but they are closely being country. If anything, he suggested, owners of legacy and became a defining
The accusation of “foreign meddling” echoes that work as a journalist. It’s nearly impossible.” watched by the intelligence agencies and the mobs,” media companies, many of whom have remained close image of the ongoing
used by another authoritarian ruler, President Rodrigo Meanwhile, the government has gone after other in- Jose said of his colleagues. to Modi, may stand to gain by a decline in digital me- farmers’ protests
Duterte of the Philippines, who has attacked media crit- dependent media — like The Caravan, known for its ag- “We saw the change in the media landscape probably dia. Last August, the editorial page of The Hindustan
ical of his murderous war on drugs and other assaults gressive reporting — in new ways. In 2018 The Caravan a year before [Modi] came to power” in 2014, Jose said. Times called the legislation limiting foreign funding
on individual lives and liberties. Duterte has gone after published numerous articles critical of the BJP, such as “We could see a number of editors changing, the cover- a “welcome move,” and argued that the “government
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA
Rappler, an independent news site in the Philippines an article about the BJP’s national president’s finances age changing.” When Modi took power, “You could see should also expand the definition of digital media” to
that has been funded by outside networks like Omidyar. as well as investigations into the mysterious death of a a direct proactive involvement” from the government in include more outlets.
The site’s co-founder and CEO, Maria Ressa, has faced judge who had been presiding over a murder trial involv- newsrooms. Around that time, The Caravan started re- Meanwhile, journalists in India continue to report,
10 criminal charges in the past two years. In June of last ing a close friend of Modi’s. The Caravan “has become ceiving stories from independent journalists that other despite the obstacles. Says Krishnan, the investigative
year, she was found guilty of “cyberlibel” for Rappler’s an orphanage for journalists who were edged out of leg- publications no longer wanted to publish. journalist, “We are fighting for whether truth is mean-
reporting about the links between a businessman and acy newsrooms like myself,” says contributor Krishnan. Since the farmers’ protests, Jose says, the magazine ingful or not.” P
10 N IE M A N R E P OR T S S PRI N G 2 0 2 1 NIEMA N REPO RT S SPRIN G 2 0 2 1 11
“WE LIVE IN AN AGE OF
Now the oxygen is being taken away, sucked out even almost every nonfiction essay, it is a story.
of the lungs of even the middle class and even the big It seems to be the only way I can explain things
farmers, the agricultural elite. to myself. There is a mathematics to the way the
structure works. To me, the structure and the language
MINI-MASSACRES”
On the role the media has played in the is as important as the story or the characters.
decline of India’s democracy I don’t think I’m capable of writing something
None of this could have happened if it wasn’t the from A to B. It has to take a walk around the park, and
media. Here you see the confluence of corporate then come back to certain places, and then have these
money, corporate advertisement, and this vicious reference points. Structure’s everything.
nationalism. You can’t even call them media or
journalists anymore. It would be wrong. On the dangers to journalists, intellectuals,
The only [legitimate] media that there is now is and activists in India
a few people who are online who are managing very The thing is, what we first have to understand is
bravely to carry on and a few magazines like Caravan. how ordinary people — ordinary villagers, Indigenous
I was recently listening to a very moving talk by this
young journalist called Mandeep Punia who had just
people, women guerillas who’ve been fighting mining
corporations, people whose names we don’t know —
“THE BEST OF
been arrested and beaten up. He was talking about
how so many of his fellow journalists cannot be called
have been dragged into prison, have been humiliated,
even sexually humiliated. Those who have humiliated
THE BEST —
journalists anymore.
They’re just people who act out a script every day.
them have been given bravery awards. Look at the
number who have been imprisoned, executed, buried
JOURNALISTS,
If you look at the media, the police — I’m sorry to
say this, but it’s almost diseased. [Politicians such as]
in mass graves in Kashmir. All that violence that
many Indians have accepted quite comfortably, even
TRADE
Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Minister of Home
Affairs Amit Shah, none of them would be anything
approved of, has now arrived at their doorsteps.
When you’re a journalist, a writer, anybody whose
UNIONISTS,
but just some small-time hoods on the street if it
wasn’t for the media, I’d say. They have been built up
head is above the water, you’re already privileged in
terms of someone’s looking out for you. You have a
LAWYERS WHO
and amplified by this unbelievably invasive, relentless
propaganda machine.
lawyer. Meanwhile, we have thousands of people who
are in prison who don’t have any access to legal help,
DEFEND THEM —
On the role of the writer or the artist in
nothing.
Then you have a situation where, I’d say, the best
ARE IN JAIL”
democracies in crisis of the best — I mean journalists, trade unionists,
It’s been a question that’s very interesting to me for lawyers who defend them — are in jail. We know a lot
as long as I’ve ever been a writer. To me, it’s always of them are in jail for entirely made-up reasons. There
been the case that I feel like you need to have eyes are students in jail. The latest police trick is to make a
around your head. For example, if you look at what’s charge-sheet that is 17,000 pages, 30,000 pages. You’d
happening with the farm protests now, how do you need a whole bloody library shelf in your prison cell
understand it, as a writer or as a human being? to accommodate your own charge-sheet. A lawyer or
Man Booker Prize-winning On whether India is still a democracy The agriculture crisis is a real crisis. It wasn’t a judge can’t even read it, let alone adjudicate upon
author Arundhati Roy on the Of course not. Apart from the laws that exist, like
the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act [1967 anti-
created by Hindu fundamentalism. It was created by
the Green Revolution when capital-intensive farming
it, for years maybe. They are continuously arresting
people, or threatening people with arrest. The
state of India’s democracy, terrorism legislation to prevent unlawful associations was introduced, and by the overmining of water, by the harassment, even if you are not actually in prison, is
the role of the media, and more and “maintain the sovereignty and integrity of India”], overuse of pesticides, by hybrid seeds, by putting in unbelievable. Your life comes to a standstill.
under which you have hundreds of people now just massive irrigation projects and not thinking about how
being picked up and put into jail every day, every to drain the water. So how do I make literature out of On what gives hope
rundhati Roy’s first novel, “The institution that is meant to work as a check against irrigation problems, or drainage, or electricity? I have days of utter desolation and hopelessness, like
God of Small Things,” won the unaccountable power is seriously compromised. It’s been something that I’ve been pretty obsessed millions of others here. But the fact is that when we
Man Booker Prize in 1997. Her Also, the elections are compromised. I don’t think with, understanding things which are not normally develop a way of thinking and seeing, many of us end
second, “The Ministry of Utmost we have free and fair elections because you have a considered a fiction writer’s business. To me, I can’t up being people who know that we’ve got to do what
Happiness,” was shortlisted for it. system now of secret electoral bonds, which allows write fiction unless I make it my business. You have to we have to do. Whether we win or lose, we’re going to
These books, written two decades business corporations to secretly fund political parties. know how all these things intersect with each other. do it because we’re never going over to the other side.
apart, capture how India has We have today a party that is the richest political party How does caste, or race, or class, or irrigation, or bore- You’ve got to keep holding on to that, because
changed. In addition to her fiction, in the world, the BJP. Elections in India have become wells affect what might seem like a clash between two that is what puts the oxygen in our lungs, that way of
Roy’s political essays taught a a spectator sport — it’s like watching a Ferrari racing a communities? thinking, that way of not aggrandizing yourself to an
generation of young Indian writers few old bicycles. extent where you think you can solve all the world’s
to think incendiary thoughts. In any case, a democracy doesn’t mean just On the writing process problems. You can’t, but you can do something, so you
At a time when democratic elections. First of all, India hasn’t been a democracy I am a structure nerd. A lot of it has to do with the fact just keep doing that something.
values are under siege in India, as they are elsewhere in Kashmir or in Bastar [a district in the state of that I studied architecture, and that I always have been There isn’t ever going to be an end to the chaos.
around the world, Roy’s analysis of issues like nuclear Chhattisgarh], or for the poorest of the poor who have interested in cities, how they are structured and how But we have to be able to accommodate that chaos
SUKI DHANDA
weapons, industrialization, nationalism, and more is no access to institutions of justice, who live completely they work, and how institutions in the city are built for in our minds and be part of it, swim with it, absorb
essential to this moment. Roy spoke with the Nieman under the boot of police and the justice system that citizens, and the noncitizens live in the cracks. it, influence it, turn it to our purpose. The wind will
Foundation in February. Edited excerpts: crushes them with violence and indifference. To me, if you look at my fiction or the nonfiction, change direction at some point, won’t it? P
12 N IEM A N R E P OR T S S P RI N G 2 0 2 1 NIEMA N REPO RT S SPRIN G 2 0 2 1 13
RAGE
AGAINST
THE
MEDIA
Trump’s stoking of hostility
— rhetorical and physical —
toward reporters is outlasting
his presidency
By Celeste Katz Marston
14 NIe M A N r e P or T S S Pr I N G 2 0 2 1 NIEMA N REPO RT S SPRIN G 2 0 2 1 15
OST DAYS, PAUL GILLESPIE KEEPS HIMSELF TO PHOTOGRAPHING the news,
not commenting on it. January 6, 2021, wasn’t one of those days.
As violent pro-Donald Trump rioters laid siege to the U.S. Capitol, disrupt-
ing congressional certification of the 2020 election results, an image circulat-
ed of a grim message scrawled on a door to the hallowed building: “Murder the
Media.” Gillespie, a survivor of the 2018 disgruntled-reader rampage in Annapolis,
Maryland, that left five Capital Gazette newsroom colleagues dead, had to respond
— and began tweeting out his portraits of the fallen and their survivors.
“That might just be words [to] whoever wrote that, or they might think it’s
funny, or they might really mean it — but it happened to me. … Five of my Capital A man is restrained
Gazette family members were murdered all around me. My head was almost taken after shoving
off my body,” he says. “[I] had to let it be known: [We’re] not make-believe. We members of the
media during a
are real people who live in your communities, and we go to the job every day just
2019 Trump rally in
trying to do the best job we can.” El Paso, Texas
As Gillespie notes, the motive for the notorious Annapolis shooting, unlike the
January 6 rampage, did not center on President Trump, who systematically stoked cently, [look] at what happened in the Balkans during from the situation — and calmly did.
suspicion and hatred of the press even before his 2016 election. Even now that the ’90s, [and what’s] happening in the Philippines. It “I’m not one to run or to scurry away from a situa-
President Biden is in office, Gillespie and others in the field remain concerned is a global phenomenon,” says Tanya Domi, an adjunct tion, no matter how dangerous it is, [but] I walked away.
about a political climate that has been fertile ground for attacks, rhetorical and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia I didn’t think [it] would have been the wisest thing to
physical, on the media Trump demonizes. University and an expert on the Balkans and autocratic say anything or just to confront them — as much as I
There’s been a torrent of condemnations of the violence at the Capitol, where re- leaders in Eastern Europe. wanted to,” says Wafford, who’s been with the station
The Fairness Doctrine, which required FCC-licensed less than a year. He shared the video because “I want
TV and radio stations to give airtime to controversial people to understand what [we] deal with.”
public issues and allow opposing viewpoints on them, Staying cool may not always be easy: Having “Murder
“needs to be re-instituted across all new contemporary the media” messages out there “made me even more
porters and photographers tell of being threatened with really is a loser [and] half the stuff he says are lies,’ [that] platforms in which media is reported, [and] that has to grateful that [my] situation didn’t turn bad,” Wafford
shooting and working among demonstrators wearing hasn’t seemed to happen yet,” Egan adds. become a priority,” along with stronger education in areas says in retrospect. “What if the person that was behind
T-shirts with slogans like “Hang the media.” New York The rage Trump normalized in the past five years is in like civics, says Domi. She also encourages congressional me was the one who wrote ‘Murder the media’? … I lit-
Times photographer Erin Schaff described being thrown some ways elemental. Bernard Golden, a Chicago-based hearings, pushed by the heads of media organizations, erally saw someone walk past me with a pitchfork. A
to the ground by hostile men as the Capitol was overrun. psychologist and author of “Overcoming Destructive on threats to a free press: “Journalists [are] harassed and pitchfork. [I] saw people with sticks and objects to hit
Julio Cortez of The Associated Press shared video of his Anger,” says, “Anger is energizing; it’s like a shot of caf- have been threatened around the world and [they] live people with and throw at people.”
colleague, photographer John Minchillo, being bodily feine in our body. We feel more alive with anger.” While with it in a way that [is] really honorable, but after a while, While Wafford walked away from the vitriol with his
dragged into a crowd of Trump supporters. “This is a in decades past, people viewed an “angry” politician as that really diminishes your capacity to stay at it without gear intact, others weren’t as lucky.
reminder of the dangers journalists both in the U.S. and flawed, he says, widespread “modeling of anger gives us backing of the editorial leadership. What you learn about D.C.-based Ford Fischer, whose activism footage is
PREVIOUS SPREAD: MICHAEL NIGRO/SIPA USA VIA THE A SSOCIATED PRESS
around the world face every day while simply trying to permission to be angry” — whether it’s from the very autocrats is that they’ll threaten and belittle and intimi- used by news outlets and documentarians via his com-
do their jobs,” says AP spokesman Patrick Maks. top of the government or a proliferation of TV news and date as long as they have the room to do it.” pany, News 2 Share, was at the Capitol when a mob
More than 2,000 miles away, Salt Lake Tribune talk shows that have found that conflict sells. Thanks to the catastrophe in Washington, Trump’s overran a camera position, driving out the press on
photojournalist Rick Egan was covering a pro-Trump “Those people who marched into the Capitol, they ability to suck up oxygen and directly mobilize his fol- duty and destroying their equipment. He remembers a
demonstration at the Utah State Capitol on January 6 felt empowered,” Golden says. “Anger could become an lowers suffered a body blow: With days left in his pres- reporter’s “real scream of fear.” The marauders “picked
when a man rushed him and pepper-sprayed him in the identity, and it [has].” idency, and facing possible impeachment or invocation things up and then smashed them back on the sidewalk,
face. A colleague flushed Egan’s eyes with water after Trump’s messaging has clearly had its deleterious of the 25th Amendment, he saw major social media plat- and they were chanting, ‘Fake news! Fake news! We’re
the assault, which the paper decried as an unacceptable effect on public discourse — both by defining it and by forms kill his mic. Twitter, his prime megaphone, per- the media now,’ and that moment, for me, was horrify-
attack on local journalism. Once his eyesight returned, derailing it. During recent Senate runoffs in Georgia, manently suspended his account on January 8. ing,” Fischer says.
Egan says, he made photos for another two hours. Golden says, candidates tried to debate concrete issues On the ground in D.C. and at statehouses across the While covering groups like the extremist Proud Boys,
ERIC GAY/THE A SSOCIATED PRESS
Egan, a 36-year veteran of the Tribune, thinks Trump like the economic stimulus and health insurance, but country that had satellite pro-Trump rallies on January Fischer says he’s seen that even in confrontational, an-
bears responsibility for stoking anti-media animus: “Trump and others like him have completely distracted 6, coverage and safety choices had to be made by report- ti-media situations, the hardcore right will “listen to
“Making us ‘the enemy of the people’ has made it hard. them by the hatred, finding ‘the other’ to focus on, rath- ers in real time. leaders, [and to] hierarchical, top-down commands.”
PREVIOUS SPREAD: … [The Trump supporters] just come right at us, like, er than [the] hard task of coming up with answers to the A video clip widely circulated during the Capitol riot- That leads him to believe “the thing that would prob-
Pro-Trump rioters ‘Who are you with?’ and ‘What do you think you’re doing problems we have.” ing shows Andrew Wafford, a photojournalist for WJLA, ably cause Trump’s supporters to not have this level of
attack the press
pool and destroy
here?’ Egan says. “[They] attack us, which is something Diminishing the media is something Trump became a Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate, getting swarmed by animosity toward the media would be if they heard it out
TV production gear totally new to me in my career.” incredibly good at — but it’s obviously not a new tac- Trump supporters shouting “Fake news” and “Get the of President Trump’s mouth.”
outside the Capitol While some people believed once Trump lost, “a lot tic. “The statement that the media is ‘the enemy of the f— out of here.” Unlike Egan, who was ambushed in The odds of that happening?
on January 6 of these people [would] peel off and think, ‘Okay, he people’ is straight out of Stalin’s playbook, but more re- Utah, Wafford had the opportunity to extricate himself “Extremely minuscule.” P
16 NIe M A N r e P or T S S Pr I N G 2 0 2 1 NIeMA N reP o rT S SPr IN G 2 0 2 1 17You can also read
