Overcoming Bias A Journalists Guide To Culture and Context Second Edition

Overcoming Bias
In this practical and engaging new edition, experienced reporter and

teacher Sue Ellen Christian offers a fully updated and fresh take on
reporting without bias, examining the way that we categorize people,
filter information and default to rehearsed ways of thinking.
This book is about biases that affect journalism at every stage of
reporting and writing. Included throughout are stories and advice
from working reporters and editors, providing real-world voices
and experiences, and covering questions of culture, stereotyping,
sources, writing, editing, visuals and reflective practice. This advice
and guidance is coupled with practical exercises that give readers the
chance to apply what they learn. Christian provides a career-long
foundation for those looking to edit their thinking and to champion
a more inclusive and open-minded approach to coverage of our
multicultural society.
Offering a concise, readable and highly applicable guide to
managing coverage of contemporary social issues, this book is an
ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students of journalism
and early career journalists.
Sue Ellen Christian is a Professor of Communication at Western

Michigan University. She was the 2016 Michigan Distinguished
Professor of the Year and has received the highest honor for teaching
from her institution. She is an award-winning former Chicago Tribune
staff writer and the author of Everyday Media Literacy: An Analog
Guide for Your Digital Life (2019).
Overcoming Bias
A Journalist’s Guide to
Culture & Context
Second Edition
Sue Ellen Christian

Second edition published 2021
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First edition published by Holcomb Hathaway 2012
First edition republished by Routledge 2017
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Title: Overcoming bias: a journalist’s guide to culture & context /
Sue Ellen Christian.
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Contents
Preface ix
Audience xi
The Book’s Format and Features xi
Acknowledgments xv
1
Context, Culture and Cognition: Making the
Case for Reflective Practice in Journalism 1
2
Habits of Thought: How Cognitive Processes
Influence Journalistic Practice 25
3
Encountering the News: How the Mind
Organizes and Interprets Information – and
How Story Ideas Get Lost in the Process 47
4
Story without Stereotype: How Stereotypes
May Influence Reporting in Stealthy Ways –
and What to Do about It 71
vii
C ontents
5
Understanding Culture, Understanding
Sources: How Social Groups Serve as Lenses
for Looking at the World 97
6
Training the Reporter’s Eye: What Attracts
Journalists’ Attention Can Influence How They
Portray Events and Explain Behaviors 127
7
Critical Decisions before Deadline: Why Even
Experienced Journalists Neglect Certain Facts
and What to Do About It 151
8
The Power of Words and Tone: When Words
Suggest Unintended Meanings 177
9
Attribution, Images and Editing without
Bias: When to Include Data, What Images
Communicate and How to Determine Cause 207
10
Addressing Negativity: How to Manage Hate
Speech, Hostile Sources and Misinformation 237
11
Journalism and Reflective Practice: Cultivating
an Open Mind 261
Index 287
viii
Preface
Journalists are biased . . . Just not in the way that most American news
consumers think they are.
Media bias, or a purposeful slanting of the news, is a common
charge against journalists today. I believe the charge is overblown, and
that the majority of individual journalists go out of their way to be neu-
tral and independent in their coverage of people and events. Instead,
the biases that this book explores are far more real and pervasive – if
also less noticeable and loud. They are biases in the way that humans
think, the way that we naturally and instinctively categorize people,
filter information, ration our attention, rely on cultural norms and
default to rehearsed ways of thinking. These biases affect journalism
at every stage of the reporting and writing process.
Overcoming Bias shows journalists how they can examine and
know their habits of thought, allowing them to engage in more accu-
rate reporting and coverage of the cultures in their communities
and the world. Journalists need to know the biases they bring to a
reporting situation in order to avoid distorting news accounts and to
better serve their increasingly multicultural and diverse audiences.
This book provides specific advice, strategies and examples to help
journalists embrace a more inclusive and open-minded approach to
covering a dynamic society.
I wrote the first edition of this book after nearly a decade of report-
ing with my students on diversity issues in our Midwest community. I
needed a concise, practical resource to explain to a student why even
if his quotes are right the story may still be wrong; to teach a student
ix
P reface
how to step outside herself to examine ways in which the preconcep-

tions she brings to a story may skew her account into an inaccurate
version of events; and to invite these new journalists to challenge
their well-worn ways of processing the world around them. I wrote
this book for my students, after seeing them struggle to figure out
how to understand and capture the truth of lives very different from
their own.
The second edition is more of a revision than might have been
anticipated, because so much has changed in the eight years since
the first edition was published. The distrust of the news media is
central among those changes and the most concerning. If people
do not trust evidence-based news reports to help them understand
their society, public affairs and community events, then what hap-
pens to collective decision-making in a democracy? If we as citi-
zens do not agree on basic truths, then how do we move forward to
address the difficult issues of the day? How can journalists regain
the trust of news audiences through transparent reporting and mea-
sured storytelling? I sought to address all these timely questions in
this new edition.
My goal was to create a book for journalism students and work-
ing journalists that is easy to use and highly applicable. To that end, I
sought to draw from the most relevant aspects of cognitive psychol-
ogy and the related field of social cognition as well as intercultural
communication. Cognitive psychology examines how people acquire,
process and store information. A related field is social cognition,
which examines how people think about themselves and others. I
sought to simplify the complex theories and excellent research pri-
marily from the field of cognitive psychology and to select the most
relevant conclusions for use by journalists. Any misapplication of
research and concepts in this interdisciplinary approach is uninten-
tional, and solely my responsibility.
Particularly critical in this age of global journalism is considering
how culture affects narrative. Journalists interact with people as social
beings and strive to encourage sources to feel comfortable and to
relate to them. This book draws from various theories and schools of
thought, unaligned with any single research paradigm except the find-
ings that may best serve excellent and accurate journalism. A gram-
matical note: I sought to alternate use of the pronouns he, she and they
throughout the book to communicate gender inclusivity.
x
P reface
In addition to scholarly research, this book draws on advice from

working journalists. I was a journalist at large urban daily newspa-
pers for more than a dozen years, and so I approached this book as
a reporter. I interviewed journalists who are working in various roles
throughout the United States. These journalists were forthright about
their experiences as they grappled with cultural assumptions, sought
the most accurate conclusions and felt discomfort in covering people
unlike themselves. Their insights show readers how this book’s theo-
ries apply in real life. They provide a dose of humor and humility and
always reflect the drive for accuracy and authenticity that all honest
journalists have.
AUDIENCE
This book is appropriate for undergraduate and graduate journalism
courses focusing on journalism practice or journalism ethics; it will
also be useful for professional newsroom training. Educators and
trainers will find that the book adapts to their purposes, because each
chapter can stand independently if needed. Its guidance applies to
print, visual and multimedia journalism environments.
THE BOOK’S FORMAT AND FEATURES

Chapters 1 and 2 of Overcoming Bias provide an overall framework
for open-minded thinking that I hope will become a career-long
foundation for doing journalism. The following eight chapters focus
on specific journalistic practices: story ideas and focus (Chapter 3);
understanding sources (Chapter 4); source selection and interviewing
(Chapter 5); observation, attention and framing stories (Chapter 6);
journalistic decision-making (Chapter 7); word choice (Chapter 8);
editing and visual journalism (Chapter 9); and managing hate speech
and hostile sources (Chapter 10). The final chapter (Chapter 11)
invites journalists to take a moment to reflect on their work, which
is as essential as ever, and sets forth numerous specific strategies for
Overcoming Bias and increasing the accuracy of one’s thinking.
I begin each chapter with an actual journalism example that
illustrates the main concepts of the coming chapter. Many of these
introductory illustrations reveal the behind-the-scenes thinking and
professional practices individual journalists bring to their work. They
xi
P reface
are an opportunity to look inside the reporter’s notebook, so to speak,

of a working journalist, and see the decisions made and why.
Chapters also include the following features:
• Learning Objectives preview the chapter’s content for

readers.
• pause & consider segments throughout the text prompt
reflection and discussion on substantive material.
• Exploration Exercises allow readers to put the chapter concepts
into practice as well as observe them in others’ work.
• For Review section provides a recap of each chapter’s key
points.
Throughout this book I have also included anecdotes and advice from
many reporters working in various facets of news media and in a vari-
ety of positions, from staff at mainstream media outlets to editors
and independent entrepreneurs. In written responses and personal
interviews, these journalists offered their wealth of experience. Their
relevant comments provide firsthand knowledge that supports the
scholarly research underpinning this book. Their contributions are
called “On Assignment.”
Here is a sample of what these professionals encourage journalists
to do:
• Challenge yourself to truly tell the underlying narrative of

a place. That’s the goal of ProPublica reporter Logan Jaffe,
who tells in Chapter 1 about how she reflected real time
on her reporting in one rural southern Illinois community
historically where Black people weren’t welcome after
sundown.
• Examine how social media may be distorting your assessment
of how significant a news event is, cautions Julie Irwin
Zimmerman, who wrote about a showdown in the nation’s
capital between MAGA-wearing high school boys and a Native
American elder for The Atlantic.com. Her recap is in Chapter 3.
• Give voice to the voiceless, advises NPR reporter Joseph
Shapiro, who interviewed adults with intellectual disabilities
who had been sexually abused for his award-winning series.
His reporting advice is in Chapter 4.
xii
P reface
• Be prepared to be uncomfortable as you seek out the truth

behind events. Finding the truth may take some time, as
public radio journalist Annie Shreffler discovered in reporting
about a fatal shooting in a Brooklyn neighborhood. She
shares her advice in Chapter 5.
• Think about where to put your attention and why, notes
Ruth Graham, now with the New York Times. Graham’s
in-depth reporting about a bible that oozed oil for a Slate.
com news feature holds a mirror up to the believers of this
miracle without judgment and with vivid, telling detail. She
explains her reporting process in Chapter 6.
• Appreciate the influence that the tone of a story can have in
communicating bias or balance. Christina Samuels has written
about students with disabilities as a staff writer for The Washing-
ton Post and now for Education Week. She discusses the impor-
tance of tone in Chapter 8.
• Visual journalism is a critical part of storytelling in the digital
age, and a major portion of Chapter 9 is now dedicated to
it. Tips from photographers Sima Diab and Tanya Habjouqa
and reporter Karen Brown offer insights on using images
to tell stories and how photos can sometimes raise more
questions than they answer.
• A new chapter, now Chapter 10, explores how various
journalists manage hostile sources and report on hate
speech. The chapter also offers verification tips to avoid
being duped by online misinformation.
• Strive to make the unfamiliar familiar, as Thomas Curwen of the
Los Angeles Times did while writing a story about a woman with
a severe facial disfigurement. By seeing his subject as someone
with hopes and dreams like everyone else, Curwen demon-
strates asset framing, a narrative approach further explored in
Chapter 11.
Throughout, the second edition of Overcoming Bias grapples with

the tide of misinformation sweeping digital news and information, it
addresses head-on the distrust toward journalists today, and it con-
sistently delivers on ways to understand and improve awareness,
knowledge and skills when reporting on people from a variety of
backgrounds, beliefs and cultures.
xiii
Acknowledgments
Thank you to my students, current and former, for your energy, enthu-
siasm and intention to be truth-seekers and truth-tellers in this world.
I kept all of you in the forefront of my mind as I wrote. My guiding
question was this: What do young journalists most need to know now
to keep honest journalism alive and relevant in our changing society?
My sincere gratitude goes to the many journalists included in
this book who took time to share their experiences from the field: I
appreciate your honesty and ethics, and your advice is appreciated
by me and by fellow journalists. Thanks to J.Z. for outstanding edito-
rial input. Thank you to my dear friends, whose encouragement and
worldviews enrich my work. Thank you to my amazing family that has
been so generous and supportive.
xv
1
Context, Culture and
Cognition
Making the Case for Reflective
Practice in Journalism
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand the elements and value of effective multicultural reporting.

• To recognize that journalists’ own cultures and backgrounds may affect how
they interpret and understand news events and news sources.
• To differentiate between correlation and causation for more accurate
reporting.
• To know the journalistic principles that support inclusive journalism.
CONFRONTING OUR BLIND SPOTS

The experience of ProPublica reporter Logan Jaffe, 31, demonstrates
how to reflect upon a place to best tell its story.
Jaffe traveled to the downstate Illinois city of Anna, known region-
ally for a now-defunct policy of not allowing people of color to be in
town after dark. This so-called sundown town was of interest to Jaffe
as a study in how historical racism shaped the town in contemporary
terms. Overall, the concept of sundown towns conveyed a community
that wasn’t welcoming, and was often hostile, toward Black people.1
1
C O N T E X T, C U LT U R E A N D C O G N I T I O N
During her multiple trips there, Jaffe recorded her own thoughts
by speaking into her audio recorder – a “debrief with myself ” she
calls it.
“That was so important and helpful for me to do; it was a story I
reported over 1½ to 2 years. I made the habit of driving around town,
it was very ‘Twin Peaks’ – me driving around with a recorder bab-
bling,” she recalls in an interview with me for this edition.
On her first night on her first visit to Anna, Jaffe drove to a local
restaurant that she later described in her story as the place to go on
a Friday night in this town. She struck up a conversation with a local
man whose comments ended up being the lead to her story. But she
didn’t know that at the time. She wasn’t taking notes, and her recorder
wasn’t running. That evening, when she went back to the Super 8
Motel in Anna, she sat on the bed and recounted the conversation as
best she could into her audio recorder.
“It was helpful to me to remember the present-ness of that moment
in my reporting,” Jaffe says.
That audio recording was helpful to me. It wasn’t just, ‘This is what
happened and this is what happened’ . . . it was in talking about it
that at one point I realized what bothered me about it – it was the
fact that he felt comfortable saying that to me. I didn’t realize it at
the time, but I did when I thought about it later.
So what was the “it” that she was talking into her recorder about?
What did she realize bothered her; what did the local man say? The
lead of her story co-published with The Atlantic spells it out, literally
and figuratively:
I got into town just after sunset. The lights were on at a place called
the Brick House Grill, and if you were out on South Main Street on a
Friday night in February, chances are, that’s where you were going.
So I went in, too.
I took a seat at the bar. A man two stools over from me struck up a
conversation. I told him I was a journalist from Chicago and asked
him to tell me about this town. “You know how this town is called
Anna?” he started. “That’s for ‘Ain’t No N------2 Allowed.’” He
laughed, shook his head and took a sip of his beer.
2
The man was white. I am white. Everyone else in that restaurant in

Anna was white.
Later that night, I realized what shook me most about our
conversation: He didn’t pause before he said what he said. He didn’t
look around the room to see whether anyone could hear us. He
didn’t lower his voice. He just said it.3
Would the guy in the bar have said that to her if she were not white?
I ask Jaffe. “I don’t know,” she responds.
I asked myself it a lot: Could have I done this story if I wasn’t white?
For a lot of reasons it wouldn’t have been the same story. Me being
a white person I think made people feel like I was . . . somehow
complicit in the same feelings and attitudes.
Fact-checking the underlying narrative. Who we are as journalists

matters on many levels. It matters because who we are affects how
we encounter sources and events, and how sources encounter us as
journalists. Who we are influences how we process interviews and
interactions with sources. Jaffe’s audio download of her day helped
her hear something she might not have otherwise: The casualness
with which the man used that searing racial epithet.
Jaffe is aware of the journalistic habit of parachuting into a commu-
nity for a couple days, interviewing a smattering of locals to get vari-
ous viewpoints, and publishing work that presumes to sum up an entire
community. Can an outsider fairly do that in a couple days? In a week?
In Jaffe’s last visit to Anna, she reviewed with each source the quotes
and context of what would be in the story. The fact-checking meant con-
fronting some sources with some fairly ugly statements they’d made.
“They would be like, ‘Yup I said that.’ Those reactions from people
were a big learning moment for me,” she says. “People did say what
they said. If you show up multiple times that really helps.”
“I think a lot about the idea of fact checking: Fact checking is

checking facts. But how do you fact check the underlying narrative
of a place, a community? How do you know the reason why you are
reporting in a place or why you went to a particular neighborhood
is the narrative that is held by everybody? That is an endlessly
fascinating question to me,” she says.
3
Jaffe frames two critical questions that embody themes that run
throughout this book: How do you fact check the underlying narrative
of a place, a community? How
do you know the reason why
Put another way: How do you
fairly and accurately capture you are reporting in a place or
the authentic, complicated, why you went to a particular
below-the-surface narrative of neighborhood is the narrative
a place, a person or an idea? that is held by everybody?
It starts, Jaffe teaches us, by
not only listening closely to sources but also listening closely to your
own voice.
This book seeks to explore what we as journalists bring to the story
because of who we are and how our thinking about the world affects
accuracy and fairness.
To report on the rich variety of people in this world and do that
well requires understanding that there are many ways to look at the
world, each valid in its own right. This book is about how journal-
ists acquire, filter and judge information, and how, as journalists, we
must do our utmost to remove as many preconceptions and assump-
tions from the information we provide as possible. Contemporary
U.S. society is rife with labels that sort us into various factions, par-
tisanships and alliances. Part of the job of a journalist is to figure out
which of the labels matter and why. We have to know the why in order
to get out of the way of the story and allow the truest story at that
moment to tell itself.
JOURNALISM WITH AN OPEN MIND

Journalists work in a multicultural, multiethnic, multifaceted world.
Communicating information about the world – without systemati-
cally excluding any group of people from news coverage – requires
being conversant in diverse cultures and ways of being. Journalists
need to be aware of and knowledgeable about the wide variety of peo-
ple and circumstances around them. This diversity includes but is not
limited to race; ethnicity; gender; sexual identity, expression and ori-
entation; religion; geography; physical and mental ability; and socio-
economic standing.
Journalists also need to understand how their own thinking pro-
cesses can influence the news account they deliver to audiences. To
4
give a fair account of a person or situation requires that journalists

identify and seek to monitor and mitigate the effects of their assump-
tions, biases and prejudices on their news reporting. Only then can
we be as accurate as possible and portray news events with relevant
context. After all, excellent journalism is founded on seeking and
telling the truth. Truth relies on context and on accuracy, which are
influenced by our perceptions, interpretations and conclusions about
people and events.
Understanding your mind. An important step to achieving a
journalistic standard of accuracy and fairness is to understand how, as
an individual journalist, you encounter the world. Some questions to
get you started on this self-study:
What preconceptions do you bring to different situations?

What do you notice?
What don’t you notice?
How do you categorize people and events?
How does your upbringing affect your ability to interact with people
unlike you?
Is your mind able to tolerate some ambiguity in a situation?
Do you need things to be concrete and quickly defined?
Knowing your own mind allows you to better navigate the mental
processes that unfairly bias your thinking. News audiences need jour-
nalists who view the world with an open mind and who are relent-
lessly critical about the ways that they approach stories.
Where we have been, where we are going. This era of journal-
ism in the first quarter of the 21st century is tumultuous on so many
fronts: The economic upheaval of traditional funding models of news
outlets that is leading to pared-down staff and closures; the transfor-
mative nature of digital news and information that produces both rich
storytelling and eye-catching misinformation at breathtaking speeds;
and the surging civic unrest aimed at realigning and rightsizing social
groups in our country. All of these elements are calling upon the jour-
nalism profession to reckon with its own biases.
And it is that last reality, of journalism’s reckoning with itself, that
necessarily means this book is filled with facts, research, data, ideas,
reminders guidelines and good advice, but it is not a strict how-to
manual. If this new century has taught us anything as journalists,
5
it is that one-size-fits-all doesn’t fit at all with 21st-century stories,

journalists or audiences. This is an invitation to ask yourself the hard
questions posed here and to put them into action to improve your
work.
FAULT LINES
Cultures are social groups. Humans create them and give them dis-
tinctive meaning. In their work, journalists are constantly crossing the
borders of one culture and entering another. When journalists recog-
nize that they have crossed a cultural border, they can appreciate the
potential role of the culture’s ideas, beliefs, values and knowledge on
news events.
The Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education created
the Fault Lines as a tool to help journalists be more aware of the cul-
tural borders they cross.4 The Fault Lines, shown in Exhibit 1.1, are
based on social categories that humans create, since the human mind
naturally categorizes people. The Fault Lines of race/ethnicity, gen-
der, generation, class, geography and sexual orientation or identity are
depicted as the most enduring forces shaping lives, experiences and
social tensions. The lines shape journalists’ perceptions of themselves,
others and news events. There is often more than one fault line at play
in a given situation; for instance, an issue about unemployment on an
Indian reservation may have as much to do with class and geography
as race or ethnicity. The Fault Lines system helps highlight one’s per-
ceptional biases on personal experiences and serves as a reminder of
different viewpoints.
For example, consider the viewpoint of the working poor when
a devastating tornado or flood hits town and paralyzes daily activi-
ties for a few days. For the working poor, the natural disaster is more
than an inconvenience, which is a middle-class way of considering the
effects of schools closing, grocery stores running out of fresh food or
gasoline supplies being disrupted. For low-income workers, the disas-
ter goes beyond a few days of inconvenience. Each day of missed work
due to a flood means a day of lost wages. Every dollar is needed to
make the rent bill, to pay for daycare, to buy food; there’s not much,
if any, cushion.
In another example of the Fault Lines, the South Florida Sun-
Sentinel news and business staff members engaged in an exercise
6
designed to help them see events from the viewpoint of sources and
not the perspective of journalists. They went to visit a South Florida
area largely populated by immigrants from Haiti and Jamaica. The
staff wanted to ask residents how the paper could better cover the
community. The residents essentially told the reporters:
Stop using your middle-class point of view to describe us. You keep
calling us poor. You see two families living in one house, sharing one
car, and you call us poor. Now we say we have a house and we have
a car. We are not poor.5
EXHIBIT 1.1 THE FAULT LINES
1. RACE/ETHNICITY Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American,

mixed race, white.
2. GENDER/SEXUAL Male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,

ORIENTATION/GEN- queer, questioning.
DER IDENTITY
3. GENERATION Youth (0–19), 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+
• Baby boomer (born 1946–1964)

• Generation X (born 1965–1976)
• Generation Y or Millennials (born 1977–2002).
4. CLASS Rich, upper middle class/wealthy, middle class,

working class, poor.
5. Geography Urban, suburban, rural; plus regional.
Source: The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Note: The author added additional categories in item #2.
Other cultural divisions, such as religion or political ideology,

might also be a significant Fault Line for any given community and
could be added to the above list. In addition, “social fissures” such as
politics, religion or disability (seen or unseen) may create divisions.
7
These boundaries also apply to both journalists’ and sources’

perspectives on people and events, as shown in Exhibit 1.2. Aware-
ness of where you as a journalist are situated on the Fault Lines
chart better enables you to see the world through someone else’s
eyes.
EXHIBIT 1.2 THE FAULT LINES – YOUR AND YOUR

SOURCES’ PERSPECTIVES
1. RACE/ETHNICITY Your race or your ethnicity influences your view

of events.
2. GENDER/SEXUAL Your gender, gender identity and/or sexual

ORIENTATION/GEN- orientation affects your view of events.
DER IDENTITY
3. GENERATION When you grew up affects your view of events.
4. CLASS Financial circumstances influence perspectives.
5. GEOGRAPHY Where you’re from can shape how you see

events.
Source: The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.
REPORTING WITH AN AWARENESS OF CULTURE

AND CONTEXT
News reporting requires that a journalist cross into cultures unlike
their own. Rick Hirsch, then-managing editor at the Miami Herald,
told me once: “The biggest mistakes you can make are to make
assumptions about what is going to matter to people who aren’t
like you.”6
Culture has many meanings. This book uses the broad defini-
tion of a group of people organized around important commonali-
ties. Culture is a “learned set of shared interpretations about beliefs,
values, and norms, which affect the behaviors of a relatively large
group of people” (p. 30).7 What’s more critical than the particular
8
commonality is its effect on those in the group, because a culture

provides its members with a shared system of knowledge – knowledge
about how to communicate with others, and about group values, atti-
tudes and behaviors.
Culture for our purposes is a fairly stable presence in someone’s
life, such as race or gender, as opposed to a transient group member-
ship, such as affiliation with a college club or involvement in a hobby
such as skateboarding. Culture affects how we see the world. What it
means to be “patriotic,” for instance, has dramatically different inter-
pretations depending on the person’s politics, ideologies and lived
experience.
A culture is unique to its members, and the system of knowledge
that members within a culture share requires journalists to build trust
to learn about that unique knowledge. Journalists will likely never
be of a culture’s shared system of knowledge, meaning they live and
breathe it as those within the culture. But journalists can acquire
knowledge to appreciate and honor cultural knowledge in their story
telling. Journalists would be wise to begin developing cultural com-
petence, which consists of four elements: (1) Awareness of one’s own
cultural worldview or outlook, (2) an open attitude toward cultural
differences, (3) knowledge of different cultural practices and world-
views, and (4) cross-cultural skills (see Exhibit 1.3). In the reporting
example below, note how The Herald reporter shows awareness of
her own cultural worldview and outlook, and how the La Raza del
Noroeste reporter demonstrates knowledge of different cultural prac-
tices and worldviews.
On Assignment
Sharon Salyer, who works for The Herald, a daily newspa-
per in Everett, Washington, north of Seattle, partnered
with Alejandro Dominguez, who works for La Raza del
Noroeste, the Spanish-language weekly owned by The
Herald that circulates throughout the Puget Sound
region.8 The two reported an award-winning series on
mental health in the Hispanic community called “Alone
9
Among Us.” Salyer brought her years as a journalist, and

her attention to detail and accuracy, while Dominguez
brought his language fluency, cultural credibility, and
audio and video reporting skills.
Salyer says of her contribution to this cross-cultural
reporting experience:
I have 17 years of experience as a health reporter, part of my

more than 30 years experience in journalism. With my blonde
hair and blue eyes, I look very Anglo. Yet even before work on
the series began, I was aware of the unique emotional pres-
sures that immigrant families face.
A family member has told me of the sink-or-swim reality of

living in a Spanish-speaking home but attending school where
the classes were only taught in English. And many of the
students I’ve tutored over the past nine years in an after-school
program not only speak English as a second language, they
have immigrated from war-town nations. One student’s father
was shot and thrown into a fiery hole by rebels and a relative
of hers was murdered. My student watched in terror as soldiers
robbed her mother.
As for Dominguez, during the time they were reporting

the series, he became the only reporter for La Raza; it
was his first reporting job, and he’d worked there two
years. He also became an American citizen. Dominguez
says of one particular story in the series:
The story affected me because it was my story. Our main

voice in one of the stories was a woman running away from
the violence in Chihuahua, a state in Mexico that is currently
fighting against drug trafficking and where my family still lives.
Our second voice was a teenager who fell to the temptation of
drugs and gangs. Hearing his story made me appreciate how
lucky I am.
My middle school was surrounded by different gangs. I never

got into contact with them but my classmates slowly became
gang members themselves. Even when I was in my last year in
middle school, I noticed that gangs had infiltrated the school,
with younger students belonging to them.
10
Context is essential to accurate journalism. Context describes the

interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs. It is the
circumstances that create the environment for an action, statement or
idea. A contemporary dispute over Native American land rights needs
to be seen within the historical context of Native Americans’ removal
from their own lands by U.S. government policies, for example. News
doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Context involves history, linkages and
comparisons to other events, and anticipation of what comes next.
Context is telling audiences not just that an event happened but what
an event means to them. Al Tompkins of the Poynter Institute for
Media Studies says, “Accuracy plus context equals truth. Accuracy is
about facts, but context is about getting the right facts.”9
Particularly in ongoing news stories, journalists too often assume
audiences know the background, so they only provide the updates, the
latest, the current development. Context tells people why they should
care about a story. David Halberstam, a 1964 Pulitzer Prize winner
for his coverage of the war in Vietnam for the New York Times, said
that “the context of the stories is often more important than the event
itself.”10
Practicing inclusive journalism is internal and external. Inclusive
journalism is an outward-facing practice that requires acknowledg-
ing the influence of a source’s culture on a source’s interpretations
of news events while also seeing sources as individuals in their own
right. Inclusive journalism is inward-facing in that a journalist’s own
culture may affect what she notices, how she interviews sources,
what she remembers as important about an interview, the words she
chooses when writing the story and the approach to editing it, too.
The meaning and significance of events are distorted when a jour-
nalist applies her culture to a news event and neglects the relevant
context in crafting the news story.
EFFECTIVE MULTICULTURAL REPORTING

Journalists are frequently reporting about people and issues unfamil-
iar to them. Research that focuses on skills for communicating across
different cultures provides some important lessons. Exhibit 1.3 is
a basic formula for multicultural reporting that is based on vari-
ous models of what’s called cultural competence or intercultural
competence.11
11
EXHIBIT 1.3 ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE

MULTICULTURAL REPORTING
AWARENESS Examine your own cultural influences. Consider closely

your own values and beliefs about your own and others’
cultures. Have the courage to acknowledge and address
your cultural blind spots – the ways you think, act and are
motivated – that are embedded in your ways of being.
ATTITUDE Be open, aware and curious about others; tolerate ambi-

guity; promote discovery. Be willing to struggle to get it
right, and to feel uncomfortable and out of place.
SKILLS Be able to self-analyze and identify your own culture and

biases. Understand multiple perspectives. Be an excellent
listener, observer and evaluator. Ask for evidence; how do
you know this?
KNOWLEDGE Get informed about the history and facts of your own cul-
ture; understand its impact and intersectionality with oth-
er cultures. Be informed about others’ cultures. Know the
assumptions and stereotypes attached to various cultures.
EFFECTIVE MULTICULTURAL REPORTING
MULTICULTURAL REPORTING IN ACTION

Only when journalists acknowledge their biases in thinking toward a
subject can they begin to lessen the impact of those biases on news cov-
erage. Reporters who strive to be open to new meanings will quickly
dilute their preconceptions. Attitude is a powerful tool, so journalists
should enter news stories with the expectation of discovery.
12
Teresa Wiltz, a veteran reporter who is currently politics edi-

tor at POLITICO, put many of the elements of effective multicul-
tural reporting into action when she traveled to Afghanistan after
an American-backed invasion led to the overthrow of the Taliban in
2001. Wiltz went with the intention of writing about women and life
in Kabul, the country’s capital, where Islam is the dominant religion.
As part of her reporting, she shadowed a doctor in a maternity ward.
Wiltz describes her mindset as she began reporting as being patron-
izing in her assumptions about why women wore the burqa, the outer
garment associated with some Islamic traditions. The burqa cloaks
the entire body and face except for the eyes. Wiltz shares12 her report-
ing experience.
On Assignment
The bias I had was thinking these women were victims.
I had these preconceived notions that the women were
going to be all happy because we’ve freed them from
the burqas. I found it was much more complicated than
that.
I had to go in and listen to what they had to say. Hon-
estly, the burqa is the least of their issues. They are vic-
timized, but they are not victims. They are strong, smart,
funny women.
I learned by hanging out at the clinic, the maternity
ward. I spent about 24 or 36 hours there. I watched the
doctor seeing patients. I saw she was prescribing birth
control pills. Also, I saw how the women handled the
burqa; one young woman climbed up on the examining
table and gently pushed the burqa to the side over her
shoulder, like it was a curtain of long hair. It was part
of them. Not everyone liked it . . . but for them it was a
protection and part of their culture.
I had a very patronizing view about that. We think
they are not being educated. These women were really
smart, and they found their own ways to rebel.
13
pause & consider

Wiltz says she began her reporting thinking the women
were victims. How does she say she overcame that bias
about women in Kabul? What aspects of effective multicul-
tural reporting did she put into practice? What do you think
about Wiltz’s description of the women as finding their own
ways to “rebel”? Do you
Inclusive journalism seeks think that is a distinctly
to give voice to the stories American way of view-
of marginalized, misrepre-
sented, underrepresented and ing the responses of the
unheard voices in society. women?
THE ETHICS OF INCLUSION

The Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Code of Ethics13 speaks
to the ideal mindset of journalists as they go about their work. Culti-
vating that mindset includes developing a multicultural and inclusive
approach to journalism. The SPJ code states that journalists should:
• Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of human

experience. Seek sources whose voices we seldom hear.
• Avoid stereotyping. Journalists should examine the ways
their values and experiences may shape their reporting.
• Be vigilant and courageous about holding those with power
accountable. Give voice to the voiceless.
• Show compassion for those who may be affected by news
coverage. Use heightened sensitivity when dealing with
juveniles, victims of sex crimes and sources or subjects
who are inexperienced or unable to give consent. Consider
cultural differences in approach and treatment.
• Consider the long-term implications of the extended reach
and permanence of publication. Provide updated and more
complete information as appropriate.
• Explain ethical choices and processes to audiences.
Encourage a civil dialogue with the public about journalistic
practices, coverage and news content.
14
The National Press Photographers Association has a code of ethics

that promotes similar principles, including “Be complete and provide
context when photographing or recording subjects. Avoid stereotyp-
ing individuals and groups. Recognize and work to avoid presenting
one’s own biases in the work.”14 The Radio Television Digital News
Association’s Code of Ethics includes these elements that directly
relate to inclusive reporting:
• The facts should get in the way of a good story. Journalism

requires more than merely reporting remarks, claims or
comments. Journalism verifies, provides relevant context,
tells the rest of the story and acknowledges the absence of
important additional information.
• Journalism challenges assumptions, rejects stereotypes and
illuminates – even where it cannot eliminate – ignorance.
• Ethical journalism resists false dichotomies – either/or,
always/never, black/white thinking – and considers a range
of alternatives between the extremes.
In addition, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) reminds

news people of the guiding principles of their craft:
Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to

navigate society. Inflating events for sensation, neglecting others,
stereotyping or being disproportionately negative all make for
a less reliable map. The map also should include news of all our
communities, not just those with attractive demographics. This is
best achieved by newsrooms with a diversity of backgrounds and
perspectives.15
pause & consider

As a journalist, what do you stand for? No matter the lat-
est technology or the current industry trends – what are
and will remain your core values? How do your responses
compare with the ethics statements offered by SPJ and PEJ?
15
DEVELOPING AN INCLUSIVE MINDSET

Practicing journalism should include examining the stereotypes that
one holds, the culture in which one has lived and one’s perspective on
the world in order to more easily set them aside as limiting factors.
Doing so allows for new ways of seeing the world. Knowing your own
mind is an opportunity to gain better vision. You’ll see things you have
not seen before. You’ll see beyond your stereotypes and unfair asso-
ciations that your own background and popular culture conspired to
create and reinforce. To get started on this path, here are two tips for
developing an inclusive mindset:
• Be aware that who you are influences how you interpret

events and sources. You have several relatively fixed positions
in your life, such as your age, hometown, religious beliefs,
gender, ethnicity or race, education level, income level and
sexual orientation/identity. You view people and events from
these fixed positions. They combine to form your standpoint
on the world. They influence your view of and attitude
toward happenings in the world. Take a moment and make a
list of these positions as you hold them now.
• Be aware of an “us vs. them” approach when forming
conclusions about others, especially those unlike you. This
framework implies a right and a wrong way of behaving. It
describes a world of people you belong with and relate to – and
then everyone else. Take a moment and list some of the social
or cultural groups you feel most positively toward and close to
and those you feel most negatively toward and distant from.
Tom Brokaw, a longtime NBC News journalist, made comments when

he was a guest panelist on the show, “Meet the Press,” about the assim-
ilation of Hispanics in America. Assimilation describes the process by
which individuals and groups of differing heritages acquire the habits,
language, attitudes and lifestyle of a dominant social group or nation.
“I also happen to believe that the Hispanics should work harder at
assimilation,” Brokaw said. “They ought not to be just codified in their
communities but make sure that all their kids are learning to speak
English, and that they feel comfortable in their communities.”16
16
pause & consider

What is your reaction to Brokaw’s words? (Don’t read
ahead in this section to others’ reactions!) Be specific about
what you agree or disagree with in his statement.
Yamiche Alcindor, the White House correspondent for PBS

NewsHour and a political contributor to NBC News and MSNBC,
was on the “Meet the Press” panel that day as well. She challenged
Brokaw’s hegemonic view of what it takes to “feel comfortable in their
communities” right then and there: “We also need to adjust what we
think of as America,” Alcindor said.
You’re talking about assimilation. I grew up in Miami, where

people speak Spanish, but their kids speak English. And the idea
that we think Americans can only speak English, as if Spanish and
other languages wasn’t always part of America, is, in some ways,
troubling.
Brokaw apologized later that same day in a series of tweets. An NBC

spokesperson called Brokaw’s comments “inaccurate and inappropriate.”
Fairness, Balance and “Objectivity”
Understanding how your own mind works can help you identify when
it isn’t working fairly or reasonably regarding others. As a journalist,
this understanding can help you practice fairness, balance and objec-
tivity, and in turn, fairness, balance and objectivity can help you know
your own mind.
Fairness means including all relevant perspectives in a news
account and working hard to ensure that the various perspectives are
represented clearly and accurately. Though multiple views should be
considered, not all views will always be mentioned in a story. “Fairness
means that a journalist should strive for accuracy and truth in report-
ing, and not slant a story so a reader draws the reporter’s desired con-
clusion,” according to the Online News Association.17
17
Journalists need to be able to reliably consider various perspectives

on an issue and identify those that are uninformed or not credible. Take
time to inquire into various perspectives so as to avoid excluding valu-
able ones out of ignorance. When it comes to fairness, a journalist’s loy-
alty should be not to sources but to a solid understanding of the facts;
this understanding is then communicated to the audience. Fairness calls
for making every effort to contact sources for comment, particularly
in breaking news situations, and being transparent about those efforts.
Balance requires presenting the array of credible perspectives in a
news story, including and especially those perspectives not champi-
oned by those in majority or those in power. This would include, for
example, the lesser-known candidates on the ballot in any election.
While presenting multiple voices, journalists are not compelled to
allot each viewpoint identical space and time. Journalists must work
to discern the most informed, relevant and factual perspectives on
issues and offer those to audiences without distortion.
False balance describes presenting both sides (or more) as equal,
giving the news audience the sense that both positions are equally
valid and credible, when in fact one is severely lacking in evidence.
There are times when providing “the other side” of an issue does not
promote accuracy of a story, because there isn’t a valid “other side.”
(We will revisit the issue of false balance again in Chapter 10 on cov-
ering hate speech.) For example, when writing about climate change,
which scientists overwhelmingly agree is occurring, should a story
make reference to a so-called “debate” about global warming? In this
case, it doesn’t make sense or do service to your audience to provide
space and time to giving a niche opposition’s opinion that has been
scientifically debunked. Instead, provide the rational evidence that is
broadly accepted by respected scientists as an acknowledgment that
not everyone in your audience may know of the facts.
Another not-uncommon challenge of false balance for journalists
arises when covering conspiracy theories, which, by nature, are nearly
impossible to disprove because they are thought by their adherents to
be so secretive and covert. What about when covering white suprem-
acists? Is giving voice to their repugnant views necessary under jour-
nalistic balance?
Objectivity has long been misunderstood. Objectivity means that
an individual or that individual’s judgment is not affected by personal
opinions or emotions in finding and presenting facts. That is nearly
18
impossible to do. Today, a preferred concept is to be transparent in a

news story about what you know and don’t know, and about how the
story was reported, how information was gathered and sources used.
It seeks to demonstrate to news audiences that the story was credibly,
reliably and honestly reported.
Contrary to popular thought, objectivity was meant to apply to the
practice of journalism, not journalists themselves. Objectivity, when
initially formulated in the early 20th century, was aimed at developing
a consistent standard of evidence that all journalists followed, like the
scientific method for scientists. “Objectivity called for journalists to
develop a consistent method of testing information – a transparent
approach to evidence – precisely so that personal and cultural biases
would not undermine the accuracy of their work,” writes Walter Dean,
former training director of the Committee of Concerned Journalists.18
Being transparent about what he knows and doesn’t know is an
approach used by journalist Daniel Dale of CNN. Dale has been
noticed by many U.S. journalists for his clear-eyed callouts of inaccu-
racies uttered during the tenure of the 44th U.S. president, Donald J.
Trump. In an analysis of two live Twitter feeds covering Trump’s rally
in April 2018, scholar Perry Parks19 contrasts Dale’s approach with
the typical approach of most journalists, which is to try to make sense
of the wide-ranging comments by Trump. The traditional approach
seeks to provide a detached, nonpartisan and factual account of the
president’s speech in an inverted pyramid-style organization.
Dale’s contrasting approach prioritizes “the reporter’s observa-
tions, experience, and contextual knowlege – often privileging these
over simply representing the source’s message and agenda in steno-
graphic fashion.”20 Dale deconstructs Trump’s rhetoric. Instead of
trying to make sense of it for his audience, he calls it out when it is
incorrect, confusing or uncivil. For instance, in his live tweet cover-
age, Dale quotes Trump, and in the same tweet, he corrects him:
San Diego, they’re being just overrun. . . overrun by people pouring.

So they’re begging us for a wall.” San Diego is not begging for
a wall. Trump then falsely says the wall has been “started in San
Diego.” Only prototypes have been built there.21
Parks writes that another reporter who is practicing what Parks calls
the objective paradigm of covering the rally tweets that Trump expects
19
to “do fine” with North Korea. This reporter is seeking to make sense
of Trump’s statements. Dale, however, picks a different quote in which
Trump references a nuclear deal with Iran for his tweet:
Trump on dealing with North Korea: “I may go in, it may not work
out, I leave. I’m not going to be a John Kerry.” For the 10th time
in office, he falsely says the Obama administration gave Iran $150
billion.
Dale demonstrates a break from detached objectivity by highlighting

inconsistencies immediately rather than ignoring them or downplay-
ing them. It takes a reporter with deep knowledge of source and subject
to be able to fact check in real time. Instead of seeking to make sense
of incomprehensible, mocking and flippant comments by organizing
them as presidential speech, Dale highlights how unprecedented and
inaccurate they are, providing the quote and the fact-checking at once.
MOVING FORWARD
A theme throughout this book is growing awareness of one’s outward
journalistic practices and inward thought processes, and how they
interrelate. The following chapters discuss specific habits of thought
that may distort accuracy and fairness in news accounts. Each chapter
offers ways that journalists who honestly consider their own thinking
can counter those habits. This book is an invitation to do even better
journalism by starting with one’s own mind and personal history.
EXPLORATION EXERCISES
1. As a class or newsroom staff, brainstorm specific ways that journal-
ists can be more inclusive in their reporting and writing. Post the list
on a discussion board or on a social media group for all to see and
use. Add or edit the list as you move through this book.
2. Download a free news app to your mobile phone or bookmark a
local news source on your laptop. One app, AllSides.Com, provides
the content from multiple news sources ranging from progressive/
left to politically centric to conservative/right, allowing users to
compare differences in reporting choices between outlets. Select
20
one topic to compare coverage from left, right and center. Note
how fairness, balance and objectivity/transparency differ among
the three examples.
3. When you check the news each day, make it a habit to scan a story
a day for Fault Lines. Review the selected story with the Fault Lines
in mind; then answer these questions to yourself or in a small group:
a. Which Fault Lines are represented in the work?
b. Are any of the Fault Lines missing that could be realistically
included in the coverage?
c. How do you or members of your group feel about the way
that different perspectives are presented and played in the
coverage? Is it fair and complete?
4. There are various online tools that offer a very basic assessment of
your cross-cultural awareness and openness. Here are two to try:
https://bit.ly/3oHGk3x or https://bit.ly/373Smyc.
FOR REVIEW
• Recreate the diagram for Effective Multicultural

Reporting and post it near your workspace.
• Explain to a peer what the following ethical
mandate means: “Give voice to the voiceless; official
and unofficial sources of information can be equally
valid.”
• Select a story to report for which you try to apply
the Fault Lines in your sourcing.
• Paraphrase the definitions of fairness, balance and
objectivity included in this chapter.
NOTES

21
22
23
2
Habits of Thought
How Cognitive Processes Influence
Journalistic Practice
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand what habits of thought are and how they may affect a
journalist’s work.
• To explain cognitive bias and media bias.
• To recognize how reflective practice in journalism promotes excellence.
BREAKING HABITS OF THOUGHT

During the coronavirus pandemic that swept the globe in 2020, the
news media covered the origins of the highly contagious virus, how
it spread across the planet, how to stop its spread, what the virus was
made of and how a vaccine might be made to stop it. The news media
reported on the jobs lost to the closures due to the pandemic and the
subsequent evictions. Reporters told the stories of educating children
at home and in school, behind plastic sheets and masks. All kinds of
stories from all angles were told, many centering on the first respond-
ers in healthcare who were literally on the front lines of savings lives.
Hundreds of thousands of people in the United States alone died in
2020, and well more than 1.5 million globally.
25
HABITS OF THOUGHT
“The focus in the media, naturally, is on those trying to preserve

life, the doctors and nurses. That attention is absolutely justified,” says
Vanity Fair journalist Josh Sanburn.1
But those dealing with the other side of this crisis often don’t get the
same attention. And I think that’s because we as a society often push
aside death in its many forms, which is exactly why I’m interested in
telling these stories.
Sanburn got a first-hand look into the world of a funeral home in the
midst of a pandemic. The co-owner of a 120-year-old New York City
funeral home, Patrick Kearns, 51, gave Sanburn and photographer
Peter Van Agtmael of Vanity Fair full access to the overwhelming
numbers of dead who needed services and burial due to the ravages
of COVID-19.
During his virtual reporting for “The Last of the First Respond-
ers: Inside One Funeral Home’s COVID-19 Crisis,” Sanburn talked to
Kearns while Kearns was embalming a body. He asked Kearns what he
was wearing at that moment and learned this detail: Kearns tucks his
tie into his white button-up shirt so it doesn’t get caught in a stretcher
or interfere with embalming. Sanburn knew he wanted to include that
detail in his story. He shared his thoughts about reporting the story
with Washington-based journalist Trevor Pyle, who wrote the piece
for Nieman Storyboard.2
“When I met him in person, I saw the tucked-in tie for myself and
asked him about it again,” recalled Sanburn.
I often struggle with physical descriptions of people. For me, it’s one
of the hardest details to get right, to know what to use to accurately
paint a portrait of someone with just a few words, and what to
discard. The tie, thankfully, was a relatively easy and obvious one to
include.3
Another detail came not from asking but from observation. Here’s the
detail in Sanburn’s story:
Nearby sits a six-inch stack of papers atop a black filing cabinet.

It’s a copy of every funeral request they’ve been unable to fulfill
since mid-March, a mundane physical manifestation of the crisis.
26
HABITS OF THOUGHT
“It’s like it has its own presence now,” Paul says. “When I look at
it, I get this bad feeling. These are all the families that you didn’t
get to.”4
Paul is Paul Kearns-Stanley, the co-owner of the funeral home and

Patrick’s brother-in-law. Sanburn says the first time he interviewed
Paul, Paul talked a lot as he was driving to a funeral in New Jersey.
“And there were long stretches where I just let him talk,” says Sanburn.
I think journalists can sometimes get in the way during an interview,

me included. Humans naturally want to fill in silence that occurs in
conversation. But the best quotes sometimes appear when you let
your interview subject fill that silence instead.
When Sanburn described funeral home employee Yrancia Moncrieffe,

36, he was very deliberate, he says.
One thing I wanted to avoid, and something I was highly

conscious of, was ensuring that I didn’t describe Yrcania, who
is Puerto Rican and a woman of color, simply by her hair. At
the same time, she talked a lot about her hair because of what
the pandemic appeared to be doing to it. The stress of working
through the outbreak, as well as the bands from her PPE masks,
led to Yrcania experiencing some significant hair loss. She showed
me a photo of a clump of hair that had come out in the shower
and said she had joked with Patrick about whether the budget
allowed for wigs. So I combined all these ideas into that one
sentence to give this brief sketch.
Here is a snippet of that sketch:
She has an ear-to-ear smile and springy ash-blonde hair she says
has been coming out in clumps since the pandemic began. Around
the office, she often wears dark pantsuits. She’s blunt, no-nonsense,
especially when she believes others – cemeteries, hospitals, morgues –
aren’t pulling their weight.
Sanburn’s reporting details are interesting on many fronts, includ-

ing his intentional collecting of specific observations that speak to
27
HABITS OF THOUGHT
who his subjects are, not who he thinks they are or ought to be. He
spoke with Patrick Hearn more than a dozen times to report the
story. He used specific questions, lots of observation and lots of
listening to get the details that drive the piece and help readers see
what pressure the funeral service was under due to the pandemic.
The lesson? He didn’t rely on habits of thought. In fact, through his
professional practice, he had acquired new habits of thought that
steered his thinking toward evidence, watchfulness, avoidance of a
specific agenda and more.
HABITS OF THOUGHT
People generally process information in common ways. For purposes
of this book, these common ways of mental processing are described
by the phrase habits of thought. Everyone’s minds – whether they are
a journalist or not – follow some basic approaches to gathering, sort-
ing, deciphering, interpreting and assessing information. They aren’t
hard and fast rules of thinking, and they aren’t always bad, but they
do describe similar tendencies in the way all people naturally think.
Understanding our habits of thought helps us see our way to better
journalism.
Cognitive Biases
The habits of thought discussed in this book generally fall into two
categories: Cognitive biases and mental frameworks. Cognitive
biases, and cognitive errors, are the errors and distortions in human
thinking that can occur automatically, meaning spontaneously and
involuntarily, and without conscious intention to distort. A person
doesn’t have to harbor a negative attitude or prejudice to be cogni-
tively biased.
Knowing how the mind works and what can be done to control the
cognitive biases that most impact journalism can help news people
produce more inclusive coverage. To know your own mind is also to
know how wonderfully efficient it is, how speedily it can process a
good deal of information throughout a day! It is also to know how
flawed some perceptions and reasoning can be. A consequence of
this efficiency is that people naturally process information in ways
28
HABITS OF THOUGHT
that include a host of mental distortions. Some of these cognitive

biases take the form of shortcuts in thinking that are extremely use-
ful in everyday living because they allow people to make decisions
efficiently. Other cognitive biases result in negative stereotypes and
faulty reasoning.
Cognitive errors are at work especially when we are emotionally
stressed (as with a looming deadline) or dealing with large amounts
of information (such as a breaking news story). Research5 shows that
time pressure reduces people’s openness to new information and their
motivation to be accurate and increases tendencies toward confirm-
ing initial hunches or story lines.
Journalists’ cognitive biases can affect:

• Story ideas – permitting preconceptions to dictate what they
perceive as news.
• Reporting – seeing what they expect to see at a reporting
scene.
• Interviewing – asking questions in a way that elicits the
responses anticipated.
• Story focus – allowing assumptions about what happened to
shape news accounts.
• Writing – using words, especially when on deadline, that
advance stereotypes instead of questioning them.
• Editing – missing errors in judgment because of a lack of
awareness of a judgment’s effect on a story.
Cognitive errors are mistakes in thinking or deviations from

a normal, logical thinking process.
Cognitive biases are systematic distortions of otherwise

correct thinking processes, such as underusing or overusing
a particular useful mental function. An example would be
categorizing people (a normal, useful thinking process) too
much and too often so that it leads to stereotyping and
prejudice.6
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Mental Frameworks
The other habits of thought discussed in this book are not cognitive
biases but what can be considered different kinds of mental frame-
works. These mental frameworks describe the perspective from which
a person views the world and his or her viewpoint on what is normal
or accepted practice and behavior. A person’s background and culture
shapes his or her mental framework.
Significant research explores the concept of standpoint or the
position from which people and things are considered or judged – a
point of view or outlook. Our perspective determines what we focus
on and what we miss in the world around us. It influences our knowl-
edge of the world.
For example, consider how individuals can have differing stand-
points regarding the concept of “family.” One may see family as a
traditional and limited hub consisting of mother, father and siblings.
Another, having grown up with extended family, may view family as a
web that includes nontraditional elements and people beyond blood
relatives. For yet another, family might be more about good friends
who have your back and help you pay your bills rather than your bio-
logical relatives.7
Journalists’ standpoints on family and other topics affect their
point of view. These standpoints may come into play, for example
while interviewing sources and considering who counts as family. An
awareness of standpoint is useful for journalists seeking to under-
stand their own and their sources’ point of views.
Metacognition
Thinking about the ways that we think is called metacognition. To do

journalism with a standard of excellence, journalists need to under-
stand their brains’ mechanics, noting how their minds sort ideas and
people, and what gets labeled and how. Thinking about how you think
helps your journalism on many fronts, as it stops you from relying on
the go-to word choice, question or assumption. Thinking about one’s
thinking may mean journalists don’t focus on stereotypical details
about an Afro-Latina woman’s hair or make a point to set aside their
questions to allow silence that a sources may want to – and need to –
fill with words.
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Everyone Is Biased
Attention: We interrupt the regularly scheduled text of this
chapter for an important (and blunt) note. No one is free
from biases and prejudices and judgments. No one. So, if
you happen to be a member of a group often misunder-
stood or inaccurately portrayed by the media – even if you
fit into a category of people who are typically targets and
not perpetrators of assumptions and stereotypes – you are
not exempt from these biases. We are all human, with the
same wiring in our brains. The mental processing that goes
on inside our heads isn’t as different as our exterior appear-
ances might suggest.
And now, back to the chapter.
MEDIA BIAS
Cognitive bias is not the same as media bias. While both terms share
the word bias, that’s where the overlap essentially ends. Media bias
has many interpretations, but in general, it describes an intentional
and purposeful slanting of the news to a specific viewpoint or ideology.
Ideological bias, the type practiced by some cable news hosts or opinion
blogs, is popular, welcomed and doing fine in ratings, page views and
retweets. While such commentary might play well, it’s not news. It’s
opinion. In contrast, cognitive bias is typically not intentional, and it is
not directed toward any specific ideology. Cognitive bias refers to the
mental processing that influences our perceptions and our reasoning.
The difference between informed reporting and purposeful bias is
the order of action: Informed reporting digs out relevant detail and
critical facts to draw a conclusion. Purposeful bias starts with a con-
clusion and finds facts and detail to support it. As journalists, the goal
is to ensure that one’s cognitive biases do not create a practice of start-
ing with a conclusion and then seeking facts to support it. Journalists
and authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel wrote that the purpose
of journalism in a democracy is “to provide people with the informa-
tion they need to be free and self-governing.”8 Journalism should help
people make informed decisions about their world.
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
Biases in Professional Journalism
The practice of journalism in mainstream news organizations in the

United States has developed a roster of biases, or slants, toward
coverage. These are not individual cognitive biases but generalized
practices that have become a routine in the industry. They have lit-
tle to do with an individual reporter and much more to do with pro-
fessional norms. Sometimes, but not always, these biases result in
news stories that are unfair, incomplete or inaccurate. Media biases
are most often in the minds of news audiences when they criticize
news coverage.
Some examples of biases embedded in the very structure of the
profession as they are practiced today in the United States include the
following:
• A bias toward commercialism, and using metrics and

analytics to drive coverage (these are essential to improve
sales of advertising).
• A bias toward conflict and dramatic events (these elicit
emotion, which drives activity on social media).
• A bias toward whatever is new or shocking (these attract
page clicks and views).
• A bias toward a narrative structure with lead characters,
heroes and villains, and a beginning, middle and end, and
clear outcomes (these often falsely create linear stories with
tidy endings).
• A bias toward including perfunctory quotes from an
opposing side (these may give more credence than is owed).
• A bias toward expediency (this results in publish first, publish
fast, correct later).
pause & consider

Find a news story online that is representative of one of the
biases listed above. Share it in a small group and explain
how the story demonstrates the bias.
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
Expediency, the last bias on the above list, is so powerful in digital

news media that it is worth further exploration. This bias describes
how, in a competitive industry ruled by deadlines, the most accessi-
ble information and people can dictate a story’s direction. With social
media, this access is nearly instantaneous. For example, journalists
can crowdsource a story by posting a call on their Twitter feed, such
as looking for people who had to cancel travel plans due to the coro-
navirus epidemic. Sources who respond with a direct message to the
reporter get interviewed and immediately begin shaping the story.
The habit of thought of expediency just trumped other learned habits
of thought that bring about good journalism, like thinking analytically
about who the pool of potential respondents for this story is: Peo-
ple on social media, on Twitter in particular; who have wi-fi access
and availability to respond in the middle of a workday, who have the
income and time to plan travel. The early respondents send a journal-
ist looking for data to support the early trajectory of the story, rather
than allowing the most relevant data to drive the first interviews.
Popular culture commentator Chuck Klosterman9 writes:
Everybody seems to be concerned that journalists are constantly

trying to slip their own political and philosophical beliefs into
what they cover. This virtually never happens. . . . The single most
important impact of any story is far less sinister: Mostly, it all comes
down to (a) who the journalist has called, and (b) which of those
people happens to call back first.
And even when everyone else does call back before deadline, the
template has already been set by whoever got there first; from now
on, every question the reporter asks will be colored by whatever was
learned from the initial source. Is this bad? Yes. Does it sometimes
lead to a twisted version of what really happened? Yes. But it’s not an
agenda. It’s timing.
(pp. 204–206)
Klosterman’s wry conclusion rightly points to a real problem. This

bias toward a rush to upload content by going with the first sources
who respond means responsive sources can get undue authority to
shape a story simply by being accessible. Reporters aren’t following
some biased agenda; they are feverishly working to get a decent story
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
uploaded. The rush to publish isn’t going away. So journalists are wise
to be aware of this undue influence by “first responders” and remem-
ber, amid the relief that sources have called back, to challenge sources’
opinions. Include in the story what questions remain unanswered. Be
clear about the number of sources informing the story. When possi-
ble, follow up with same-day updates that include other opinions as
more sources are reached.
Organizational Biases
Journalists typically work within a larger news organization with its

own challenges and biases. The majority of individual journalists work
in newsrooms owned and controlled by massive media conglomer-
ates that emphasize shareholder profits. News outlets are increasingly
owned by remote publishers who are focused on content that will
ensure subscription numbers and ad value stays high. Increasingly,
with the shuttering of local news outlets that cannot afford to stay
open due to diminished audiences and the rise of free online infor-
mation and news, non-profit news organizations are cropping up and
finding some success. The non-profit model is an attempt to break free
from the commercially focused, revenue-driven news media model. It
is reliant on donations from foundations, philanthropists and users,
who also may buy subscriptions to access content. The non-profit
journalism model is still developing, with its focus on investigative
work and deeper dives into issues rather than daily news updates. It
tends to have a focus on specific issues or to practice watchdog jour-
nalism, meaning a focus on holding those with power accountable to
citizens.
One example of the pressures of contemporary organizational bias
influencing journalistic coverage is the rise of celebrity culture. Celeb-
rity culture is fueled by smartphones and users checking their social
media throughout the day (a 2019 study by Asurion puts the daily
checks figure at 96 times a day or once every ten minutes).10 Celebri-
ties post personal details to create a brand for themselves, and news
media have followed this trend of popular interest in athletes, enter-
tainers, actors and fashion trend-setters.
With digital news media, there is always room on the website for
another photo, video or audio clip of a celebrity. But while organiza-
tions have time and space to devote to this, users may not. Users only
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
have so much attention in a given day, in terms of both time and cog-
nition. Devoting mental energy to a singer’s romantic breakup means
less attention for an analysis of secure voting facilities in the pres-
idential election. That attentional focus is measured in page views,
clicks, shares, likes. That focus often translates into what news outlets
emphasize, particularly if the model for the news outlet is revenue
driven.
While journalists can and should acknowledge that many forms
of media bias are all around them as they work, they can also focus
on the aspect of the job they have the most control over: How they
approach their work. A good starting point is making time to reflect
on how you do journalism.
THE JOURNALIST AS REFLECTIVE PRACTITIONER

Just as there are habits of thought, there are also habits in how one
approaches the craft of journalism. Journalists are just like any other
professionals; over time, they develop work habits that help them be
more efficient and successful. In the case of journalists, these habits
are built around efficiently reporting news events and filing on dead-
line again and again.
Professional journalists develop a repertoire of reporting and writ-
ing techniques that serve them well in the rush of breaking news.
They form expectations about how stories roll out. They learn what
to look for in a news event and how to respond to what they find.
They become less and less subject to surprise. They are so capable and
adept at the job that they are seen as specialists.11 These are all seen as
positive and laudable traits that help a journalist file stories that lead
the home page schedule and kick off the newscast. When I was a jour-
nalist for a large metropolitan daily newspaper, it felt great to reach
the point on a beat when I could anticipate sources’ viewpoints and I
knew whom to call for input on certain topics. Such efficiency allowed
me to make deadline consistently. It also allowed me to deliver more
complete leads for story planning meetings that decided story assign-
ments and placements.
The negative side to professional specialization is that it can lead to
an assumptive approach to the world instead of an open-minded one.
This describes the journalist who is sure of what he’s going to encoun-
ter before he even gets to the interview and who has learned perhaps
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
too well what to look for and how to respond. Scholar Donald Schön
wrote about how professionals think in action in his book The Reflec-
tive Practitioner. Professional specialization can create a “parochial
narrowness of vision,” Schön writes.12 Journalists, like any other profes-
sional, can develop a repertoire of expectations because of repetition.
Given such smooth functioning, journalists may miss opportuni-
ties to think about what they are doing. They can overlearn what they
know. They may automatically place events and sources into well-
worn categories in their minds to explain motivation and behavior.
They are no longer attentive to specific and unique circumstances.
What they need is to adopt a reflective approach to their work.
Reflective Practice
Reflective practice invites professionals to identify and evaluate their

automatic perceptions and judgments that have grown up around
repeated experience. An automatic perception or judgment is one
that takes place without conscious thought or pause for assessment.
To put this in journalistic terms, ask the questions: How do I know?
What makes me believe this? Why am I so sure? Are there other view-
points I’m missing? What assumptions lie beneath this judgment?
Make reflective practice a career-long habit. Reflective practice is
immediately applicable for working journalists and a habit well worth
forming for student journalists as they prepare for their careers. It
can be done after every published piece or over the course of several
months on a beat. It can also be done mid-story, as problems or issues
surface that require thoughtful solutions. Schön called the ability to
adjust what one is doing while he is doing it in order to achieve a
better outcome “reflecting-in-action.” He noted how pitchers adjust
mid-game. Jazz musicians improvise on the spot. So should jour-
nalists adapt, pivoting with story focus as sources provide input and
evidence. Reflective practice allows for improvisation in the face of
uncertainty and uniqueness.13
Experiential Learning
Most journalists love to learn. They are curious people. They stick
with the profession in the face of industry turmoil because it is a
career of continuous mental growth; there is always something
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
interesting happening, someone fascinating to interview. Reflective

practice should be a natural habit for journalists, as it involves learn-
ing by doing, which is also called experiential learning. Experiential
learning means learning and gaining skills and knowledge by doing,
not merely by studying. It’s what good journalists do everyday on the
job. They broaden their repertoire of skills and knowledge with new
assignments and different challenges, from how to find tax liens on a
property to figuring out how to network their way to the key sources
in a corporation. Their learning is done through experience.
As seen in Exhibit 2.1, a model of experiential learning emphasizes
having a concrete experience (such as reporting a story) and then
reflecting on one’s performance from many perspectives, including
those of reporter, source, editor and news audience. What worked
well? What didn’t? What feedback did you get and from whom? What
groups aren’t commenting that might be if you had included other
sources or taken a different angle?
Then, use your observations and others’ feedback to envision
a strategy for a specific improvement next time. For example, you
might learn that community sources didn’t get back in touch with
you because they don’t trust the news media, and you hadn’t done
anything to familiarize yourself with the neighborhood before cold-
calling with ignorant questions. One of the best approaches to learn-
ing is to admit when you fell short, be humble and ask what you
did wrong. You’ll find sources respond to such refreshingly honest
assessment of how you can do better. Circle back to those who did
talk to you to be transparent about your approach and evidence-
gathering efforts.
Other things you might learn from reflective practice include dress-
ing appropriately for the reporting setting; researching specific termi-
nology before an interview to indicate you are trying to understand
labels and definitions; and knowing your geography so you aren’t ask-
ing someone if they are from the “country” of Africa. Put your strategy
into action on the next story, ideally with editors or educators playing
supporting roles.14 Through reflective practice, you teach yourself to
be a better journalist.
As a working journalist in mainstream news media, Ana Menen-
dez used to keep a folder on her computer labeled MISTAKES. Into
it went reminders of bad decisions.15 Later in her career (she’s now as
an award-winning fiction writer), Menendez started to keep what she
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
calls a SETREC folder as well. SETREC stands for setting the record
straight; it is her attempt to learn from her mistakes. She recalls
clearly the form that she and other reporters at the Miami Herald had
to complete when they made an error in a published news story; it
required story details such as headline, section, date, editor, and the
error and correction needed and how the error happened. Notably,
the last question was how a similar error would be prevented from
happening again. Menendez writes:
But it was that last line in the form – How I will prevent it from
happening again – that made all the difference. It was not enough to
admit a mistake. One was compelled by this sadistic-seeming act of
bureaucracy to reflect on its genesis. It had a transformative effect.
Most of us struggle to maintain our fragile egos. Faced with a mistake,
we’d just as soon forget it as quickly as possible. The SETREC forces
you to confront it in the most humbling way possible. And to bring
your imaginative powers to bear on preventing its reoccurrence.
EXHIBIT 2.1 AN EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING MODEL

FOR JOURNALISTS16
Do journalism:
Report and write the
story, photograph the
subject, create the
infographic, shoot the
video.
EXPERIENTIAL Reflect on your

Apply the strategy performance through
on your next story LEARNING
FOR self-critique and
or shoot. feedback from others.
JOURNALISTS
Form a strategy
for a single, specific
improvement.
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
FEEDBACK
Feedback from others is the second step in experiential learning. For
journalists today, this is an admittedly fraught area. Why? Because
writing simply to please audiences and online metrics would yield a
lot of fluffy stories about cats, celebrities, quirky people, odd events
and funny mishaps. That is not news – it is entertainment. The inter-
net and social media changed the way journalists get feedback, for
better and for worse. The interchange of ideas, the ability to find new
sources and the opportunity to connect with a wide variety of peo-
ple, groups and ideas – these are all benefits of online feedback. The
downsides of feedback are online harassment and personal attacks on
journalists (which is discussed further in Chapter 10), and a clear set
of metrics on what stories are read and for how long someone stays
on a page and at what point they quit reading, watching or listening. If
journalism is looking to survive by growing its audience, then it needs
people to click on stories. That means serving up more of what people
want, and that means a lot more light fare and not so much in-depth,
analytical coverage. That is not a good situation at all.
Today, editors are fewer and farther between, and those available
have less time to line-edit daily stories. The result is a less concentrated
critique of one’s output. However, one area of feedback is in ample
supply – audience comment and web analytics. Journalists have long
been wary of unsolicited outside input and its unwanted influence on
editorial decisions. The advent of web analytics and social media com-
mentary changes this dynamic, as feedback is offered and editors and
publishers often pay attention to it. Also, the people who are on social
media not to mention the people on social media who comment to
a journalist or news organization, are an admittedly distinct slice of
the news audience. The commenters hardly represent the majority of
news consumers.
As researcher James G. Robinson states in a report17 on how jour-
nalists imagine their readers, “Those entering the field quickly learn
that it is not enough to tell an important story; the stories they tell
must also attract interest from readers.” Reporters have access to
sources central to their reporting subject areas, and this is a welcome
connection. Often, these subject-area sources are the most import-
ant providers of feedback; they inevitably provide their opinion and
sometimes anger if a story isn’t favorable to them or their causes, but
39
HABITS OF THOUGHT
they may also provide context that is essential to getting a story right
and also point out missed angles. The right context is what makes a
story accurate and authoritative.
New organizations need to make money online to survive. The
honest organizations also are committed to excellent journalism,
which means covering public officials, public spending and public
affairs issues. These honest organizations work hard to tell import-
ant stories in engaging ways, and the use of infographics to illustrate
complex concepts is a wonderful asset in digital storytelling. But the
truth remains that until the advent of a better, sustainable funding
model – one that is not so dependent on ad revenues based on audi-
ence traffic – this very real tension will remain.
Story metrics can be overly celebrated by competitive journalists
who want to make their outlet’s Top Ten list of most popular stories
of the year. Really, the metrics only capture data on the attention that
a specific segment of people gave a specific story on a specific day.
So many variables go into most-read, most-watched, most-listened to
lists that drive content creators’ egos.
But just because the audience speaks doesn’t mean a journalist must
follow all that unsolicited advice. The concept of planned behavior is a
useful one in this situation. Planned behavior suggests that behavior
is determined by attitudes about the behavior (such as whether or not
and how to use online feedback), journalists’ belief about their ability
to perform a behavior (in this case, utilizing the feedback) and their
beliefs about others’ expectations of the behavior (such as if an editor
expects it and if colleagues are doing it).
It turns out that journalists’ use of feedback from Twitter and web
analytics (such as page views, time spent on the page, shares of the
story) depends on their personal attitudes toward using audience
feedback, their organization’s policy on it, as well as how much knowl-
edge and skill they think they have to use the feedback. These fac-
tors, based on a survey of 360 online journalists in the United States,
affected journalists’ intention to use, and their actual use of, audience
feedback in their editorial work.18 The researchers of the study used
the theory of planned behavior to examine the findings.
So, journalists are wary that too much devotion to analytics may
result in pandering to audience taste, which some envision as base
and unsophisticated. But the attitude element within planned behav-
ior suggests that journalists’ attitude – their belief that audience feed-
back is important – can influence their use of it. In an industry in
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
which survival is driving many decisions of what to cover and how,

the concept of planned behavior can allow a journalist some measure
of control about how to use audience feedback.
The Imagined Audience
Who is your imagined audience when you write?

It’s a useful question to ponder. The New York Times national editor
Marc Lacey asks this question19 in a more specific way:
What is the race of your reader?
For too long, readers in the mainstream media have been presumed to
be white. I notice it regularly as I survey the news. White is the norm.
And the writer helpfully lets us know when someone or something
strays from that norm. The writer points out that the mayor is Black.
But the city councilman’s race is left unstated two paragraphs later. A
neighborhood is described as predominantly Hispanic but another area
has no racial identifier at all. Someone is described as being classically
beautiful or having all-American looks. Hmm.
Lacey calls this a blind spot in the imagined audience, and he looks
forward to its correction as newsrooms become more multicultural,
so both editors and reporters catch such assumptions.
Who is the news audience? The analysis by Robinson, the researcher
introduced earlier, found that the audience is still as abstract as it was
pre-digital. The imagined audience for most journalists was the insti-
tutional audience of the publication they worked for (e.g. people who
read The New York Times); colleagues, peers and sources; friends and
family; and “vocal strangers” who let journalists clearly know their
about their affection and displeasure.
Improvement and Application
“A journalist’s ultimate goal is to write stories that are both important

and interesting,” states Robinson in his report for the Tow Center for
Digital Journalism.20
The rise of digital media gives journalists new ways to connect with
and understand their audiences. These new sources of knowledge can
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
be divided into two categories: learning from people (new methods for
journalists to listen to and talk directly with their readers) and learning
from data (use of analytics and metrics to infer audience insights.)
Controlled conversations with specific, niche audiences may be more

valuable to journalists, Robinson’s analysis states. Email conversations
between reporter and audience member, for example, were reported
to be less stressful and more specific than exchanges on Facebook
or Twitter. Also, journalists are always well served when they leave
the office and meet people who are impacted by the topics they write
about. Social media feedback and story metrics are not substitutes for
finding informed, conversant, relevant sources and talking with them
one-on-one.
In the end, your strategy for improvement may be technical; perhaps
you don’t speak the language of your sources and needed a translator
during the last interview. Or it may be contextual; you don’t under-
stand the unspoken rules of a given cultural group and more back-
ground research is a must. Or it may be knowledge based; you need to
know more about physical disabilities and the rights of individuals who
are disabled in order to convey the issues with proportionality. Apply
your new knowledge or approach during the next reporting experience
and note the effect. The learning cycle has begun again.
EXPLORATION EXERCISE
1. Review the list of biases in professional journalism (p. 23). Select
the lead stories on an online news site and evaluate them based on
conflict bias, both sides bias, narrative bias and visual bias.
2. Note the role of expediency in online news stories by comparing
similar accounts filed within an hour of one another from two or
more news outlets.
a. Compare when the outlets filed a breaking news story down
to the minute.
b. Count the number of sources cited.
c. Compare the headlines, images and the focus of the leads.
d. Now, find a story on the same event written later that day
or the following day. Answer a–c and compare findings and
draw your conclusion about the role of expediency in online
news stories.
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HABITS OF THOUGHT
3. Don’t wait for the world to come to you to discover its diversity. It’s
all around you. Focus on anything or anybody different from your
status quo. Start where you are. The key is to be open-minded.
Try to appreciate and understand people who have different back-
grounds than your own.
a. To do this, spend an hour or two reporting in your own
neighborhood. Look to break out of your comfort zone and
meet new people, especially those who are different from you
in age, race/ethnicity, gender, physical ability or in another
significant way.
b. Based on your reporting, write a short personal column aimed
at your community audience.
c. Share the column with at least one source you interviewed
and solicit feedback via email.
d. Follow the Reflective Practice Model for Journalists (p. 28)
to reflect on the story process and your interactions with
sources. What did you learn? Was anything surprising to you?
Why or why not? What sort of feedback did you receive?
What would you do differently next time? In one sentence.
State a lesson learned.
FOR REVIEW
• List common biases of the news media.

• Define cognitive bias and identify one in your own
thought processes.
• Develop a system for soliciting feedback on your
journalism.
NOTES
1 Sanburn, J. (June 25, 2020). “‘The Last of the First Responders’: Inside One
Funeral Home’s COVID-19 Crisis.” Vanity Fair. Retrieved 11/23/2020
from: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/06/inside-the-coronavirus-
crisis-at-a-queens-funeral-home
2 Pyle, T. (August 14, 2020). “Bearing Witness inside a Funeral Home at
the Pitch of the COVID Pandemic.” Nieman Storyboard: Story Annotations.
Retrieved 11/23/2020 from: https://niemanstoryboard.org/stories/bearing-
witness-inside-a-funeral-home-at-the-pitch-of-the-covid-pandemic/
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44
HABITS OF THOUGHT
45
3
Encountering
the News
How the Mind Organizes and
Interprets Information – and How
Story Ideas Get Lost in the Process
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand how schemas work and how they can affect journalists.
• To be able to define the perseverance effect and the self-fulfilling prophecy.
• To learn techniques to counter the potentially negative impacts of schemas on
news stories.
PERILOUS ASSUMPTIONS
Julie Irwin Zimmerman, a freelance writer whose work has appeared
in TheAtlantic.com, CityLab, America and Cincinnati Magazine, tells
the story of what happens when people, including herself, make con-
clusions without all the evidence.
Zimmerman wrote about her misjudgment of a confrontation
between high school students from Covington Catholic High School
and a Native American elder – a confrontation that went viral on
social media within hours – for TheAtlantic.com. “I Failed the Cov-
ington Catholic Test: Next time there’s a viral story, I’ll wait for more
facts to emerge,” was the title of her piece.
47
ENCOUNTERING THE NEWS
Here’s Zimmerman’s recap1 of her story for TheAtlantic.com; I

encourage you to seek out the actual story online:
One late January weekend in 2019, a video clip of some Kentucky

high school students in an apparent confrontation with an Indigenous
man – a Native American elder – on the National Mall in Washington,
DC, dominated news coverage across the country. It was a short
clip, heavily edited, but it went viral within hours. I am still trying to
understand why.
This media moment began late on a Friday night, when a disturbing

video was posted from an unidentified social media account. In the
video, a group of teenage males surround an Indigenous man, who
was beating a drum he held. The teenagers, many of them wearing
red “Make American Great Again” hats, appeared to be jeering and
taunting the man. One boy stood directly in front of the man and
stared at him, with a slight smirk on his face.
The sight of MAGA-hat-wearing young white man apparently

menacing an older Indigenous man struck a nerve in a country
deeply divided by partisan politics. How do I know this? Because
by Saturday morning, Twitter was awash in posts sharing the video,
expressing outrage and disgust. The teenagers were threatened on
social media, and the family of one teenager, who was mistaken for
the smirking youth, received death threats. He hadn’t even gone on
the school trip.
Local and national media picked up the story within hours. The media
are desperate to remain relevant in the age of social media, and
outlets quickly published news stories and commentary on the video.
The event arguably did not represent any significant news event. It
met no traditional understanding of news at all.
(I have imagined myself trying to convince an editor that the video

was newsworthy: “There were these teenagers, see, and they were
locked in this sort of standoff with a man who was drumming, and
there was chanting and singing in the background, and then it sort of
broke up and everyone went home . . .” In my imagining, the editor
always tells me to get back to work.)
By Sunday, the news cycle was re-evaluating the event because a

new video had emerged that seemed to vindicate the teenagers.
48
Turns out that the school group had been waiting on the Mall
for their school bus, which was to take them home to northern
Kentucky, when a group of Black Hebrew Israelites who were nearby
began insulting them. Contrary to the initial reports, the Indigenous
man had approached the teenagers, not the other way around. He
was joined by others who had just participated in an Indigenous
People’s march on the Mall. He seemed to be asserting himself as
a go-between, a peacemaker soothing the tensions of the Black
Hebrew Isrealites and the Catholic white youths. Seen from other
camera angles, the smirker now appeared more nervous, rather than
mocking, as he stared at the face of the Indigenous man. He seemed
like a kid who didn’t know what to do or how he ended up in this
strange situation.
People fought over the meaning of the Covington Catholic incident

for days, and like so many other viral stories, how someone viewed
it became a proxy for their political leanings: Many conservative
commentators leapt to the boys’ defense, while liberals largely
continued to criticize them. But it made no discernable sense why
millions of people had passionate opinions about these two groups of
strangers.
Without social media, would anyone care about people they don’t
know in a place they weren’t present, who were in an ambiguous,
non-violent confrontation? Why do we allow emotional content
produced by people who aren’t paid and trained to gather
news manipulate us into the sort of frenzy that the Covington
Catholic story produced? I believe it’s because on social media,
outrage is both easy and entertaining. Solving the problems that
our communities face requires nuance and the hard work of
relationship-building. That hard work is the opposite of agreeing
with like-minded friends about the awfulness of people you’ll never
meet; that’s a lot like rooting for a football team. In that case, we
simply post a few insults (the snarkier the better), and feel like
we’ve contributed to political discourse, when really all we’ve done
is cheer for the home team.
There are many possible solutions to how news media should

respond to viral social media moments. I favor the approach of
considering viral stories on social media with a critical eye and healthy
skepticism. Ask yourself: Who made this content? What is their aim?
49
Why is this provoking such an emotional response in me and others?

Is there an alternative explanation for this event that might make
sense? What don’t I know about this? And most importantly, why do
I care? Why should anyone care?
Asking critical questions in the face of a social media firestorm is not

as satisfying as hate-watching random videos made by unknown
people and then adding news analysis about a supposedly deeply
meaningful social moment. Please – pause before you do that. Get
the full context. Do the reporting before weighing in. Make sure you
have the full story. The emotions manipulated by our social media
feed are dangerous in ways we as a society are only starting to
understand. Fighting back requires rational thought, careful analysis,
and sometimes, a decision to take a pass on the day’s outrage.
In Zimmerman’s TheAtlantic.com piece, she writes,
The story is a Rorschach test – tell me how you first reacted, and I
can probably tell where you live, who you voted for in 2016, and
your general take on a list of other issues – but it shouldn’t be . . .
Take away Twitter and Facebook and explain why total strangers care
so much about people they don’t know in a confrontation they didn’t
witness . . . If the Covington Catholic incident was a test, it’s one I
failed – along with most others.2
Zimmerman’s even-handed analysis about the very real problem of online

outrage prompted Shankar Vedantam, of Hidden Brain, to showcase
her article on his radio program.3 Vedantam unpacked the incident and
her story on air. In that segment, Vedantam broadcast Rush Limbaugh’s
dressing down of Zimmerman that happened soon after her article ran
online. We tune in at that point in the program, with Limbaugh’s clip:
One of the drive-by media outlets that really roasted these kids from
Covington was at The Atlantic. And a writer at The Atlantic has
published a piece . . . Julie Irwin Zimmerman - she was one of the
early pilers on and she’s begging forgiveness. She failed the test.
Vedantam then set the record straight with his listeners:
Rush Limbaugh was wrong in several ways. Julie didn’t work at The
Atlantic and had nothing to do with their initial coverage.
50
And she was not an early piler on. Before she wrote her essay, she
herself had posted nothing on social media about the Covington
Catholic students. In addition, lots of journalists had, in fact,
covered the story with nuance. Ironically, Rush Limbaugh was doing
exactly what Julie had initially done. He was leaping to sweeping
conclusions - about liberals, about Julie, about journalists - with
very limited evidence.
pause & consider

Watch the viral video of the confrontation discussed in this
chapter opening. Discuss your response with others.
DEFINING SCHEMAS
Journalists throughout the nation covered the face-off on the Wash-
ington Mall. A cognitive phenomenon was at work in the coverage of
the confrontation: Schemas.
A schema is a category of knowledge that helps people interpret
and understand the world. It is a mental structure used to simplify
and organize knowledge. The mind can have schemas about people,
social roles, specific events and ourselves.4 When the mind meets new
information, it will search for an existing schema about that type of
information.
So, a reporter covering the Washington Mall story would be tak-
ing in new information on the video and assimilating the informa-
tion or differentiating it from the existing knowledge and experience
already in their brain. They might have a set of schemas that relate to
many aspects of the story, such as Catholic all-male high schools and
the students who go to them. They may have acquired those sche-
mas directly through their own experiences: themselves, friends or
family who attended Catholic schools. Or they may have acquired
the schemas indirectly through television shows, stories, movies and
cultural myths. Similarly, the reporter would have a mental folder on
the Indigenous man. If were like most Americans, the reporter would
have compiled most of the contents of that mental folder from mass
media representations of Native Americans.
51
With each specific encounter or experience, they would have

accompanying mental processing that involved adding and sub-
tracting information to their existing organized knowledge – their
schema on this subject. As the reporter unpacks the confrontation,
they add new information to their schema about the players involved,
their motivations and purposes. But that new information is filtered
through the reporter’s existing schemas. Do you see how that imme-
diately sets up a bias to having information “fit” within an existing
schema, instead of seeing the event at face value and working to fill in
the gaps in the event with evidence?
Experts have well-developed schema in a subject area, and that
helps make their judgments less extreme. To put it in journalistic
terms, a longtime beat reporter will notice, recall and use material
that varies from or disagrees with established schema more than a
news intern will. People who have been exposed to many schema-
relevant experiences form more complex schemas that moderate
their judgments. Researchers Shelley E. Taylor and Susan Fiske con-
clude, “The more variety one has encountered, the more complex the
issues, and the less clear-cut it all seems, and the less extreme one’s
judgment.”5
THE FUNCTIONS OF SCHEMAS

It is important to learn about schemas because they are foundational
in understanding how the mind works. Schemas affect what people
(including journalists) notice, think about and remember.6 Schemas
help individuals know what to expect from other people, oneself,
social roles and social events so they can focus energy on the most
relevant features of a situation. Schemas guide a person’s perceptions,
memory and judgments toward consistency with their preexisting
expectations.7
Schemas are culturally influenced. The culture in which a person
lives exerts its influence by instilling schemas that influence the way
the person will understand and interpret the world.8 For instance, a
person raised on a crop farm has schemas about the spring planting
time and each growing season. Conversely, an urban dweller has sche-
mas about riding the subway and interacting with other riders. Either
schema is generated by experiences unique to the geographic setting
in which the person lives.
52
Schemas affect:
• What people notice.
• How people remember and interpret things.
• How people make decisions.
Mental Shortcuts
The good thing about schemas is that they allow a person to take
mental shortcuts in interpreting lots of information at once. Schemas
help one subconsciously process remarkable amounts of mental input
throughout the day.
For example, due to schemas, a journalist on the courts beat cov-
ering a crime trial doesn’t have to spend a lot of mental energy under-
standing the workings of the court process in a case. That’s because she
has an existing cognitive framework about the judicial system and its
workings. Instead, she can go to an unfamiliar courthouse and know
how to behave and generally what to expect in the court proceed-
ings: Rise when the judge enters. Use a quieter voice. No photographs
unless given permission. She has a court proceedings “script” in mind
that tells her what to expect, and she can use her mental energy on
other story-related events.
The bad thing about schemas is that they are just that: Shortcuts.
So if the reporter’s schema about prosecutors is that “the prosecutor
always uses accurate facts,” then a shortcut in processing informa-
tion might mean the reporter doesn’t pause to closely examine the
prosecutor’s motives or behavior in the case. She will tend to exclude
pertinent information because it doesn’t fit in her mental packet of
preexisting beliefs and ideas. Given that, the reporter may not even
consider that the prosecutor wouldn’t have a load of evidence to con-
vict the accused. It just isn’t a part of the reporter’s cognitive frame-
work on prosecutorial conduct.
Interpreting and Filing New Information
We often use schemas to fill in gaps in information, and those schemas

influence how we interpret situations. So, when the brain encounters
information that can be interpreted in a variety of ways, meaning the
information is ambiguous, a person uses an existing schema to inter-
pret the new information. Also, when people remember information,
53
they often guide their memory to what’s called “schema-consistent”

information. In other words, they remember details that fit into their
schema: Even though those details might not be fully accurate in real
life, they are accurate to the structure we’ve assembled in our mind
about it.
What does that mean for our reporter following the Washington
Mall confrontation?
A lot of details are missing from the initial viral video, but when
paired with our always-in-action schemas, suddenly, the video has a
plot, accurate or not: A group of privileged high school male students
taunting an older Native American elder and activist. We fill in the
story line to fit our schemas. That is what happened in media reports
and on social media; people made assumptions based on their sche-
mas, which in this case were heavily influenced by political ideology.
Interestingly, when Zimmerman reassessed the confrontation,
after watching videos with other vantage points and gathering more
information, she accessed another schema. That sniveling Catholic
high school prepster now becomes a nervous, embarrassed kid who
is uncertain what to do next. The schema changes when Zimmerman
changes her viewpoint from social media scroller to one of mother.
She has a son herself who went to a Catholic boys’ school and is
around the same age as the young man. In the schema as social media
scroller, certain information is accentuated, such as the teen’s smirk.
In viewing the teenager through the maternal schema, the same
information is reinterpreted, and he now has a tentative half-smile.
pause & consider

Why do the descriptive terms for people involved in the
confrontation matter? A MAGA-hat wearing Catholic high
school student in a town to attend the March for Life is
an accurate description. So is a veteran who is a member
of the Omaha Tribe who was beating a drum as part of
a sacred prayer song. What does each phrase evoke for
you? In your thinking, how do the phrases begin to suggest
blame or cause?
54
More Attention to the Inconsistent
It takes more work for people to process an individual’s actions

when the behavior is especially incongruent with existing men-
tal concepts – when it doesn’t fit with existing schemas. People
remember those behaviors and other incongruous information bet-
ter, presumably because of the extra effort expended trying to fit
the material into an existing set of ideas and beliefs.9 Information
inconsistent with existing schemas receives more mental attention
as people try to explain the inconsistencies. Also, because expected
information is effortlessly integrated into a schema, this leaves extra
attentional resources for processing and remembering unexpected
information.
This extra processing can be a good thing for journalists who are on
the lookout for inconsistencies in narratives. It can force a journalist
to take note of what seems incongruous. However, it’s important to
remember that the reason something is noticeably inconsistent might
be because of personal categorizations and stereotypes; it is notice-
able perhaps because of a journalist’s internal view of how things
should be, not because of an outside, empirical rule about how things
should be. Strive to notice why you think what you think. And don’t
believe everything you think.
TYPES OF SCHEMAS
The way that people think about social groups and social interactions
involves various schemas, as Taylor and Fiske explain in their text on
social cognition.10 They include the person, event and role schemas.
Person Schema
A person schema is a mental file containing your perceptions of the

person’s traits and goals. You may have a person schema about your
editor and what her personality is like. People tend to remember
behavior that is relevant to their schema about the person11 – for
instance, your editor is always in better shape after a third cup of cof-
fee, so make the morning story meeting a bit later. But you wouldn’t
necessarily remember or find relevant what kind of car she drives.
55
Person schema may encourage a reporter to fit new information

about a source into an existing schema. But journalists must pause
to evaluate whether the new information should instead alter their
schema of the person. In other words, allow your ideas about people
to change as your learn more information about them, rather than
shoving new information into an outdated mold.
Event Schema
An event schema, sometimes referred to as a cognitive script,

describes a person’s knowledge of the typical sequence of recurring
events as well as for standard social occasions. Like other schemas,
event schemas guide the interpretation of ambiguous information to
fit with existing schemas. Ordering, being served, eating and paying
at a restaurant is a standard script, or schema, for eating out. For jour-
nalists, an example of an event schema would be a press conference.
A person may also have an event schema that is uniquely ethnically
or racially influenced. An example would be a schema for a recurrent
event such as being stopped by police for DWB (driving while black),
the expression used to describe a traffic stop by police for no apparent
reason other than the driver’s skin color. Another event schema that
is sometimes ethnically or racially influenced would be if a woman
experiences the recurring event of being trailed by security while
shopping in clothing stores because of her appearance. She may then
develop a “trailed-while-shopping” schema. Similarly, people with
ethnic origins traced to southwest Asia and North Africa who travel
may have a schema about airline security checkpoints and the addi-
tional scrutiny they encounter that most travelers in the United States
cannot comprehend.
Role Schemas
Role schemas organize one’s knowledge about appropriate behav-

iors attached to social positions, such as how a police officer should
act on the job or how a mayor should behave at a city council meet-
ing. Unlike person or event schemas, role schemas can contribute to
stereotyping.
Role schemas create expectations about people in socially defined
categories. An exotic dancer is likely a role about which people have
56
schemas. Certain behaviors and standards are expected of people based

on their age, race, sex, religion, education and so on. For example, a stay-
at-home parent may be seen by some people as nurturing and attentive if
female, but unmotivated and directionless if male.
When it comes to memory and one’s role schemas, the typical
case will eclipse the details of a specific instance. People apparently
remember the category of information that they put someone into
better than they remember the person as an individual. They remem-
ber the person’s role even if they remember nothing about the person.
This lasting power of categorization lays the groundwork for stereo-
typing, which is examined at length in Chapter 4.
pause & consider

There is usually a lag of several hours between breaking
news of a mass shooting and the identification of the
alleged shooter. Some people find themselves anticipat-
ing whether the shooter fits or doesn’t fit certain catego-
ries: Muslim, white nationalist, etc. What is behind these
impulses? Do you find yourself having a similar reaction
when you hear about an outbreak of mass violence? Discuss
that in a small group.
The Perseverance Effect
While not a schema in itself, the perseverance effect is a concept

that describes how people’s beliefs and schemas persist despite con-
tradictory information. The Washington Mall confrontation evokes a
past news story that was similar to the Mall story in that journalists
rushed to judgment about the case that included characterizations
from central casting. This story involved partying white Duke lacrosse
players and their alleged victim, a Black single mother working as a
stripper. The Duke case is an excellent example of the perseverance
effect. Media and public sentiment did not withhold judgment when
the case came to light, and evidence that eventually surfaced did little
to erode the initial judgments made by some people.
57
In March 2006, a woman who was a student at North Carolina

Central University was hired to dance at a party held by members of
the Duke University lacrosse team. After the party, she told police that
three players had sexually assaulted her. The students were charged
with first-degree sexual offense, kidnapping and rape. The district
attorney handling the case, Mike Nifong, stated that a rape had taken
place and prosecuted the three students even as doubts surfaced
about the woman’s account of the events.
When the news first broke, the coverage was immediate and exten-
sive. Major stories ran in The New York Times, Newsweek (one cover
story was entitled “Sex, Lies & Duke”), The New Yorker, Rolling Stone
and Sports Illustrated. Thousands of news outlets covered the event.
60 Minutes devoted five segments to the case.12
In the case of the accuser, she had various labels ascribed to her –
single mother, young Black woman, exotic dancer, community col-
lege student – that reporters used to quickly fit her into an existing
schema. Placing the accuser in the “exotic dancer” schema instead of
the “community college student” schema meant certain information
was accentuated, perhaps what she wore, and other information was
downplayed, such as her college academic record.
Reporters also had to think about word choice when describing
the accuser and how word choice may affect the schemas of readers.
One academic analysis of press coverage of the case tallied how often
the accuser was described in one of four ways: Mother, single mother,
student or stripper/dancer. The New York Times, USA Today, NBC
Nightly News and the Raleigh News & Observer were analyzed. The
results were as follows: The accuser was described as a “mother” 29
times, as a “single mother” 19 times, as a “student” 92 times and as a
“stripper” or “dancer” 264 times.13
pause & consider

Why do the descriptive terms for the accuser matter? What
effect might the various terms have on a reader’s schema?
Is there a context in which one term is more appropriate
than the others? How do the terms suggest blame or cause?
58
Here’s how the Duke case turned out: A little more than a year
after the scandal, in April 2007, North Carolina’s attorney general
announced at a crowded press conference that the students were
innocent. The charges against the players were dropped. Nifong, the
district attorney, eventually resigned and was disbarred over eth-
ics violations in his handling of the case. Duke University reached
an undisclosed financial settlement with the three former lacrosse
players who had been falsely accused. The North Carolina attorney
general did not pursue any action against the accuser for making the
false accusations. Take a moment and think about how that fits into
your existing schemas.
Schemas as Standard Scripts
In their analysis of the Duke coverage, two academic researchers

wrote,14
The case had elements that played into stereotypes and standard
scripts about race and class – dynamics that were reinforced by
Duke’s mostly affluent, mostly white student body and faculty
located in Durham, a small city (population approximately 190,000)
with a predominately working-class and poor population, forty-four
percent of which is African American.
Other groups pushing various storylines for the case included faculty,
who saw the case as a symbol of race, class and gender injustices. In
general, the case played into the cultural schema of athletes misbehav-
ing and administrators looking the other way. In addition, some in the
news media saw the story as one of Southern white males exploiting
Black females, even though the young men involved were not from
the South.
Another insightful analysis of the Duke case15 details how, in the
frenzy of early coverage, many news outlets downplayed assertions
by team captains and their defense attorneys that the charges were
patently false, players were cooperating with police and DNA results
would clear them. Instead, story lines clung to the script of lacrosse
thugs raping a woman and covering it up.
One critic of the coverage, Kurt Andersen, writing in New
York Magazine, asserted that the news media coverage was about
59
reinforcing clichés and preconceptions. The lack of regard for finding

the truth prompted Andersen to quote a longtime quip around news-
rooms that “some juicy fragment of reporting is ‘a fact too good to
check.’”16 Andersen’s commentary of The New York Times’ coverage of
the Duke lacrosse team in New York Magazine began this way:
As a young writer at Time, whenever I’d hear “That story’ll write

itself,” I wanted to reach for my revolver. The line, delivered with
bluff cheer, suggests that good material makes good writing easy,
which isn’t true. Its premise is the very wellspring of hackdom:
The more thoroughly some set of facts reinforces the relevant
preconceptions, caricatures, clichés and conventional wisdom, the
easier it makes life for everyone, journalists as well as their audiences.
Most people want to be told what they already know. . . .
Thus the enthralling power of the Duke lacrosse-team story when

it broke last spring. As a senior Times alumnus recently emailed
me, “You couldn’t invent a story so precisely tuned to the outrage
frequency of the modern, metropolitan, bien pensant journalist.”
That is: successful white men at the Harvard of the South versus a
poor single mother enrolled at a local black college, jerky superstar
jocks versus $400 out-call strippers, a boozy Animal House party,
shouts of “n-r,” and a . . . gangbang rape in a bathroom.17
pause & consider

With peers, talk about what Andersen means when he says
that a story will “write itself.” Why is that such a bad thing?
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Schemas don’t just affect our thinking. They can influence reality in
very concrete ways. The self-fulfilling prophecy is the tendency for
people’s expectations to elicit behavior that is consistent with those
expectations. It describes the interaction that occurs when a journal-
ist holds an expectation about how a source will behave. The inter-
viewer’s treatment of that source can foster the very behavior that
60
was anticipated and so the expectation is confirmed, as illustrated in

Exhibit 3.1. A reporter expecting a source to be uncooperative in an
interview, for example, may put up their guard and not be as friendly
and approachable as usual. The source reacts in a corresponding man-
ner, perhaps not making eye contact and offering curt responses. How
much of this was a foregone conclusion and how much was a response
to one another’s demeanor?
EXHIBIT 3.1 THE SELF-FULFILLING PROPHECY
Journalist expects
source to act in a
particular way.
Journalist sees the THE Journalist treats source

source’s behavior as SELF-FULFILLING in a way consistent with
proof the expectation PROPHECY
their expectation.
was correct.
Source responds in a
way consistent with the
journalist’s treatment.
COUNTERING THE BIASING POWER OF SCHEMAS

Journalists are storytellers. They love a good tale. But be wary of the
easy narrative. If information seems to fit too neatly into a predeter-
mined template, there may be a schema at work. Research shows18
that when people have trouble remembering, they use schemas to fill
in the blanks with what they think should be there. Andersen’s com-
ments in this chapter about a story “writing itself ” are a reminder that
61
careful journalists will work to dismantle the predictable script, pur-

posely testing all the assumptions within it.
Combatting the Perseverance Effect
First, let’s look at some basic techniques specifically found to combat

the perseverance effect:
1. Counterargue. Explain to someone why your point of view on

the story might be wrong. This act can help you see other ways
of thinking about the event and to rewrite the usual scripts.19 So
if the reporter’s take on the Duke lacrosse case is that of course
the three players are guilty, he would argue their innocence to his
editor or colleague, calling on all evidence possible to justify his
position.
2. Think it through. When people are told to think carefully about
how they evaluate information and to pay attention to their
biases as they sift through the data, the perseverance effect is
moderated.20 So the reporter on the Duke lacrosse case might
know that he has a negative bias toward college athletes as
cocky, privileged and aggressive. Research indicates he could off-
set that bias by reminding himself to think carefully about how
he is evaluating the evidence in the case. He could pay attention
to his inclination to discount evidence from the players. Making a
list of facts and statements by key sources helps lay out evidence
clearly.
3. Have meaningful contact. When it comes to role schemas,
personal interaction between people unlike one another helps
undercut the categorization that occurs.21 So it stands to reason
that a journalist on a beat might benefit from actively seeking out
conversations with sources about whom they have pre-defined
ideas or strong opinions, particularly negative ones. Developing
a one-on-one professional relationship with such sources may
result in more neutral schemas. In the Duke case, the sources
were not accessible to news reporters due to the pending liti-
gation, but reporters did attempt to interview friends, coaches,
neighbors and faculty to better understand the key players
involved.
62
Choose Your Thinking Wisely
Schema-driven thinking is pretty easy on the brain. It’s spontaneous

and unintentional. It’s low effort. It involves quick judgments based on
past experiences.22
The opposite is stimulus-driven thinking. This is high effort. It’s
controlled thinking. Intentional. Conscious. Voluntary. With this kind
of thinking, different aspects of a person are considered individually.
People cannot constantly engage in this type of controlled thinking
because it requires more time and mental energy.23 But journalists
need to engage in this type of thinking when trying to figure out
sources’ motivations for their actions, for example.
Two tools can help encourage stimulus-driven processing and
counter the effects of negative schemas on accurate perceptions. The
first is reflective practice, which was discussed at length in Chapter 2.
Recall that reflective practice encourages people to identify and evalu-
ate their perceptions and judgments that have formed due to repeated
experience. It simply encourages pause for assessment.
A reporter functioning with schema-driven thinking will automati-
cally believe the district attorney’s charges are based on valid evidence
due on the dozens of past cases the reporter has covered in which the
D.A. was right. Reflective practice allows the reporter to construct a
new view of the situation at hand through careful assessment of the
information: Is it valid? Why am I so sure? Where’s the proof? What
information am I missing?
A second tool to help journalists avoid schema-driven process-
ing is to consider multiple perspectives. This technique involves the
act of shifting perspectives to improve recall of events or to enrich
interview questioning or background research. The Rashomon
effect refers to how individuals remember events differently, but
plausibly, from other’s remembrances.24 This effect got its name
from the movie Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa. This 1950
Japanese mystery details a crime witnessed by four individuals,
each of whom describe the event in four different and contradictory
ways. The “truth” for each individual is different because their per-
spectives are different.
It’s useful to think of this effect when reporting a story with many
key players. Work to report the story from each source’s perspective,
63
and compare and verify the information with other sources’ interpre-
tations of events. Continue to shift and compare the perspectives. In
essence, this is trying on alternative schemas about the event. Where
are there conflicting interpretations?
On Finding Story Ideas: Look for the

Non-Event
We, as journalists . . . write about events, so we tend not to talk
about non-events. Someone shooting a Sikh is an event. People
calling their Muslim friends to offer support is not. Bush calling for
war is an event. People wanting peace is not. A friend complained
recently that from reading the papers you’d think all Americans
want to go to war. I think we have to work twice as hard at
providing context and multiple perspectives.25
(Gelareh Asayesh, author, Saffron Sky:
A Life between Iran and America)
Research has shown that shifting one’s perspective based on another

person’s goals allows one to remember the details not easily recalled
from the other perspective. “To see the impact of goals on under-
standing, take a mental tour of a friend’s house, with burglary in
mind,” write researchers Fiske and Taylor.
What details are important? You know that burglary includes

looking for expensive, easily disposable items such as color
televisions, silver, and stereos, so that is what you will focus on
most. To get an idea of the schema’s impact, think again of the
friend’s house with the goal of possible purchase. Suddenly, the
leaky basement matters; you remember the sagging stairs and
forget the stereo.26
Thinking about people’s intentions in specific situations can be used

effectively in reporting. Shifting perspectives can help a person recall
details.27 For journalists, the Duke lacrosse case had many perspec-
tives to consider. Thinking about each perspective and each source’s
goals as events unfold can help reporters present the full story.
64
1. Watch the footage of the confrontation on the Washington Mall
between Nick Sandmann and Nathan Phillips described at the start
of this chapter. A comprehensive summary is on CNN at https://
cnn.it/37lEYEX. Then, read Zimmerman’s story on TheAtlantic.com
(https://bit.ly/3qHwzV0) and listen to the Hidden Brain podcast
(https://n.pr/3oDTbE2) about her story:
a. What do you think as you watch the initial viral video? Write
your reaction down in a paragraph.
b. Offer a brief analysis of news outlets’ coverage of the video.
What did the coverage emphasize? What was not known?
What was left unstated?
c. Provide your feedback on Zimmerman’s story. Do you agree
with her analysis of the reasons behind the reaction to the
video?
d. Finally, respond to the conclusion of Shankar Vedantam of
Hidden Brain at the end of his segment: “But the ground
rules have changed. All of a sudden, there are powerful
incentives to be fastest to react and loudest to shout.”
2. Test the Rashomon effect by selecting a recent event in your com-
munity or on campus and discuss the event with at least four other
people. Compare perceptions, memories and judgments toward the
event. Try to figure out why differences exist within each individu-
al’s conclusions.
3. Think of a story you’ve done in which the self-fulfilling prophecy
may have played a role in the reporter-source dynamic. Or, if you
haven’t yet had a reporting experience, think about these questions
in light of a different interaction, such as between you and a sub-
ordinate, such as a child you are babysitting, or a player you are
coaching, or between you and a new professor. The person who is
the focus of your expectations is called a “target.”
a. In a brief paragraph, describe the situation.
b. In a second paragraph, explore how you might have changed
your attitude and acted more neutrally toward the target.
Think about factors such as the words you used, your body
language, your tone of voice, if you stood or sat, the volume
of your voice or where you focused your eyes.
c. Can you recall another time when your treatment of a target
was negative and what the reactions were?
d. Can you recall a time when your treatment of a target was
especially kind and patient? What was the reaction then?
65
4. Categorize the following based on whether the situation is more or

less likely to prompt you to engage in schema-driven processing or
stimulus-driven thinking:
• Making a trip to the grocery store.

• Attending a lecture.
• Listening to a defendant testify.
• Observing a fundraiser by an LGBTQA+ organization.
• Meeting the new president of the organization, who is
multiracial.
5. In the form of a short essay or blog entry, write about whether

your ideas and beliefs about the main characters in the Duke case –
the accuser, the three players and the county district attorney –
changed in light of the case’s conclusion.
a. What, if anything, is surprising to you about the people

involved now that you know the outcome of the case?
b. Compare these notes with your earlier pause & consider
reaction, written before you knew the outcome of the case.
c. If you were familiar with the case before reading this chapter,
then approach this essay by selecting one type of schema
(person, role, event) and consider how this schema type
affected your ideas and beliefs about the Duke case.
6. Read the excerpt below by a journalist who covered the Duke
lacrosse case for Newsweek. She is writing about Crystal Mangum,
the woman who accused the players of rape. The column is from
2010, four years after the case occurred. The column was occa-
sioned by new charges against Mangum that included attempted
murder, arson and child abuse.
I ended up spending eight weeks in Durham over a year of

reporting on the lacrosse case, devoting a good deal of time to
trying to figure out who Crystal Mangum was, following her
trail into the worst parts of town. Though I never met her, I
came to know a troubled woman and her hometown, a city still
raw with racial bitterness.
At the time of the rape accusations, Mangum was a mother
of two, working as an escort and taking classes at North Car-
olina Central University (NCCU). NCCU was the first publicly
supported Black liberal arts college in the country, but it has
struggled over the years to get adequate funding. The dis-
tance between the campuses of Duke and NCCU was a few
miles and a lot of resentment. Students I spoke with at NCCU’s
66
campus soon after the rape charges were filed had no doubt
that the lacrosse players were guilty but would beat the rap.
One student told me,
“This is a race issue. People at Duke have a lot of money
on their side. ” Another student said, “It’s the same old story.
Duke up, Central down. ” He said he wanted to see the Duke
students prosecuted whether they were guilty or not. “ It
would be justice for things that happened in the past,” he said.
For me, it was one of the more eye-opening moments of the
whole case.28
a. Finish this sentence: “The NCCU students had no doubt

the lacrosse players were guilty but would beat the rap”
because . . . . Because why?
b. Why is there so much resentment between Duke and NCCU?
What is the author leaving unstated here?
c. Brainstorm at least one story idea that stems from the student
comments in this column excerpt. Pitch it to a small group for
discussion.
FOR REVIEW
• Apply the person, event and role schemas to a

current story unfolding in the news.
• Draw a diagram to illustrate the dynamics of the
perseverance effect, in which your initial opinion
persists even in light of contradictory information.
• Explain to a peer at least one technique to combat
the perseverance effect.
NOTES
1 Zimmerman, J.I. (December 1, 2020). “Reflections on ‘I Failed the Cov-
ington Catholic Test’ Story.” Personal essay written by author’s request.
2 Zimmerman, J.I. (January, 2019). “I Failed the Covington Catholic
Test.” TheAtlantic.com: Ideas. Retrieved 11/24/2020 from: https://bit.
ly/3qHwzV0
3 Vedantam, S. (October 7, 2019). “Screaming Into the Void: How Outrage
Is Hijacking Our Culture, and Our Minds.” Hidden Brain. National Public
67
Radio. Retrieved 11/24/2020 from: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/

767186846
4 Aronson, E., Wilson, T.D., & Akert, R.M. (2005). Social Psychology
(5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.
5 Fiske, S.T., & Taylor, S.E. (1984). Social Cognition. New York: Random
House, pp. 173–174.
6 Aronson, Wilson, & Akert.
7 Fiske & Taylor.
8 Aronson, Wilson, & Akert.
9 Hashtroudi, S., Mutter, S.A., Cole, E.A., & Green, S.K. (1984).
“Schema-Consistent and Schema-Inconsistent Information: Processing
Demands,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 10(2), 269–278;
O’Sullivan, C.S., & Durso, F.T. (1979). “Effect of Schema-Incongruent
Information on Memory for Stereotypical Attributes.” Journal of Person-
ality and Social Psychology 47(1), 55–75; Hastie, R., & Kumar, P.A. (1979).
“Person Memory: Personality Traits as Ongoing Principles in Memory
Behaviors.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, 25–38.
10 Fiske & Taylor.
11 Macrae, C.M., & Bodenhausen, G.V. (2000). “Social Cognition: Thinking
Categorically about Others.” Annual Review of Psychology 51, 93–120, p. 95.
12 Duke University Office of News and Communications. (n.d.) “Looking
Back at the Duke Lacrosse Case.” Retrieved 6/5/2010 from: http://today.
duke.edu/showcase/lacrosseincident/
13 Entman, R.M., & Gross, K.A. (2008). “Race to Judgment: Stereotyping
Media and Criminal Defendants,” Law and Contemporary Problems 71,
93–133, p. 116.
14 Ibid., p. 109.
15 Taylor Jr., S., & Johnson, K.C. (2007). Until Proven Innocent: Political
Correctness and the Shameful Injustices of the Duke Lacrosse Rape Case.
New York: St. Martin’s Press.
16 Andersen, K. (October 8, 2006). “Rape, Justice, and the ‘Times’.” New York
Magazine.
17 Ibid.
18 Kleider, H., Pezdek, K., Goldinger, S.D., & Kirk, A. (2008). “Schema-Driven
Source Misattribution Errors: Remembering the Expected from a
Witnessed Event,” Applied Cognitive Psychology 22, 1–20.
19 Anderson, C.A. (1982). “Inoculation and Counter-Explanation: Debias-
ing Techniques in the Perseverance of Social Theories,” Social Cognition
1, 126–139; Fiske & Taylor, Social Cognition; Hirt, E.R., & Markman,
K.D. (1995). “Multiple Explanation: A Consider-an-Alternative Strategy
for Debiasing Judgments,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
69, 1069–1086.
68
69
4
Story without
Stereotype
How Stereotypes May Influence
Reporting in Stealthy Ways – and
What to Do about It
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To be able to define stereotypes and list their attributes.

• To understand the potential influence of stereotypes on news reporting,
including how sources are influenced by stereotypes.
• To know how to apply techniques to control the use of stereotypes in
journalism.
WORKING AGAINST LABELS

A common stereotype about people with intellectual disabilities is
that they are not “smart enough” to participate in an interview and
understand it is for publication to a wide audience.
National Public Radio news investigations correspondent Joseph
Shapiro has seen and heard stories about people with disabilities that
don’t include any quotes or interviews with the people with disabil-
ities. Instead, other sources such as family members and advocates
speak on their behalf. But they don’t get to speak for themselves. Their
voices are missing from news coverage focused on their stories.
71
STORY WITHOUT STEREOTYPE
“It is particularly true of people with intellectual disabilities that

they are not interviewed because people think they cannot under-
stand, and that is not true,” says Shapiro.1
“Someone with an intellectual disability can be very wise and very

introspective and they can be thoughtful – those are all things as a
journalist that you want in a source. You want people who reflect and
think about things deeply,” Shapiro says. “People with intellectual
disabilities and other people who are marginalized often spend a lot
of time thinking about the results of being on the margins. They have
something important to say.”
Shapiro is careful to spend time with sources with an intellectual dis-

ability before turning on his audio recorder. He wants to get to know
sources, and to have sources get to know him, and to ensure that
sources understand their words will be shared with a wide audience.
In one such case, Shapiro traveled to Pennsylvania to interview
Pauline, a woman with intellectual disabilities who had been sexually
assaulted by a member of the foster family with whom she lived.
“For the first 40 minutes that we spoke, I didn’t turn the tape
recorder on,” Shapiro recalls. “I spent time getting to know her and
her me. I wanted to make sure that she understood that people
would hear her story on the radio and our website.”
Pauline’s response was that yes, she understood, and that she was
speaking to Shapiro because she wanted to help other women like her.
She wanted to share her story to help others. The result was a story
that is included in the 2018 award-winning NPR series “Abused and
Betrayed.”
The series told the story of sexual abuse of people with intellec-
tual disabilities from points of view both personal and policy cen-
tered. People with intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted at a
rate seven times higher than people without disabilities, the series
reported. Also, Shapiro’s reporting found, it is a crime that often goes
unrecognized and unpunished.
Because of his reporting, state governments, communities and
advocates proposed changes to prevent abuse. In Texas, a new law
gave people with intellectual disabilities quick access to a sexual
72
assault examination, without first needing approval from a guardian.

In some cases, Shapiro’s reporting showed, assaults are committed by
those guardians or family. In Massachusetts, a registry was created of
abusive caregivers. In Pennsylvania, people with intellectual disabili-
ties were given expanded rights to testify in court.
Shapiro knew from the start of the “Abused and Betrayed” series
that people with intellectual disabilities would be integral to the sto-
ries. That made reporting each story a bit harder, he notes, since some
individuals with intellectual disabilities can’t speak clearly, others
can’t grasp that they are being interviewed for publication and others
have parents or guardians who may not want them to speak out. But
Shapiro persisted, knowing there were sources able and eager to speak
on their own behalf.
One of my rules was I was going to treat them like any other person
I interviewed. I would assume they had something to say and treat
what they said with value. I wanted them included in a story about
abuse of people with intellectual disabilities.
pause & consider

Listen to Shapiro’s piece “In Their Own Words” at https://n.
pr/3m75TKN. How many times have you heard a story like
this, exclusively featuring a group of people from whom
we usually don’t hear directly? Discuss the effect of this
segment.
THE NATURE OF STEREOTYPES

Stories full of stereotypes may be easy to write, but they are rarely
as surprising or as vivid as those filled with the messy, complicated
details of real people. They often damage the people who are being
stereotyped too. Stereotyping is the use of beliefs about the attributes
of a group to judge an individual member of that group.2
In 1922, Walter Lippmann, a journalist and cofounder of New
Republic magazine, first used the word stereotype, a printer’s term
73
for making a mold of composed type, as a social scientific concept.

The first chapter of his book Public Opinion was titled “The World
Outside and the Pictures in Our Heads.” Lippmann wrote that people
don’t respond to reality (the world outside) but to mental pictures –
those pictures in our heads that he called “fiction.”3 Lippman wrote
that “we tend to perceive that which has been picked out in the form
stereotyped for us by our culture.” The idea that culture creates the
stereotype and not the individual is an important point we will get
back to in a moment.
Paul Martin Lester asserts that the concept of culturism, which he
defines below, is one reason that news outlets (I would particularly note
U.S. news outlets) and their journalists have not historically fully and
deeply covered certain geographical areas and the people who live there.
Lester writes,4
Most media experts come up with several reasons why the media
stereotype: advertisers that demand quickly interpreted shortcut
pictures, lazy or highly pressured reporters who do not take or have
the time to explore issues within their multifaceted and complex
contexts, limited diversity in news organizations, journalists’
presumptions that readers and viewers only accept images of
diverse members within a limited range of content categories,
and – regrettably and often denied – culturism. Culturism is a term
that describes the belief that one cultural group – whether based
on ethnicity, economics, education, etc. – is somehow better or
worse than some other cultural group. Culturism may explain why
mainstream media are slow to cover human catastrophes in remote
sections of the world such as Rwanda, Somalia and South-Central Los
Angeles.
Stereotypes Can Simplify
People create those mental pictures, or stereotypes, to simplify

perception and thinking processes. Lippmann noted that a charac-
teristic of a stereotype is that it is in one’s head before a person can
critically think about it. “We are told about the world before we see
it,” he wrote.5 “We imagine most things before we experience them.
And those preconceptions, unless education has made us acutely
aware, govern deeply the whole process of perception.”
74
Stereotypes may be seen as a kind of role schema, which was dis-

cussed in Chapter 3. Specifically, stereotypes can be thought of as a par-
ticular type of role schema “that organizes one’s prior knowledge and
expectations about other people who fall into certain socially defined
categories.”6 Stereotypes mean that certain behaviors are expected of
people based on their age, religion, education or other factors. Other
types of schemas, such as event or person schemas, guide perception
and memory and other thinking-based judgments. But role schemas
influence emotions and behavior. Fiske and Taylor state:
To put it another way, deciding that some people have adopted

the role of gang members does more than help you to notice and
remember that they wear black leather jackets and drive motorcycles.
It helps you decide how you feel about them.7
Scholar Perry Hinton emphasizes the cultural, or social, aspects of

how our stereotypes emerge and form.8
While Lippmann used the term ‘stereotype’ familiar to him from

newspaper printing, he saw it as a cultural phenomenon: ‘we tend to
perceive that which has been picked out in the form stereotyped for
us by our culture’ (Lippmann, 1922 81; my italics), writes Hinton. “In
Lippmann’s view it is the culture that is creating the stereotype, not
the individual.”
Stereotypes Are Necessary
Despite their bad reputation, stereotypes are integral to the way our
minds process information. Some basic attributes of stereotypes are
as follows:
1. Pervasiveness. All of us hold stereotypes. No one is free from ste-

reotyping others. Stereotyping is as much a part of us as touching
or tasting. We like to stereotype because it makes us feel better
about ourselves and groups we belong to (an ingroup) compared
to other groups (outgroups).
2. Predictability. Stereotypes help people make sense of the world.
They provide people with a way to quickly categorize others.
Categorizing a member of one group is efficient, as then the
75
same categorization is applied to all group members. “Stereo-

types provide us with a handy, albeit imperfect, basis on which to
predict the behavior of individuals in the absence of any informa-
tion about those individuals other than their membership in some
group.”9
3. Positives. Stereotypes are not automatically negative. They can
be positive, as in “Midwesterners are so friendly!” Problems arise
when, instead of generalizing about a group, people exaggerate or
oversimplify. They fail to individualize the traits of the group. They
do not customize the information to the unique situation. Then
they are at risk of indicting entire groups of people. Even positive
stereotypes place limits on the people they reference; not every
Midwesterner is nice or wants to be known that way. (Trust me on
this one.)
4. Partly true. Stereotypes do often hold an element of truth. Stereo-
types evolve because they stem from behaviors or characteristics
that are often shared by people in a group. They are generaliza-
tions that on average tend to be true, but not always. How ste-
reotypes affect the behavior of people toward one another is what
really matters. The danger of stereotypes lies in the application of a
generalization to an individual case. “Stereotypes matter because
they have consequences.”10
Stereotypes Can Be Unconscious
Perhaps the most troublesome stereotypes are those we don’t know

we possess. An explosion of research in recent years explores both
the explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) associations at
play when it comes to our attitudes about others. We are aware of
explicit stereotypes; for example, an individual may recognize he has
a bias against people from a particular region of the country, believ-
ing they are ignorant or lazy even though he has no knowledge of
their work ethic or intellect. Explicit stereotypes are the biases that
you know you have. Conversely, implicit stereotypes are sneak-
ier. They affect our attitudes and behavior without our immediate
realization.
Project Implicit is a Harvard-based nonprofit specializing in edu-
cation and data collection on the thoughts and feelings beyond our
76
conscious awareness and control. Project Implicit researchers define

implicit and explicit stereotypes this way:
Stereotypes are the belief that most members of a group have some
characteristic. Some examples of stereotypes are the belief that
women are nurturing or the belief that police officers like donuts. An
explicit stereotype is the kind that you deliberately think about and
report. An implicit stereotype is one that is relatively inaccessible to
conscious awareness and/or control. Even if you say that men and
women are equally good at math, it is possible that you associate
math more strongly with men without being actively aware of it.
In this case we would say that you have an implicit math + men
stereotype.11
For example, someone might say she is not prejudiced toward lesbians
(an explicit attitude) but act in a manner that indicates she is (reflecting
her implicit attitude). In one study, the higher people tested on having
unconscious negative feelings toward lesbians, the more socially distant
they acted when alone with a woman whom they thought was gay. They
smiled less, made less eye contact, had more tense body posture, were
less friendly overall and showed less interest in conversation with a les-
bian than with a heterosexual in the same setting.12
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one measure of these
thought and feelings beyond our conscious awareness and control,
and it has gained worldwide attention. However, the test stability is
low; that means your scores on the same test taken weeks apart may
be different. Also, the association between the scores on the IAT and
actual discriminatory behavior is weak.13
Analyses conclude that the IAT is useful for predicting, on aver-
age, how a group of people will respond, such as workers at a com-
pany. It is not predictive of how individuals will behave, however.14
Implicit biases and the IAT have received a lot of attention in the
more than 20 years since implicit biases were introduced, and you
may have learned about them or taken a test or two through the proj-
ect. Do not assume you are forever going to be prejudiced toward
people who are elderly, or toward a certain ethnicity, based on your
IAT results. The results are but one measure of your stereotypes
toward others unlike yourself.
77
JOURNALISTIC CONSEQUENCES OF STEREOTYPES

Some stereotypes justify systems of discrimination, such as sys-
tems based on racial, sexual, disability or age discrimination, note
researchers John T. Jost and David L. Hamilton in their writing
on stereotypes in our culture. “Stereotypes are used – implicitly
and explicitly – to . . . imbue existing forms of social arrangements
with meaning and legitimacy; they preserve and bolster the status
quo.”15 The researchers summarize the impact of stereotypes on
thinking; a partial list is included in the left column of Exhibit 4.1.16
I have translated the effects into journalistic practice in the right
column.
To combat stereotypes requires extra time and effort on the part
of journalists, and time is a scarce resource in today’s newsrooms.
The more multitasking we are doing, the more our thinking relies on
stereotypes.17 The more so-called cognitive load or processing load
a reporter is under – juggling phone calls to police and prosecutors,
helping edit the video and recording voiceovers, talking with an edi-
tor to move the story higher in the broadcast – the more a reporter
will rely on those mental pictures as opposed to carefully consider-
ing anti-stereotypical information. In a world in which journalists are
increasingly called on to fill multiple roles and make do with shrinking
resources, it is especially important to be wary of a reliance on stereo-
types for mental shortcuts.
Visual Images Can Promote Harmful Stereotypes

“The list is endless and always injurious,” writes Paul Martin
Lester in Images and Stereotypes.18
African Americans play sports. Latinos are gang members.

Native Americans are alcoholics. Wheelchair-using individuals
are helpless. Gays are effeminate. Lesbians wear their hair short.
Older adults need constant care. Anglos are racists or rednecks.
Homeless people are drug addicts. These and other stereotypes
are perpetuated by visual messages presented in print, television,
motion pictures, and computers – the media.
78
EXHIBIT 4.1 HOW STEREOTYPES INFLUENCE

REPORTING
Stereotypes Tend To In Journalistic Terms, That Means:

...
Direct people’s When reporting on a murder in a low-income neighborhood,
attention to certain the reporter focuses on the stereotypical run-down houses and
information and graffiti, not the organic food in the witness’ kitchen and the
exclude other presidential biographies on the bookshelf.
information.
Color the When met with ambiguous information, the reporter
interpretation of the interprets it in line with her stereotype. So the halting English
information. of the witness, a new immigrant, is seen as a sign of low
intelligence, not of fresh arrival to a new land and language.
Play a role in eliciting She’s so sure the witness is unintelligent that the reporter
from others the very speaks to her slowly and loudly, asking simple, close-ended
behavior that confirms questions that could only elicit a “yes” or a “no.” She is left with
biased expectations. a notebook of single-word answers, confirming her biased
expectation that the witness isn’t all that bright or thoughtful.
Influence the way Writing up her notes at her laptop, the reporter most easily
that information is remembers the information that doesn’t fit her stereotypic
remembered. portrayal. “What were those presidential biographies doing
there?” The props that were out of place in her mental picture
required extra thinking that made the information lodge in
her memory. This can work in a journalist’s favor, helping the
reporter more easily recall fresh or incongruent information –
but only if the reporter has time to think about the
discrepancy.19 And time is in short supply in most newsrooms.
Serve as hypotheses The reporter’s angle is about a poor neighborhood held
that are tested and hostage to yet another murder in a slew of gang killings.
disproportionately While writing her lead, the reporter gets the crime data she’s
favored in the been waiting for; the murder is the second in 18 months for
interpretation of new the neighborhood – not good, but hardly a “slew,” either.
information. Unwilling to see the data as disproving her hypothesis, the
reporter instead sticks with the bloodbath angle and attributes
the 18-month “lull” in murders to a corresponding rise in
burglaries and robberies.
Source: Items in column 1 are adapted from Jost and Hamilton, 2005.
79
STEREOTYPES: JOURNALISTS AND SOURCES

The way in which journalists portray news sources can contribute to
the public’s understanding and opinion about whole groups of peo-
ple in our society. In turn, news sources, particularly officials and
organized groups, also communicate to the public through the news
media. Sources’ messages, delivered through quotes and news events,
from rallies and meetings to campaigns and conventions, can project
stereotypes to the public.
When Journalists Stereotype Sources
Examples abound of news media coverage that furthers societal

stereotypes of groups of people in our society. For example, local
television newscasts have overrepresented African Americans as per-
petrators and underrepresented Latino victims when the amount of
news coverage is compared to actual crime statistics.20
Entertainment and news media have presented a distorted por-
trayal of people with mental illness as dangerous, unpredictable and
prone to criminality. This portrayal results in stigma and discrimi-
nation toward people with mental illness.21 Research has shown that
shallow news media representations of people living with AIDS also
negatively influence audience perceptions.22
Awareness of Socioeconomic Biases

Steve Gunn, a longtime journalist and former Director of Stra-
tegic Products and Audience Development at The Charlotte
Observer, notes that young journalists in particular need to
be aware of their socioeconomic stereotypes and biases:
I don’t see a lot with racial stereotypes that much, but class
discrimination or class stereotypes is a very interesting thing . . . I
see with a lot of young people . . . they feel like they are entitled
and therefore they are not as sympathetic to people who maybe
are not as high up the ladder as they are.23
80
Journalists shortchange the role of women in sports, countless

examples indicate. The stereotype that women’s athletics is not as
demanding or exciting as men’s athletics predominates society, and
journalism coverage reflects that. The Tucker Center for Research
on Girls & Women in Sport at the University of Minnesota states24
that “Forty percent of all sports participants are female, yet women’s
sports receive only 4% of all sport media coverage and female athletes
are much more likely than male athletes to be portrayed in sexually
provocative poses.”
Other studies have found the focus in women’s sports cover-
age is on attractiveness and femininity. Data collected as part of
a 25-year longitudinal analysis25 of televised coverage of women’s
sports found that while over time, girls’ and women’s sports have
been included in coverage and that it is less denigrating and more
respectful, the coverage is now lackluster. The result is what the
researchers call “gender-bland sexism” that is dutiful, respectful
and uninspired.
In another example, news media coverage of female corporate
executives still carries with it negative stereotypes about women
and their abilities. For example, when Carly Fiorina was named chief
executive of global technology giant Hewlett-Packard, the coverage
included sexist references that her male counterparts likely didn’t suf-
fer. According to one analysis26 of media coverage:
U.S. News & World Report referred to her as a “former receptionist”

and the “consummate corporate cheerleader.” Fortune described
her as “affable and stylish, dressed in a brown Armani pantsuit,”
commenting further that Fiorina “seems as comfortable with power
as any woman could be.”
The Fortune piece concluded with “Expect to see her on the covers of
Fortune, Business Week, and Forbes – heck, maybe she’ll even make
InStyle.”
The stereotypes that journalists may have about a person or group
can prevent them from tapping those individuals as sources. That’s
a missed opportunity, and it’s neglecting part of the job, which is to
tell the public about entire communities, not just selected parts of
society.
81
WHEN SOURCES STEREOTYPE OTHER GROUPS

News sources are no different from journalists in their cognitive
habit of stereotyping others. But news sources don’t have professional
training as journalists do. They may make no effort to avoid making
intentionally biased comments, or they may make biased comments
unintentionally. Journalists must understand and clarify the informa-
tion from sources that hint (or perhaps reek) of unfair stereotyping.
When sources speak in stereotypes, reporters and editors have
decisions to make. If the quoted comments are from a brief person-
on-the-street interview, journalists are likely inclined to dismiss the
comments outright as prejudicial and move on to other sources, but
if the source is a politician, journalists may scramble to immediately
publish the offensive language.
Sometimes, a source’s comments are laced with stereotypes and
it’s unclear whether the source is conscious about how ugly the gen-
eralizations are; in these instances, journalists should probe. Instead
of accepting a source’s general bashing of an entire category of people,
do the following:
• Ask follow-up questions that aim at the specific and

detailed.
• Seek to understand the context in which the source is
framing the comments.
• Unpack the statements; push the source to clarify meaning.
The quotes may still be highly prejudicial, but a journalist
who has ferreted out the specific intent and, often,
background of the source can then forcefully and clearly
characterize the source and his, her or their comments
without fear of misstating a position.
Stereotypes depend heavily on who is speaking, about whom they

are speaking, the place in the world the source is from and the his-
torical time frame being referenced.27 For example, suppose a source,
“Joe,” declares that Blacks are more violent than whites. Is the source
himself a Black man from the South or a white businessman? Are the
comments set in contemporary society? David Schneider in The Psy-
chology of Stereotyping writes:
82
When Joe says that blacks are more violent than whites, he may
mean, but not bother to say, that this stereotype applies only to
unemployed and undereducated black males, and even then only
to a minority under certain circumstances (say, black males of this
description who are engaged in gang activity). In his own mind, he
may be quite clear that he does not mean to say that black lawyers
and truck drivers are more prone to violence than their white
counterparts.28
Some probing questions for Joe: How does he characterize violence?

Does he mean strictly physical assault against strangers or aggression
toward family members too? What are his criteria for violence? What
specific group of Black men does he have in mind? And what are his
perceptions of that group?
Reporters should avoid assuming that they understand toward
whom the stereotype is aimed, which group of people and the spe-
cific context that the average Joe source has in mind. The report-
er’s concept of the group referenced, the time frame or the
setting being referenced might be very different from that of a
source. Assumptions on the part of reporters that they and their
sources were thinking of the same context for a given comment
can lead to calls and emails from irate sources charging, “I was
misquoted!”
When Sources Stereotype Journalists
The public possesses strong stereotypes about journalists that may act
as barriers to journalists when they are pursuing stories. These stereo-
Types may frustrate journalists’ efforts to land an interview or gain
access to citizens.
As Exhibits 4.2 and 4.3 indicate, news consumers have strong feel-
ings about journalists’ accuracy and professionalism. None of these
categories of criticism directly state that “journalists stereotype a lot.”
But they do show a general wariness and negative view about how
news outlets favor one political agenda over another. An individual
journalist may be professional, focused on accuracy and represent a
respected news outlet, but they still is faced with these stereotypi-
cal criticisms of the press that they must overcome. Fortunately,
83
60 percent of respondents29 indicated they did believe journalists

could set aside personal views and opinions when reporting on events.
But – that means 4 in 10 don’t think that.
Depending on the reporting situation, the expectations of jour-
nalists about how they will be perceived by sources can affect how
journalists behave. (Remember the self-fulfilling prophecy from
Chapter 3.) Scholarship on communicating across cultures notes that
if someone expects to be ignored or dismissed due to others’ preju-
dices, the person may act in self-defeating ways.30 Journalists report
across cultures. Self-defeating behavior on the part of a journalist may
cause that journalist to fail to make a second attempt at interviewing a
hostile source or not press for an answer out of certainty that sources
won’t give a reporter a straight answer anyway.
EXHIBIT 4.2 MOST AMERICANS

THINK JOURNALISTS CAN SET ASIDE
THEIR VIEWS31
Most Americans think journalists can

set aside their views when reporting
% of U.S. adults who say__for journalists to fully set
aside their own views and opinions when reporting on
an issue or event
It is not It is
possible possible
39% 60%
Note: Respondents who did not give an answer are not shown.
Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Feb. 18-March 2, 2020.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER
84
EXHIBIT 4.3 AMERICANS LARGELY BLAME

OUTLETS, NOT JOURNALISTS FOR UNFAIR
COVERAGE32
Americans largely blame news outlets,
not journalists, for unfair coverage ...
Among those who say news coverage tends to favor one
side, % who say it is mostly because of the ...
No answer 1%
Journalists
16%
News
organizations
83%
... and think political agendas get in the

way of coverage being fair
Among those who say news coverage tends to favor one
side, % who think__most commonly gets in the way of
news organizations treating all sides fairly
Political views
66%
or agenda
Financial interests 20
Poor journalistic
8
practices
Insufficient time
6
and resources
Source: Survey of U.S. adults conducted Feb. 18-March 2, 2020.
PEW RESEARCH CENTER
85
Teresa Puente, founder of Latina Voices, a website of stories by or

about Latinas, has had to grapple with that sense that sources
wouldn’t talk to someone like her because of her ethnic background.
When working at a small paper in California, Puente was assigned to
cover an anti-immigration rally as a general assignment story to run
the next day. Puente is not an immigrant but a third-generation Mex-
ican American. She tells about33 covering that event and feeling that
sources assumed she was strongly pro-immigration.
On Assignment
My whole career, people look at me and make assump-
tions about me. I had to go into this crowd of people
who were against immigration and in I walk – a brown
woman with a reporter’s badge. I am assuming they will
assume what my beliefs are. They were looking at me
probably with assumptions, and I was looking at them
with assumptions. I assumed they were racist.
That was a time I thought, OK, I have to put aside what-
ever my personal thoughts are and be a reporter. I had
to put aside my assumptions and my worries about their
assumptions. I had to do my best to ask the questions and
interview them like I would any other sources. I did have
to separate my personal feelings on the topic. That was
very difficult to do. A daily story ran in the paper the next
day. I didn’t get any complaints, so I assume it was fair.
pause & consider

Think about a time when people made assumptions about
you. What was the assumption? Was there a reaction or
consequence because of the assumption? When working
as a journalist, how can you use that feeling of frustration
over being categorized to avoid doing the same to sources?
Share your ideas with a peer.
86
MANAGING STEREOTYPES
With extra effort, it is possible to dismantle the stereotypes we hold
about others. At a minimum, changing stereotypes requires time,
attention and effort. But we don’t have to settle for automatic stereo-
typing as a consequence of everyday thinking or everyday reporting.
A few initial steps to help combat one’s natural tendency to stereotype
are as follows:
1. Individualize: The act of seeking out information that is particular

to an individual makes it easier to recognize the uniqueness of that
person and to see the person as something more than a member
of a particular group.34
2. Self-analyze: The extent to which you readily accept negative ste-
reotypes is linked to your personality. Knowing yourself will help
you know how carefully you need to vet your work for stereo-
types. People who are highly cognitive (who like to think a lot) are
less likely to stereotype.35 Mindfulness is helpful.
Another way to help assess and adjust your attitude toward others is
to figure out your social dominance orientation.36 The Social Domi-
nance Orientation Scale describes a general attitude toward others,
toward social groups and one’s regard for the implicit value of various
groups. You can find the scale to take the short survey on the last
page of this scholarly article: https://bit.ly/376NVTt. The scale mea-
sures the extent to which people desire their own social ingroup to
dominate and be superior to outgroups or social groups to which they
do not belong. It is a general attitudinal orientation toward relations
between groups: Should they be equal or hierarchical? Should some
groups be superior and others inferior?
This orientation also measures the extent to which an individ-
ual believes in policies and structures that support sexism, racism,
nationalism, cultural elitism, liberalism and conservatism, among
other ideologies. It’s important to remember that this orientation,
while relevant to an individual’s personality, is designed to illustrate
that in any given society, there are different kinds of people who have
different roles and different effects on each other.37 Also remember
that this is simply one small measure of one’s thinking. It is meant to
be used as a tool that invites you to think about how you view others
and social hierarchies.
87
The journalist Walter Lippmann encouraged self-awareness to

know the sources of our stereotypes. He urged easy modification of
the ways in which we categorize others:
If our philosophy tells us that each man is only a small part of the world,
that his intelligence catches at best only phases and aspects in a coarse
net of ideas, then, when we use our stereotypes, we tend to know that
they are only stereotypes, to hold them lightly, to modify them gladly.
We tend, also, to realize more and more clearly when our ideas started,
where they started, how they came to us, why we accepted them.38
Replacing Our Stereotypes
Rewiring our stereotypes, especially the negative ones, and replac-

ing them with more neutral responses is like breaking a bad habit. It
requires awareness of the bias, motivation to correct it and control
over the specific behavior.39 The elimination of a bad habit requires
essentially the same steps as the formation of a habit. Researchers out-
line these steps40:
1. Decide to stop the old behavior. In this case, negative stereotyping.

2. Remember your resolution. Type a note into your mobile phone.
Program it into your virtual calendar for a reminder alarm every
day at lunch. Put an orange key on your keychain as a prompt to
“undo” the stereotype.
3. Engage a rival response. Each time you realize you are thinking of
a negative stereotype, think about your personal beliefs toward
negative stereotyping. You are essentially trying to train your mind
so that when the automatic negative stereotype arises, you engage
a rival response that is more neutral.
So if perhaps you hold a stereotype that low-income white peo-
ple are racist or ignorant, think instead about this demographic
group in terms of subsets: Low-income white people who are
college-educated, who are in interracial relationships or who are
engaged in social justice work. As your rival response, it may also
help to have in mind an outstanding person who is from the group
about which you hold a negative bias.
4. Don’t give up. You won’t be free of nasty stereotypes overnight,
and you’ll also fail on occasion in your efforts. Keeping trying.
88
Commit and recommit to substitute neutral categories for negative

ones. The more success you have at asserting your new attitude,
the more natural it will become. We’ve all quit something: smok-
ing, caffeine, being chronically late, a loser boyfriend or girlfriend.
It takes daily recommitment.
In the 21st-century digital culture in which we live, we can broaden

our social network easily via social media connections to others
unlike us, by watching documentaries about cultural groups with
which we have little to no interaction and by signing up for news-
letters to educate us about social groups, to name a few ways. We
have options to construct social environments than are more broad
and far-reaching, especially including others not like ourselves. Like-
wise, this same digital culture can isolate us in a filter bubble that
only serves to offer us like-minded rhetoric, agreeable news and
information, and familiar, homogeneous social connections. Within
any social media bubble, our stereotypical representations of others
remain unchallenged.
pause & consider

How diverse is your social network, both in person and
online? Do an audit of your friendships and meaningful rela-
tionships with people unlike you, and seek to diversify your
relationships based on the results of that informal audit.
Here’s a couple short videos to watch regarding this prompt:
https://nyti.ms/3oHUhP2 and https://nyti.ms/3oFfiK9.
EMPATHY IS ESSENTIAL
Diversity education has been shown to reduce prejudices and stereo-
types in those who are interested in social and political equality for
all people.41 Diversity education is based in part on a piece of advice
you’ve probably often heard: “Put yourself in the other person’s shoes.”
It’s called empathy. Empathy helps a journalist consider stories from
all sides.
89
The American Press Institute’s excellent “Strategy Studies”

series takes a look at how to employ empathy in reporting, par-
ticularly for communities of people that have been the objects of
news coverage that stereotypes, ignores or misunderstands them.
The overview of the study applies the three key elements of empa-
thy to journalism42:
A reporter can employ cognitive empathy to approach an

underserved community, using techniques that help him understand
people with opposing views and from different backgrounds.
Reporters can also practice behavioral empathy by using verbal and

nonverbal signals to show they’re working to understand another
person’s feelings and ideas. These signals can be simple, like putting
your pen down to let someone cry or looking into his eyes as he
speaks.
The third kind of empathy, affective empathy, makes many journalists

uncomfortable. They believe sharing a source’s emotions is a sign
they’ve gotten too close and jeopardized their impartiality . . . That’s
the difference between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy involves
feeling compassion, sorrow or pity for another person’s experiences;
empathy is putting yourself in the shoes of another by understanding
his point of view.
EXHIBIT 4.4 WAYS TO INCORPORATE EMPATHETIC

TECHNIQUES IN YOUR REPORTING
Spend time researching an unfamiliar community before you do your

first interview. Ask questions with an awareness that there is a lot you don’t
know.
Tell your sources up front what story you’re working on and what you’ll do
with what they tell you.
Meet sources in person, where they live, play or work.
Tell sources a little bit about yourself and let them get comfortable. See what
happens if they lead the conversation.
Reframe questions to get at a source’s motivations and emotions.
90
Spend more time with sources when doing tough stories. Instead of one or
two sit-down interviews, embed yourself with them during a typical day,
even if it’s just for a few hours.
On daily stories, try to find small ways to employ empathy. Look at the per-
son you’re interviewing and adjust your body language to show you’re listen-
ing. Reflect what you hear instead of focusing only on note-taking.
Try to break down an ongoing issue by covering the “arc of the story.” Spend
time listening to concerns and questions of community members and address
them in your stories.
Set aside time each week to follow up with sources. Trust comes from time
spent together.
Source: Derived from Bui, 2018.43
Taking the perspective of people unlike yourself, and looking at the

world through their eyes, can significantly reduce bias and nega-
tive stereotyping that stems from placing people into categories and
groups.44 Some reporters even choose to live for a time in the neigh-
borhood of their beat to better understand the community, notes Rick
Hirsch, now interim executive editor of the Miami Herald:
One of the things we struggle with as a news organization is that so

often, we bring people from outside to cover communities they don’t
know. So everything is new and news to them. But . . . [if] you live in
a neighborhood, [then] you understand things in a different way than
if you just parachute in. The most successful community reporters are
ones that really know their neighborhoods well.
Just because it’s boring to you doesn’t mean it’s not important to
people in the neighborhood. Something that is new or changing in
a neighborhood can mean a lot to that neighborhood. It’s common
for people to think, “What are they getting so upset about?” And if
you don’t know the answer to that question, then there’s probably
more reporting to do, because people care a lot about home. People
protect home. And things that they think threaten [home] are really,
really newsworthy in the local, local sense. You may not care about it
on the other side of town, but in your neighborhood, it matters.
Walking in someone else’s shoes is a cliché, but some of the best

reporters I’ve worked with have done just that.45
91
1. Listen to this story by Kat Chow of the NPR Code Switch team. It is
about Asian women who have plastic surgery to remove their dou-
ble eyelid. Chow worked to explore assumptions that the women
desired to appear more white. Find the story here: https://www.
npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/11/17/363841262/is-beauty-
in-the-eye-lid-of-the-beholder. Discuss the story in small groups.
2. Complete one of the exercises at UnderstandingPrejudice.org
(www.understandingprejudice.org/demos). The exercises include
a questionnaire to assess how mixed one’s beliefs are regarding
women and equality (the ambivalent sexism inventory), a quiz
about Native Americans and an interactive presentation to illustrate
how segregation occurs.
a. After completing one of the exercises, write about your
results and your reaction to them.
b. In your response, consider how your attitude on the given
topic might affect your journalism. Consider ways to combat
any negative effects of that attitude on your work.
3. The excerpt below is from Susan Sontag’s “The Double Standard
of Aging,” which ran in the September 23, 1972, Saturday Review.
The article explores the stereotypes of beauty in U.S. culture and
how aging affects perceptions about women’s beauty:
To be a woman is to be an actress. Being feminine is a kind

of theater, with its appropriate costumes, décor, lighting and
stylized gestures. From early childhood on, girls are trained
to care in a pathologically exaggerated way about their
appearance. . . . And a woman who spends literally most of
her time caring for, and making purchases to flatter, her phys-
ical appearance is not regarded in this society as what she is:
a kind of moral idiot. She is thought to be quite normal and is
envied by other women whose time is mostly used up at jobs
or caring for large families. . . . Women are more vain than
men because of the relentless pressure on women to maintain
their appearance to a certain high standard.46
a. Using Sontag’s comments as inspiration, shoot a video or compile

a slideshow of stereotypical expressions of beauty in America as
well as images that challenge those stereotypical expressions.
b. Since Sontag wrote this article decades ago, consider whether
her comments on vanity and standards of appearance now
apply to men in the United States as well.
92
c. You might consider which, if any, particular socioeconomic

groups are being referenced in the excerpt and how
her comments are specific to aging in America. Let your
conclusions be evident in your video or slideshow.
d. Post your multimedia package online and invite user comments.
4. Identify an example of news coverage that stereotypes a group of
people and briefly respond to the following:
a. Define the stereotype.
b. Explain how the coverage perpetuates the stereotype.
c. Consider whether culturism may be at work in the text or
image: Does the coverage depict a specific cultural group as
better or worse than others in the United States? How so?
What groups are being compared?
d. Propose a different way to cover the same news event or
subject without stereotyping.
FOR REVIEW
• List at least four ways in which stereotyping can

influence journalistic practice.
• Formulate a rival response to a stereotype you hold.
• Role-play how a journalist might respond when
a source negatively stereotypes others during an
interview.
NOTES
1 Joseph Shapiro, personal interview with author, 10/23/2020.
2 Banaji, M.R., & Greenwald, A.G. (1994). “Implicit Stereotyping and Prej-
udice.” In: M.P. Zanna and J.M. Olson, eds. The Psychology of Prejudice:
The Ontario Symposium, Vol. 7, pp. 55–76. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, p. 58.
3 Lippmann, W. (1922). Public Opinion. New York: Macmillan, p. 12.
4 Lester, P.M. (1997). “Images and Stereotypes.” In: E.D. Cohen & D. Elliott,
eds. Journalism Ethics: A Reference Handbook, Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-
CLIO, pp. 70–71.
5 Lippmann, p. 90.
6 Fiske, S.T., & Taylor, S.E. (1984). Social Cognition. New York: Random
House, p. 160.
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94
95
96
5
Understanding Culture,
Understanding
Sources
How Social Groups Serve as
Lenses for Looking at the World
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To be able to define culture, cultural beliefs, values and norms.

• To understand the influence of standpoint on journalism.
• To recognize how the concept of ingroups and outgroups applies to sources
and reporting.
• To learn strategies for reporting across cultures.
CHANGING PERCEPTIONS
About a dozen years ago, Eric Woodyard, who is now a reporter for
ESPN, was a student journalist and thrilled to get a freelance report-
ing assignment from the local newspaper’s sports editor. His job was
to cover a Saturday morning high-school cross-country running meet
and file a story right after the event. Woodyard didn’t know anything
about cross country and had never been to such an event. “I didn’t
know what was going on, and the day editor didn’t communicate with
me on what to expect,” he says.1
Woodyard recalls being the only person of color at the event and
one who was wrongly dressed to walk around a wet field of grass.
97
U N D E R S TA N D I N G C U LT U R E A N D S O U R C E S
A cross-country meet doesn’t have a scoreboard, a media box, a ref-

eree in a striped shirt or anyone with “coach” on the back of a jacket.
It is a lot of people lined up along unmarked running paths to cheer
as runners pass by on trails that wind through forests or meadows.
Woodyard had no idea whom to talk to or how to talk to those pres-
ent. Frustrated and uncomfortable, he left the meet without a story.
The result of that Saturday morning reporting assignment was a
clash of cultures that left the newspaper without a story, and Woody-
ard off the list of freelancers for the paper, but also with an experience
from which he learned.
“Lessons like those taught me that sometimes I’ll be in situations

like that, and I will have to go,” said Woodyard. “I’ve learned I will
have to cover a tennis match in a place with all white people and
Confederate flags on the cars. I’m not the story, and I have to tell the
story that’s there, and put the facts first.”
As a Black man in America, Woodyard notices different things than

other reporters.
“There are not a lot of Black reporters,” says Woodyard, 32. “We
bring a unique perspective. We have to reach a point in journalism
where we can explain fully the Black experience to our audiences.”
A lack of diversity in the journalism profession means that too
many reporters have blind spots when it comes to covering the
African American experience in the United States, Woodyard asserts.
(See Exhibit 5.1 for details on the racial, ethnic and gender diversity
in U.S. newsrooms.)
“Diversity in journalism is a problem; so many people at the top cannot

relate to our truth. If there were more African-Americans in those news
leadership roles, it would help, because how can we tell (audiences)
about something we don’t understand?” asked Woodyard, referring to
the majority-white news outlets in the United States today. “When it is
a situation of people (we cover) not being understood, then we need
more minorities to be in those decision-making roles.”
Woodyard, who covers the NBA, is now based in Chicago. He’s from
Flint, Michigan, and he hasn’t forgotten his hometown or his roots.
His down-to-earth authenticity is what helps him build rapport with
98
all manner of sources, and to perhaps see things in ways that other
reporters may not.
“The same way I speak to you is the same way I speak to Lebron
James,” says Woodyard.
My advice to young reporters is don’t try to overdo it, or put a

certain accent in your voice. I’m not going to overdo it or talk super
proper or be someone that’s not me. People can see right through
that and they won’t trust you. Don’t think because you’re Black you
can walk in a room and say, “What up homeboy?” It’s not like that.
It’s a balance of being yourself and being a professional.
In short, he says, “Be authentic to yourself.”

Woodyard says that he goes into every situation ready to learn.
Even when I go into interviews, I have a set list of questions but I

might have to go off the grid based on what the source says. You
have to be really observant and listen. It’s not my story, it’s his story.
And it’s always about fact checking and being a journalist at heart.
UNDERSTANDING CULTURE
Culture is a learned set of shared interpretations about the world.
As noted in Chapter 1, culture describes socially transmitted behav-
ior patterns that occur in a fairly large group of people. People learn
about culture through interactions with family, friends, teachers and
others in their community.2 Culture isn’t just about a race or eth-
nicity. Groups of people organized around important and constant
commonalities create cultures, too. Culture can be about income, as
in a culture of poverty or middle-class or affluent culture. It can be
about sexual orientation, as in a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or
queer (LGBTQ) culture. It can be organized around religion, as in a
Mormon or Amish culture, or around a strongly-held political belief.
Culture has lasting effects and is a serious, often stable presence in
someone’s life as opposed to a transient affiliation for a brief period,
such as a teen into Goth aesthetics and music.
A culture provides its members with knowledge about how to
communicate with others and how to interpret their behaviors. Hav-
ing said that, not every member of a culture shares the same beliefs
99
and values with the same intensity. For example, a son might not be as
patriotic as his father even though they may both be military veterans.
Beliefs, values and norms form the basis for culture. Beliefs con-
cern what the world is like and what is true or false. Values involve
judgment of good and bad and what is important. Norms have to do
with appropriate behavior and expectations. Let’s take a closer look
at norms because they are the outward manifestation of beliefs and
values.3 Norms are what journalists are most likely to observe when
interviewing sources.
One should think twice before applying the norms of one person,
group or society to another. Information about the nature of
the cultural differences between societies, their roots, and their
consequences should precede judgment and action.
Intercultural scholar Geert Hofstede4
Cultural norms, or simply norms, offer directions for correct and

moral behavior. They are standards we live by, taught to us by family,
friends, teachers, religious figures and other important connections
in our lives. They set standards and expectations for behavior. Cul-
tural norms are deeply engrained in our lives, but we aren’t always
aware of the impact of norms on thinking and behavior until we come
up against other cultures’ values and beliefs. For example, one of the
norms in the culture of low-income people is that any extra money is
shared. While middle-class culture emphasizes self-sufficiency, peo-
ple living paycheck to paycheck often have an outlook that advance-
ment is impossible, so one might as well share or spend any extra
money immediately. That a person with a low income would not save
an extra $50 she lucked into but instead throw a party with the cash
or immediately lend it to a friend may seem incomprehensible to a
middle-class person. To a person on a low income it may seem cruel
to hoard extra money when family or friends could benefit from it.5
Cultural norms in America include tipping in restaurants, using
smartphones everywhere, casual attire (flip-flops, sweatpants) in pub-
lic, giving a thumbs up to indicate affirmation, being quite open with
personal details and speaking in a casual, direct manner. Those are
just a few examples.
100
pause & consider

To get you thinking about cultural norms, take this short
quiz on U.S. customs and norms: https://bit.ly/33oPSZf. Or
see if you can answer these 27 true or false questions on
cultural differences, etiquette, customs and language in
the 60-second time limit: https://bit.ly/3lgwJPa.
EXHIBIT 5.1 DIVERSITY IN U.S. NEWSROOMS 2019

Percent of women in salaried positions, online-only newsrooms: 50
Percent of all newsroom workers, both print/digital and online news-
rooms: 41.8
Percent of people of color in salaried workforce, all respondents: 21.9
Percent of people of color in salaried workforce, online-only newsrooms:
30.8
Percent of women in management, all respondents: 40
Percent of people of color in management, both print/digital and online
newsrooms: 18.8
The results summarize responses from 429 news organizations, including
267 newspapers and 65 online-only news sites (some organizations did
not specify).
News Leaders Association6
JOURNALISTS AS CULTURAL BEINGS

How do the cultures of journalists influence their reporting, and how
should it influence reporting? How can it not? As Woodyard notes, he
brings to his work his whole self – Black, male, native of Flint (where
40 percent of the population lives in poverty), first in his immediate
family to graduate college, Christian, heterosexual, lover of basketball,
straight talker and involved father to a grade school-aged son.
Woodyard did not cover the Black Lives Matter protests in the
summer of 2020, but other journalists of color did. Their coverage
brought important context, detail and meaning to the summer of
101
racial justice protests sparked by the death of George Floyd, a Black

man killed during a police arrest in Minneapolis in May 2020.
Dallas-based journalist Ashley Holt, who works for NBC, says,
There’s always this conversation about not being biased, but with so
many companies and media outlets coming out and [being] willing
to say “Black Lives Matter” and to make statements, the rules have
changed in terms of what’s biased and what’s not. These stories have
a lot to do with Black people’s humanity . . . So the lines are being
redrawn, things are changing, and I think everyone is kind of trying
to find where they fit in that.7
The Black Lives Matter protests for racial equity and social justice
raised, once again, the reality that journalists experience the world
differently based on who they are, which in turn lifted up questions
about the traditional journalistic allegiance to impartiality.
“Journalism isn’t one size fits all,” says Pulitzer Prize-winning
reporter Wesley Lowery in an article on covering racial inequality as
a Black journalist.8
Our job as journalists is to use our eyes and ears to observe the world we
live in. But the thing about our eyes and our ears is they are attached to
the rest of our bodies. And the color of those bodies frames what we see
and hear, what spaces we have access to, how the world treats us. What
that means is the journalism is going to be different.
Journalists of color across the United States felt the tension in cov-
ering the social justice protests throughout 2020. The Los Angeles
chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists held an
online panel entitled “How to Fight Racism and Not Get Fired from
Your Newsroom.”9
No journalist can be objective, as noted in Chapter 1, but the prac-
tice of journalism can strive to be rooted in fairness and accuracy,
stating the truth as fully as it is known at the time of publication and
within context. The idea that journalists check their humanity when
they clock in to work is unrealistic.
So while journalists can and arguably must show their human side
to sources, they also must leave their opinions and ideology out of
102
their work. Bringing reportorial opinions to bear on news stories isn’t

fair, and it’s not true to the story. As much as humanly possible, jour-
nalists are called upon to isolate their personal positions and beliefs
from their reporting. But how can reporters be expected to not be
fully themselves while on the job? This is a fraught area, and one that
is under examination in newsrooms.
Journalistic Codes of Ethics: Promoting Neutrality or

Discouraging Diversity?
Journalistic codes of ethics prohibit journalists from being publicly

involved and commenting on issues they will likely cover and report
about. For example, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Alexis Johnson,
who is in her 20s, a Pittsburgh native and Black, was barred from
covering protests prompted by the killing of George Floyd. Editors
said a tweet she had posted showed bias. The tweet likened litter and
debris from a music concert to that left by protesters. (See the tweet
here: https://bit.ly/3lca9Y0.) Johnson, who now works at Vice News,
is suing the paper for racial discrimination.10
It’s more important than ever for journalists to remain publicly
neutral, says Alison Bethel McKenzie, the Director of the Corps
Excellence at Report for America, which places journalists in local
newsrooms to report on underrepresented issues and communities.
“It is unethical for journalists to take these sorts of stances on social
media,” says McKenzie, reacting to a request by a reporter asking if
she could wear a “Black Lives Matter” T-shirt out on assignment,
and donate to a fundraiser for the movement.11 This is particu-
larly important, McKenzie emphasizes, with trust in journalism
declining. Forty-four percent of adults say that their level of trust in
the news media has decreased in the last year, according to a 2018
Media Insight Project.12
In a separate opinion piece in the New York Times, Lowery argued
that objectivity as a sacrosanct journalistic standard is futile:
And so, instead of promising our readers that we will never, on any
platform, betray a single personal bias – submitting ourselves to a
life sentence of public thoughtlessness – a better pledge would be
an assurance that we will devote ourselves to accuracy, that we
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will diligently seek out the perspectives of those with whom we

personally may be inclined to disagree and that we will be just as
sure to ask hard questions of those with whom we’re inclined to
agree.13
Journalists of various identities have sought to stay true to their culture

and their very selves while also staying true to fair and accurate journal-
ism. The Associated Press (AP) news values and principles states14 that:
• AP employees prevent bias and favoritism by avoiding

behavior, activities and other work that compromise our
ability to report the news accurately.
• Editorial employees are expected to be scrupulous in
avoiding any political activity, whether they cover politics
regularly or not.
• They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious
public issues in any public forum, whether in Weblogs, chat
rooms, letters to the editor, petitions, bumper stickers or
lapel buttons, and must not take part in demonstrations in
support of causes or movements.
Shaya Tayefe Mohajer, who describes herself as the first Iranian-

American journalist in most of the newsrooms where she has worked,
advocated for the right as a journalist to walk in the 2017 Women’s March
in Washington, D.C. She sees the rule against demonstrating in support
of causes, handed down through generations of mostly white and male
journalists, as harming the advancement of diversity of newsrooms.15
“As a woman of color, I have been told to set aside my identity – no

easy task, and patently dishonest – and my desire for equality so that
I can report like a robot facsimile of a supposedly pure standard,”
says Mohajer.
But any journalist’s excellence depends on much more than that. We

are told to speak truth to power, to reveal inequality, to empower the
disadvantaged and the poor. But diverse employees are also told to stay
silent where they feel their own rights and those of other marginalized
communities are threatened. Perhaps that’s part of why, despite decades
of efforts, newsroom diversity is actually declining in some sectors.
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REPORTING IN A MULTICULTURAL SOCIETY

When a journalist understands a culture so well that they selects
salient facts about that culture for a news story, they is demonstrat-
ing accuracy of perception. Accuracy of perception has two compo-
nents: The first is truth. The second is an understanding of the people
being covered, meaning a grasp of the beliefs, values and norms that
influence a social group’s behaviors and decisions.
A core principle of the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ)
states16 that “journalism’s first obligation is to the truth.” Another is
that journalism’s “first loyalty is to citizens” and to serving the pub-
lic interest. This principle means representing all groups in a society.
“Ignoring certain citizens has the effect of disenfranchising them,”
according to the PEJ principles. Audiences should be able to expect
representation in their news accounts.
Responsible journalists are sensitive to the difference between

religion and culture, and the fact that they often overlap. Many
traditions or beliefs considered religious are actually cultural, limited
to a certain region or group.
Reuters’ Handbook of Journalism17
Accuracy of perception requires understanding a culture well

enough to understand its complexities. Certainly cultures share
important commonalities, but they also contain subgroups and
differences. Within any broad culture is variety. For example, the
demographic of Latino or Hispanic encompasses a wide spectrum
of ancestries. Latinos who live in the United States come from and
are descended from many different countries, including Mexico,
Puerto Rico, Cuba, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guate-
mala, Colombia, Honduras, Ecuador and Peru.18 Jessica Durkin, who
served on the board of the National Association of Hispanic Jour-
nalists and who helps develop online, independent news publishers,
says,
You cannot address the Hispanic community as a whole. News

reporters should be sensitive to the context of the community and
105
who is in it. You should specify if it’s predominately Puerto Rican, for
example, and try to convey some of the nuance and specifics of the
community.19
Consider applying the Fault Lines framework explained in Chap-

ter 1 within cultures, to better see the distinctions between cultural
subgroups.
COVERING CULTURES: EDUCATION, CONTEXT,

PERSPECTIVE
All news stories benefit from including these three components. And
in news stories about cultures, particularly those not in the main-
stream of a news audience’s demographics, these components are
particularly meaningful:
1. Education: The facts and history behind issues, events or actions.

Example: In a story about why neighborhoods in a city are so
segregated by ethnicity, a clear discussion of the history of red-
lining discrimination in home loans may be essential to audience
understanding.
2. Context: The circumstances and conditions within which events,
ideas or statements occur or exist. Ask what your audience needs
to know to fully understand the significance of the news being
reported. Example: When explaining the reluctance among some
contemporary African Americans to seek healthcare, it helps to
remind readers of the Tuskegee Syphillis Study, in which research-
ers withheld treatment from and lied to impoverished Black men
over four decades, resulting in painful outcomes, unnecessary
infections and death.
3. Perspective: The diverse viewpoints of people involved, particu-
larly views that are relevant and credible. Example: For a story
about ways that families are celebrating the graduation of their
high-school seniors, interview a variety of people from across an
array of family types and incomes. Among the American public,
only 15 percent surveyed thought that journalists covered low
income people accurately, the Media Insight Project found.20 See
Exhibit 5.2 for more details on journalists’ coverage of various cul-
tural issues.
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EXHIBIT 5.2 PERCEPTIONS OF RACE, ETHNICITY

AND RELIGION NEWS COVERAGE
Slightly/not at Moderately Completely/very

all accurately accurately accurately
PUBLIC
Issues around 33% 43% 23%

race and
ethnicity

religion
JOURNALISTS

race and
ethnicity

religion
Data source: Question: “Thinking about news coverage in general, how accurately do
you think news organizations portray each of the following topics?”
Study: “Americans and the News Media,” 2018.
MEDIA INSIGHT PROJECT
“We cannot make assumptions about what our audiences know and do not
know and about their frames of reference,”21 advises the Robert C. Maynard
Institute for Journalism Education. Frames of reference are the ideas, assump-
tions and conditions that dictate how consumers will approach and understand
the news. Frames of reference are the context in which audiences receive and
process information. It is critical that audiences understand the significance of
a news event.
The significance of Donald J. Trump’s rise to the presidency in 2016 was
missed on most reporters. The polls didn’t forecast the reality TV star’s vic-
tory over opponent Hillary Clinton. Media pundits and journalists themselves
couldn’t see Trump ever occupying the Oval Office. Trump obviously did win,
and journalists set about figuring out how that happened. It led to countless sto-
ries in the news media about the high percentage of blue-collar, working-class
whites who helped vote him into office, supporting a candidate who seemed
unlikely to help improve their situations.
Washington Post columnist Alexandra Petri satirized22 the coverage of
blue-collar voters in “real America” by journalists who were writing for elite,
107
urban news outlets:
Next to her sits Linda Blarnik. Like the rusty hubcaps hanging on the wall
behind her, she was made in America 50 years ago, back when this town
made things, a time she still remembers fondly. She says she has had
just enough of the “coastal elitist media who keep showing up to write
mean things about my town and my life, like that thing just now where
you said I was like a hubcap, yes you, stop writing I can see over your
shoulder.” Mournfully a whistle blows behind her, the whistle of a train
that does not stop in this America any longer.
It can be difficult for journalists to report on people who aren’t like themselves.
It is difficult to know what details are salient in capturing a person’s character
and giving readers a dimensional portrait of a news story. It’s perhaps more dif-
ficult to cover sources about whom a journalist may know just enough, whether
through lived experience or media representations, to skew one’s understand-
ing of them.
In the case of the working-class white Trump supporters, the contradictions
abounded: Why would someone who depends on Obama’s healthcare insur-
ance plan vote for a man who wants to eradicate it? Here is where education
about what is informing working-class white voters would have served news
reporters well. Why would someone who is ill from working in a coal mine
for 20 years vote for a candidate who wants to seriously loosen the industry’s
safety and health regulations? Context about what is most critically pressing
to coal miners would have helped inform the reporting and focus of stories.
Alexandra Petri’s piece mocked the lack of perspective-taking of w orking-class
white Americans with high school degrees by white-collar, p rofessional journalists
with advanced degrees. The more nuanced divides are not so evident or simpli-
fied. They are about worldview, how people see their futures, what brings them
hope, what they value and how those values are evidenced in their lives, howev-
er inconsistently or idiosyncratically.
Journalist Issac J. Bailey offered23 perhaps a tougher task for reporters who
were looking to figure out why people voted for the unlikely presidential can-
didate:
Here’s a novel idea for journalists interested in providing the public with
more insight into the 63 million Americans who voted for Trump: Spend
less time with the poor white people who voted for him and more time
with the rich white people who also supported Trump.
Said another way, report not on why working-class Americans voted for a
candidate who might hurt their interests, but instead report on why rich white
Americans voted for a candidate who pledged to make policy changes that
would hurt others, instructs Bailey.
108
pause & consider

Compared to reporting on people who are living on mea-
ger incomes or are working class, is it more challenging
to report on people who may intimidate with power and
prestige, or whom you may admire for their wealth or suc-
cess? Are people in powerful positions more inclined to be
cautious about talking to reporters, knowing that being
honest with a reporter carries potential risks?
Social Groups as Lenses on the World
Social groups serve as lenses for looking at the world. Some news out-
lets largely missed the opportunity to focus on people when covering
efforts by the U.S. administration to build a border wall between the
United States and Mexico between 2016 and 2019. Instead of concen-
trating on the variety of people seeking to enter the United States for
a variety of reasons, some news media focused on the physical border
wall itself.
Major U.S. television news media coverage from June 2015 through
mid-Feburary 2019 emphasized physical barriers over people, one
analysis concluded.24 The combined airtime of CNN, MSNBC and Fox
News showed a rise in coverage of Trump administration stories using
terms such as border(s) and wall(s) compared to the term immigrant(s).
“Putting this all together, we see that – at least through the eyes of the
news media – Trump’s presidency has always been more about build-
ing physical walls than about reforming immigration policy,” states the
analysis.
Fixating news coverage on a physical wall ignores more complex
reporting issues of immigration, such as foreign and domestic pol-
icy. “When we fixate on a physical wall, we also introduce a wall in
our thinking,” says writer Roberto Lovato, who has covered Central
American refugee issues.25 “Reporting that simplifies the issue of
immigration by literally framing it as one that begins and ends at the
US-Mexico border excludes crucial information.”
109
A major reason people are migrating is the “biggest borderless

immigration story of our lifetimes: climate migration,” Lovato states.
Climate change-driven catastrophes are contributing to the violence
fueling migration, he says. One example of in-depth reporting that
explored those reasons is a series by New Yorker writer Jonathan
Blitzer. (See the first installment on how climate change is fueling the
border wall crisis here: https://bit.ly/2Ve4V3B.)
Race and Ethnicity
Race is a social, cultural and political construction not a biological

one. One dated definition of race is a category of people who share
certain inherited physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial
features and stature. However, “we often see more physical differ-
ences within a race than between races.”26 Also, genetically, people
of all races are more than 99.9 percent the same in their DNA. The
social construction of race has been used to treat people of darker
skin unequally and abusively for centuries in the United States.
Ethnicity describes “the shared social, cultural, and historical expe-
riences, stemming from common national or regional backgrounds,
that make subgroups of a population different from one another.”27
Ethnicity is about common regional or national backgrounds. It refers
to common social, cultural, religious, ancestral, historical, linguistic
or other affiliations.
Conveying Cultural Identity
A news story that doesn’t help audiences make sense of the world
is a news story likely to be ignored. News stories about ethnic cul-
tures often do a good job of conveying the identities of sources
with titles and positions, but a poor job of conveying the meaning
of sources’ ethnicity to their daily lives. Story references to “diver-
sity” and “multiculturalism” don’t add much, as the terms are broad
and unspecific. Use the following questions to help probe the role
of ethnicity in a source’s life, but remember, there is no need to
mention someone’s ethnic background, physical or mental ability
or other descriptor unless it is demonstrably relevant to the story
at hand:
110
1. Self-identification. How does the source describe himself – by

country of origin? As an American? The response helps illumi-
nate how a source might perceive himself within the surround-
ing society. Explore contradictions and benefits of being a global
citizen.
2. Language. Is there encouragement to speak the native language
often in the home, or do parents encourage youth to speak only
English? How bilingual are the family members? These distinc-
tions often convey the number of generations a family has lived in
America, how much the family emphasizes pride of country of ori-
gin and how the family has approached the adoption of American
cultural norms of language.
3. Family background. Understand the extended family’s history. For
example, Asian Americans or Pacific Islander Americans may be
perceived as foreigners when in fact many families have been U.S.
citizens for generations. What generation immigrated to America?
Why did they come? Were they fleeing political, religious or sexual
persecution? Were they seeking better economic opportunities?
Or, did they move because they found something else appeal-
ing about the United States? How many members now in the
United States are foreign-born or native-born? How many gen-
erations interact in the home? What is the employment status of
working-age family members? What different or shared skill sets
are represented?
4. Ethnicity and religion. Is the source’s ethnicity often associated
with a religion? Is it a valid association? For example, a common
myth about people of Arab descent is that they are all Muslim. But
only about 20 percent of the world’s Muslims are from the Middle
East or North Africa,28 and many Arabs living in the United States
are Christian. What influence does faith have on a source’s every-
day life?
Journalistic Standpoint
Like everyone else, journalists have a standpoint on the world, as

discussed in Chapter 1. Remember that journalists’ culture and his-
tory influence their standpoint. Standpoint can also influence the
questions they ask and the answers they consider acceptable and
111
r easonable. White journalists in particular need to seek out and con-

tinue education and training on white privilege and systemic racism
and its effects. Systemic racism is the manifestation of prejudice and
bigotry in American institutions, including educational, economic,
medical, legal and cultural systems. It’s results are manifold, always
unfair and harmful.
A Note on Assimilation vs. Acculturation

Be aware of the power of the word assimilation, as in the
absorption and integration of an ethnic culture into the
dominant culture. The term can suggest a negative out-
come, as in something lost to a larger, more powerful force,
such as relinquishing parts of one’s heritage to fit in to a
new home country.
Depending on the story context, the term acculturation
may be preferred. Acculturation describes an exchange that
is two-way, as both cultural groups interact with and change
each other over time, through intermarriage or language,
for example. Acculturation is the modification of one’s cul-
ture as a result of contact with a dominant culture. Either
way, use the word that most accurately describes what is
actually happening.
Here’s an example: A journalist is looking into the problem of

homelessness in her community. She’s told by city officials that down-
town retailers are suffering because of homeless people harassing
shoppers on the streets. Many of the homeless people, the reporter
discovers, are mentally ill. Some were removed from state mental
health institutions, and efforts were made to integrate them into soci-
ety with the help of community mental health services. But those ser-
vices were underfunded and the workloads too great for so few staff.
So, many people aren’t getting the treatment and oversight they need
to stay well.
The reporter on this story at first sees it as a simple city policy
story: Clean up the downtown streets for people who want to spend
112
money. The city council is looking into ways to ban loitering, panhan-
dling and other behaviors, thus targeting the homeless population.
She isn’t all that interested in the homeless people, in part because her
efforts to interview them go nowhere. She thinks their responses to
her questions are bizarre or irrational.
However, the reporter has good success with interviewing
retailers, in part because the reporter’s father was a jeweler. She
grew up hearing lectures at the dinner table about the importance
of a steady flow of foot traffic into a store. She heard many times
how customers want easy parking and hassle-free shopping. Her
standpoint on this story is pro-retailer; she can’t help it – it’s in her
genes.
A solution for the reporter is to interview advocates for and rel-
atives of people who are homeless and mentally ill, who may help
connect her with sources to interview directly. In the event she can’t
find primary sources who are able to communicate clearly and under-
stand they are speaking for publication, she could use advocates and
relatives. She also could include the background of the homeless
problem, which emerged only after the institutions closed and local
funding for services was cut. She could acknowledge to herself her
own bias against the homeless people and ask a caseworker to accom-
pany her while interviewing, in hopes that the caseworker can iden-
tify conversant sources and provide another point of view. In short,
the journalist needs to acknowledge that her pro-business stance
is only one perspective in a story that goes beyond just hassle-free
shopping.
Bias in Question Wording
In addition, journalists must think about the perspective inherent

in their questions when interviewing sources from different cul-
tures. Sometimes, journalists’ own biases are embedded in the
way they word questions, implying blame or criticism of sources’
actions because they don’t match journalists’ own norms. To bet-
ter understand the power of questions and perspective, consider
how questions about sexual orientation or physical abilities can be
framed.
For instance, “A Heterosexual Questionnaire” was written by a
psychologist to highlight the cultural norm of heterosexuality by
113
reversing the questions often asked of gay and lesbian people by het-
erosexual people. Among the questions: “What do you think caused
your heterosexuality? When and how did you first decide you were a
heterosexual? Is it possible your heterosexuality is a phase you may
grow out of?”29 Similarly, for people with disabilities, Exhibit 5.3 high-
lights the different perspectives inherent in the two questions.30
The first question in the exhibit is from the able-bodied point of
view as dominant, functional and “adequate.” The second question
turns the tables on that perspective. (The first question was taken
from an actual survey administered by government personnel to peo-
ple with disabilities in Britain in the 1980s.) The lesson here is not that
journalists need to ask convoluted questions to ensure no offense to
any source, but instead to think about the different perspectives from
which a journalist as well as news sources may view issues and events.
Ingroups and Outgroups
Standpoint comes into play when considering a key aspect of social

cognition, the concept of ingroups and outgroups. No, you are not
back in high school, with cliques and popularity contests. But the
principle isn’t so different.
Outgroup members are outsiders, people not in your social group
and often seen as inferior. Ingroup members are those in your own
social group, or people with whom you share similar interests and
attitudes. Journalists need to understand ingroups and outgroups
because group membership – their own and that of their sources –
influences perceptions, perspectives and people’s definitions of truth.
Exhibit 5.4 frames basic findings about ingroup and outgroup mem-
bership in terms of journalistic decisions.
EXHIBIT 5.3 QUESTIONS AND STANDPOINT
“Do you have a scar, blemish “Do other people’s reactions to any
or deformity that limits scar, blemish or deformity you may
your daily activities?” have limit your daily activities?”
114
EXHIBIT 5.4 INGROUPS AND

OUTGROUPS: JOURNALISTIC DECISIONS
ASSUMPTION 1 People in outgroups are all the same.
Journalistic application: Reporter Kali interviews a Japanese American stu-

dent who just won a public school math contest. She leads her story with:
“Everybody knows that the Asians are good at math.”
Research shows: People see those in outgroups as less variable and more ho-
mogenous than their own group. They are “all alike.” Therefore, people are
willing to make inferences about outgroup members with little knowledge
about them. Based on meeting one person in the group, they make gener-
alizations about the entire group. This sort of categorization relates to both
schemas and stereotyping.31
ASSUMPTION 2 People in outgroups are less complex.
Journalistic application: Twenty-four-year-old Kali doesn’t believe that old

people do all that much, so how could they be interesting? She mistakes sed-
entary lives for sedentary minds. Her profile on residents in the town’s new
assisted living complex paints them simplistically, with an existence limited
to knitting classes on Tuesdays and Sunday dinners with visiting family. She
doesn’t take time to look for the depth and personality in individual residents:
The woman in Room 203 who plays Delta blues on the harmonica. The man
in Room 321 who on Thursdays offers Latin classes for his fellow residents.
Research shows: The conceptions people hold about outgroup members are
less complex than those they have about ingroup members. For instance,
young people view old people along fewer dimensions than they do other
young people.32
ASSUMPTION 3 People slant their perception of the behavior of

those in outgroups.
Journalistic application: In her cover story on a local youth center, Kali in-
vestigates a tip that a group of Mexican American teens are instigating fights
there. She spends a couple of nights observing at the center. She perceives
the loud, boisterous behavior of the Mexican American youths as violent and
incendiary, but she perceives the loud, boisterous behavior of the hometown
teens at the center as goofing around. Her story reflects her bias.
Research shows: How people categorize others – as in an ingroup or an

outgroup – influences how they interpret their behaviors. For instance, a child
taking an eraser from another child may be seen as aggressive if he is Black
but simply assertive if he is white.33
115
When covering outgroups, journalists are wise to listen closely,

clarify and challenge when sources make unsubstantiated allegations
that rely on in-group acceptance of cultural norms. Such acceptance
assumes all sorts of uninformed generalizations.
Journalists also need to be aware of intragroup biases that are
evident. Unfairly judging others is not the exclusive domain of
ingroup members. People in outgroups hold biases about others
too. For example, nearly 80 percent of LGBT people of Asian and
Pacific Islander backgrounds said they experienced racism within
the primarily white LGBT community, according to one survey.34
Another example of intragroup judgment is colorism. Colorism,
as defined by Pulitzer Prize winner Alice Walker, is “prejudicial or
preferential treatment of same-race people based solely on their
color.”35 In the United States, it stems from a racist history of slaves
as being seen as lesser humans, and the concept of treating peers
differently based on their darker skin tone is evident in African
American children as young as seven and nine, a 2009 study36
found.
Journalists of color may be tasked with covering ethnic and racial
issues for a news outlet. Covering one’s own culture – one’s own
“ingroup” – can pose its own challenges. In one of my classes that
conducted an in-depth reporting project in a majority Black neigh-
borhood in our community, two Black student journalists found it
more difficult to interview local residents than did their white peers.
Why? Said one student at the end of the project:
Sources kept saying to me, “Well, you know how it is. You know
what I’m talking about.” They assumed I’d know how they’d finish
their thoughts because I was Black too. I had to keep saying, “No, I
don’t know what you’re talking about. Explain it to me.” Because I
really didn’t know. I couldn’t assume.
STRATEGIES FOR REPORTING ACROSS CULTURES

Journalists reporting across cultural boundaries can take steps to
improve the accuracy of their perceptions. To promote accuracy
and correct context when reporting about cultures, journalists
should:
116
• Know their individual standpoint and outlook on the world.

• Make people the subjects of news coverage, not the
objects.37 Instead of writing a news story observing that
“even” plus-sized women are wearing miniskirts, bike shorts
and other clothing often traditionally thought of for the
size-2 set, write a fashion story about how larger women
are embracing body-conscious attire. The first approach
objectifies a community of people. The second approach
contributes to that community.
• Create new categories to define a source or situation.
Instead of seeing a source, a woman in a wheelchair, as a
disabled person, see her as her occupation defines her – as a
scientist or artist or swim coach, for example.
• Focus on process, not outcome. Focus on how an interview
is conducted instead of just completing it. The process of
communication involves all sorts of nuances and cues –
word choice and body language, inflection and silences.
When a journalist focuses on the process of communication,
the journalist is more able to make an authentic connection
to a source.
• Approach sources as individuals, not as part of a monolithic
group. Avoid allowing one member of a culture to speak for
or represent the entire culture.
• Avoid single-topic coverage. For example, go beyond a
focus on crime coverage in a low-income neighborhood to
depict the underlying entrepreneurism of the residents, who
sell food off their back porches and repair autos in driveways.
Identify Ethnic Cultural Patterns
Being aware of patterns within groups can help journalists better

understand ethnic cultures. Ethnic cultural patterns affect group mem-
bers’ thinking about their actions and behaviors. A reporter is more
informed when she understands a particular culture’s approach toward
the major aspects of life – such as work, interpersonal relations or the
concept of time. This information helps when reporting on members
of that culture. Exhibit 5.5 demonstrates the wide range of approaches
different cultural groups may take toward major aspects of life.
117
Journalists serve both themselves and their news audiences when

they do background research into ethnic cultures’ norms and values
and actively develop relationships with people living in a particu-
lar culture. For example, many Vietnamese people honor courtesy,
people who are older and those in authority. A Vietnamese daughter
may not correct her father in an interview situation, even if he is
providing incorrect information. The reporter may be wise to also
interview the daughter separately. The daughter may not want her
father to “lose face.”
EXHIBIT 5.5 CULTURAL CONTINUUMS38
How Do People Regard and Handle Work?

An end in itself A means to other
ends
Separate from play Integrated with play
A challenge A burden
Problem–solving Coping with

situations
How Do People Relate to Others?
As equals Hierarchical
Informal Formal
Member of many Member of few

groups groups
Weak group identi- Strong group iden-
fication tification
How Do People Communicate with Others?
Directly Indirectly
No intermediaries Intermediaries
How Do People Value Time?

Scarce resource Unlimited
Fast pace Slow pace
Source: Compiled from Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communication Across

Cultures, 3rd ed., by Myron W. Lustig and Jolene Koester, Tables 4.3, 4.4, 4.7. Copyright
© 1999 by Addison Wesley Longman.
118
Value Patience
Patience in reporting is a characteristic not often preached in journalism

schools or championed in harried newsrooms. But an extra few hours,
a second interview or another visit to the scene can mean a far richer
story, the kind that people tweet and retweet, remember and share with
others. Whenever possible, journalists should try to return to a com-
munity after filing an initial breaking news story and have conversa-
tions with everyday people and nonofficials who have experiences with
the issue or event at the center of the story. The journalist who takes
time to circle back stands in contrast to other reporters and conveys to
local residents a genuine interest in forming accurate conclusions.
Annie Shreffler had to be patient and gain the trust of one neigh-
borhood’s residents before they would explain its culture to her and her
public radio listeners. Shreffler was reporting a story for WNYC, a public
radio station in New York City. A nine-year-old boy, Shamshawan Kelly,
had been killed when he was inadvertently caught in the crossfire of a
shooting in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Some three
days after the shooting, Shreffler was sent to do a piece on the event. She
details39 how she handled entering the Crown Heights subculture.
On Assignment
Going into Crown Heights to cover a shooting was not
an original story. It’s a neighborhood famous for its riots
and violence. I knew I needed to go there and not be the
25th reporter to ask the same questions. I sat down on a
stoop with a guy who wouldn’t talk unless I put away my
microphone.
We talked forever. He told me I couldn’t handle “the real
news.” That’s how he put it. He talked about how a corrupt
system full of players in Manhattan is what brings guns into
his neighborhood. He hinted that if the city really wanted
to crack down on violence, it could, but it was full of people
who didn’t care about his neighborhood.
He introduced me to passersby because he enjoyed the
sport of watching me try to get an interview. He dared
119
me to speak to one woman coming down the street, and

she told me off. “You can’t handle what I could tell you,”
she declared.
Finally one of his friends agreed to an interview. He
gave us great, honest clips to play for the evening broad-
cast. By the time I had talked with him, I had a much bet-
ter sense of the place and the people. That never would
have happened if I had just hustled the guy for a sound
bite and taken off.
This story took me way out of my comfort zone by
sending me into what felt like hostile territory. I was white
in a Black neighborhood with its share of poverty and
violence, and I was holding a microphone. I looked like I
didn’t belong and that I wanted something for nothing.
What the people there didn’t know was that I lived in
the Bronx; I didn’t feel like I was in unfamiliar surround-
ings. What I felt uncomfortable about was being such
an obvious outsider, and so unwelcomed! That made
me tense. But I dealt with it by asserting my right to be
there and convincing someone that I was interested in
the story from that street. It took time, so I decided not
to give in to pressure or do anything desperate. I decided
to plant myself and figure it out.
Shreffler’s patience paid off in good quotes for a daily broadcast.

Sometimes, the patience needs to last more than a day. It might take
months to develop trust with sources wary of news reporters who
parachute in, demand information and leave until the next crisis
occurs. But it’s worth the investment and will pay off in richer, more
accurate journalism.
Practice “Big Umbrella” Journalism
Inclusive journalism begins with taking people and events from the
narrow categories in our minds and placing them in broader contexts.
120
We have to revise our mental placement of groups, from ingroups and

outgroups, to an inclusive “Big Umbrella” that encompasses all
groups. Shifting someone’s membership from a confining outgroup
to a common ingroup changes our perceptions of them. The idea is
that since people are programmed to prefer the group they are in,
why not defuse stigmas by putting outgroup members under the
same ingroup umbrella?40 The concept behind this model of think-
ing is not that people still don’t categorize, but that their categori-
zation is broader and more inclusive.
Interestingly, this model doesn’t mean that devotion to a smaller,
more elite group disappears, but the two coexist; this is a concen-
tric loyalty. Two distinct groups can exist within a larger group –
like parents and children in one family. This model recognizes that
people rightly desire to retain membership and allegiance to their
ethnic culture, for example, but that they can also retain that ethnic
identity while seeing themselves as members of their surrounding
culture as well.
Journalists can apply the Big Umbrella concept to their own think-
ing as well as to their reporting and writing. A journalist interviewing
a local woman who follows Islam might show the woman as a devout
Muslim but also determine whether or not the woman perceives her-
self as belonging to the local secular community as well, and how
those two roles set the stage for cultural exchange, intersection or
conflict. This type of reporting seeks to go beyond a one-dimensional
depiction of the woman.
Some stories are so good because the reporter has captured the
duality of a situation. For example, imagine a story prompted by the
news that a teenager who is overweight has founded Big Is Beautiful,
a fat acceptance campaign at her public high school. The story may
be occasioned by the founding of the group but also detail the many
ways the teen is similar to, and seeks acceptance from, the very peers
who have teased her. The story works well because it captures the ten-
sion of a teen shuttling between her vocal activism and her efforts at
belonging. It humanizes her.
When journalists apply the Big Umbrella approach to sources, they
recognize the source’s unique culture and its influences while also
placing individuals and issues in a broader societal context. This dual-
minded strategy allows for relevant differences among groups of people
to be highlighted while avoiding an “us vs. them” depiction of the world.
121
1. Class and financial standing are not always as evident as cultural bor-
ders in the same way that race, ethnicity or gender is. But economics
is a significant part of people’s lives. Class is more than what you can
afford to buy. It also involves power. People of different classes often
relate to one another in different ways. People may judge affluent peo-
ple as “snobby” or “selfish” just as they may judge people on public
assistance as “lazy” or as “scammers.” Select one of the following
exercises to explore your economic history and perspective:
a. Use a free online software tool such as Timeglider to make
a timeline of your economic life. Start with the economic
circumstances into which you were born. As you compose your
timeline, include the highs and lows in your economic life. What
was your first job, its pay and how formal was it? Consider the
difference between a job and a career; which did your parents
have? Note the spaces and places in which you grew up.
Consider adding photographs to your timeline to illustrate your
economic circumstances. If you’re comfortable doing so, upload
the timeline for others to see and react to. Think about how
your class standing influences your perspective on the world.
b. Make a list of statements that explain the norms of your
economic class41 and also perhaps the ways you adopt
different class’ norms and apply them to your own
economic status. To get you started: What do you value as
“possessions” – people, things or one-of-a-kind objects? Is
money to be used, to be managed or to be invested? When it
comes to food, is it most important to have enough, to have
it be tasty or to have it well presented? Is clothing chosen
as an expression of individual style or based on the label
and quality? Think of other norms to include in your list of
statements. Compare your norms with others’ norms.
c. Write a brief essay about how popular culture has framed
your perceptions of consumerism and affluence. What
television shows influenced your ideas about wealth and how
people should live? Which performers or celebrities do you
follow and why? What cues do you take from them about
the trappings of success? Share and compare with peers.
2. Select a current controversy involving a distinct cultural group that is
playing out in the news media. Ideally, choose a local issue:
a. Remembering that audiences need three components in
coverage that involves multicultural reporting, assess the
122
coverage on the basis of those three elements: Education

about issues, events or actions; the context of issues,
events and actions; and inclusion of all relevant, credible
perspectives.
b. Summarize your assessment in a brief memo and include a
story pitch suggesting one new approach to covering the
issue.
3. In a study of the relationship between body weight and person-
ality traits involving 3,500 adults, researchers found that adults
who were overweight and obese were not significantly less
conscientious, less agreeable, less extroverted or less emotion-
ally stable.42 Several scholarly studies show that “children and
adults living with obesity are treated unequally because of their
size at school, at work, in interpersonal relationships and within
the healthcare system. It has been argued that weight bias is a
socially acceptable form of prejudice today.”43
a. Talk with a peer about the challenges posed by doing a
story about the very real problem of a lack of fitness in
the American public today while still respecting people’s
natural body size and shape and without furthering
stereotypes.
b. Interview a health expert in your community to
understand the issues involved in America’s health
problem with obesity.
c. File the highlights of your interview as a tip sheet for your
classroom or newsroom.
FOR REVIEW
• List at least six cultural norms that you follow.

• Explain to a peer the three components necessary
for covering cultures.
• Apply one strategy for reporting across cultures to a
story you are currently reporting or one in the news.
• Identify a news story in which a more inclusive “Big
Umbrella” approach could be applied instead of a
narrow perspective on the issue. Explain the more
inclusive angle on the story.
123
NOTES
1 Eric Woodyard, personal interview with author, September 17, 2020.
2 Lustig, M.W., & Koester, J. (1999). Intercultural Competence: Interper-
sonal Communication across Cultures, 3rd ed. New York: Longman.
3 Ibid.
4 Hofstede, G. (1991). Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind.
New York: McGraw-Hill, p. 7.
5 Payne, R.K. (2005). A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Highlands,
TX: aha! Process.
6 News Leaders Association. (September 10, 2019). “2019 ASNE News-
room Diversity Survey.” Retrieved 11/28/2020 from: https://www.news
leaders.org/2019-diversity-survey-results
7 Hill, J. (July 10, 2020). “9 Black Journalists on What It’s Been Like to
Cover – and Cope With – the News.” Self. Retrieved 11/28/2020 from:
https://www.self.com/story/black-journalists-coverage-copin
8 Jackson, A. Yap, A.C., & Low, E. (June 3, 2020). “Reporting while Black:
The complexity of covering racial inequality as a Black Journalist.”
Variety. Retrieved 4/27/2021 from: https://variety.com/2020/tv/features/
black-journalists-racial-inequality-protests-george-floyd-1234623820/.
9 National Association of Hispanic Journalists. (n.d.). “How to fight racism
and not get fired from your mainstream media job.” Retrieved April16,
2021 from: https://nahj.memberclicks.net/fight-racism
10 Thompson, L. (June 19, 2020). “Should a Journalist be able to Attend
a #BlackLivesMatter Protest as a Civilian?” Media Diversity Institute.
Retrieved 12/12/2020 from: https://www.media-diversity.org/should-a-
journalist-be-able-to-attend-a-blacklivesmatter-protest-as-a-civilian/
11 Ibid.
12 Media Insight Project. (June 11, 2018). “Levels of Trust and How
Americans Feel about the Fairness and Accuracy of the Press.” American
Press Institute. Retrieved 11/28/2020 from: https://www.americanpres-
sinstitute.org/publications/reports/survey-research/fairness-accuracy-
of-press/
13 Lowery, W. (June 23, 2020). “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by
Black Journalists.” The New York Times: Opinion. Retrieved 12/12/2020
from: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/opinion/objectivity-black-
journalists-coronavirus.html
14 Associated Press. (n.d.). “News Values and Principles.” Retrieved 11/28/2020
from: https://www.ap.org/about/news-values-and-principles/
15 Mohajer, S.T. (January 20, 2017). “Why Journalists Should Be Able to
Join the Women’s March.” Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved
11/28/2020 from: https://www.cjr.org/first_person/womens_march_
washington_dc.php
124
16 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Principles of Journalism,” Pew

Research Center. Retrieved 5/16/2011 from: www.journalism.org/
resources/principles.
17 Reuters staff. (2008). “Reporting about People.” In: Handbook of Jour-
nalism, New York: Thomson Reuters. Retrieved 9/1/2010 from: http://
handbook.reuters.com/index.php/ Main_Page
18 Pew Hispanic Center, “Country of Origin Profiles,” Retrieved 8/17/2010
from: http://pewhispanic.org/ data/origins
19 J. Durkin, Interview with author, August, 2010.
20 Media Insight Project.
21 The Maynard Institute, (2011). “Fault Lines, Chapter VII: Perspective
Exercises,” Retrieved 8/10/2011 from: http://www.maynardije.org/fault-
lines-chapters-ix-and-x
22 Petri, A. (April 4, 2017). “Every Story I Have Read About Trump Sup-
porters in the Past Week.” Washington Post. Retrieved 12/12/2020 from:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/compost/wp/2017/04/04/
every-story-i-have-read-about-trump-supporters-in-the-past-week/
23 Bailey, I.J. (April 7, 2017). “Another Under-Covered Trump-Voting Demo-
graphic.” Nieman Reports. Retrieved 12/12/2020 from: https://niemanre-
ports.org/articles/another-under-covered-trump-voting-demographic/
24 Leetaru, K. (February 15, 2019). “How Immigration Coverage Shifted
from People to Barriers.” RealClear Politics. Retrieved from: https://bit.
ly/2JnqdZJ
25 Lovato, R. (May 7, 2019). “Borders are Imaginary. News Coverage
should Treat them that Way.” Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved
11/29/2020 from: https://www.cjr.org/opinion/border-news-coverage-
media.php
26 (no author.) (2010). “The Meaning of Race and Ethnicity.” Sociology: Under-
standing and Changing the Social World, Ch. 10.2. University of Minne-
sota Libraries Publishing. Retrieved 12/11/2020 from: https://open.lib.
umn.edu/sociology/chapter/10-2-the-meaning-of-race-and-ethnicity/
27 Ibid
28 DeSilver, D., & Masci, D. (January 31, 2017). “World’s M uslim Popula-
tion More Widespread Than You Might Think.” Pew Research Center:
FactTank. Retrieved 12/12/2020 from: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-
tank/2017/01/31/worlds-muslim-population-more-w idespread-
than-you-might-think/
29 Rochlin, M. (2008). “The Heterosexual Questionnaire.” In: Karen E.
Rosenblum and ToniMichelle C. Travis, eds. The Meaning of Difference:
American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social Class, Sexual
Orientation, and Disability, Boston: McGraw-Hill, p. 175.
30 Oliver, M. (2008). “Disability Definitions: The Politics of Meaning.” In:
Karen E. Rosenbaum and Toni-Michelle C. Travis, eds. The Meaning
125
of Difference: American Constructions of Race, Sex and Gender, Social

Class, Sexual Orientation, and Disability. Boston: McGraw Hill,
pp. 177–178.
31 Susan T. Fiske and Shelley E. Taylor Social Cognition (New York: Random
House, 1984); Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio, “Categorization,
Recategorization, and Intergroup Bias,” in John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick,
and Laurie A. Rudman, eds., On the Nature of Prejudice: Fifty Years
after Allport (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005); Susan T. Fiske, “Social
Cognition and the Normality of Prejudgment,” in On the Nature of Preju-
dice: Fifty Years after Allport, ed. John F. Dovidio, Peter Glick, and Laurie
A. Rudman (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2005).
32 Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition; Fiske, “Social Cognition and the Nor-
mality of Prejudgment.”
33 Ibid.
34 Dang, A., & Vianney, C. (2007). Living in the Margins: A National Survey
of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Asian and Pacific Islander
Americans. New York: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy
Institute.
35 Norwood, K.J. (2015). “If You Is White, You’s Alright . . .” Stories about
Colorism in America, 14 Wash. U. Global Stud. L. Rev. 585. https://open
scholarship.wustl.edu/law_globalstudies/vol14/iss4/8
36 Williams, T.L., & Davidson, D. (2009). “Interracial and Intra-Racial
Stereotypes and Constructive Memory in 7- and 9-Year-Old African-
American Children,” Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology 30(3),
366–377. doi: 10.1016/j.appdev.2009.02.002
37 Tuller, D. (2004). The Reporting Diversity Manual. London: Media Diver-
sity Institute. Retrieved 7/17/2011 from: http://www.media-diversity.org
38 Lustig and Koester, Intercultural Competence: Interpersonal Communi-
cation Across Cultures, Ch. 4.
39 Annie Shreffler, Interview with author, June, 2010.
40 Samuel L. Gaertner and John F. Dovidio, “Categorization, Recategoriza-
tion, and Intergroup Bias.”
41 Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty.
42 Roehling, M.V., Roehling, P.V., & Odland, L.M. (2008). “Investigating the
Validity of Stereotypes about Overweight Employees: The Relationship
between Body Weight and Normal Personality Traits,” Group and Orga-
nization Management 33(4), 392–424.
43 Alberga, A.S., Russell-Mayhew, S., von Ranson, K.M., & McLaren, L.
(2016). “Weight Bias: A Call to Action,” Journal of Eating Disorders 4,
article number: 34. doi: 10.1186/s40337-016-0112-4
126
6
Training the
Reporter’s Eye
What Attracts Journalists’
Attention Can Influence How
They Portray Events and
Explain Behaviors
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand what people – including journalists and news sources – tend to

notice.
• To recognize that the focus of a journalist’s attention influences and reinforces
news values and frames.
• To learn techniques that can fill journalistic gaps in observation and attention.
ON THE LOOKOUT FOR AUTHENTICITY

Reporter Ruth Graham didn’t believe the bible was oozing oil. But she
also believed that others – likely thousands of others – firmly believed
that Jerry Pearce’s New King James translation bible was, in fact, ooz-
ing oil. And that was why she traveled to the small town of Dalton,
Georgia, to talk with those gathering each Tuesday to be in the pres-
ence of that miracle.
“This miracle had convinced a lot of people,” says Graham, 40, who
wrote the story for Slate.com and talked with me about her reporting
experience.1
127
TRAINING THE REPORTER’S EYE
People were compelled by what was happening. They saw it an

ongoing supernatural event. I thought if I can go and “figure out”
what it was that was really going on, that would be interesting. (My
editor and I) were open to whatever the story would be. It was never
going to be a story making fun of anyone. We knew the tone.
Jerry Pearce’s bible began flowing with oil just days after President
Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017. Graham’s 2020 story states,
Within three years, hundreds of people were gathering each week in

the small town of Dalton, Georgia, to pray, socialize, and be healed.
Believers say the translucent oil has cured skin conditions and cancer.
They say it has generated crystals, changed color, and increased
in volume – inching upward in the Tupperware container over the
course of a few hours. They say small vials of oil refilled themselves
overnight.
‘What Should I Be Paying Attention to the Most?’
Graham, who is now a New York Times’ reporter on religion, faith and
values, excels at the kind of reporting this story required. “I think my
background is an asset to me as a reporter,” says Graham, who was
raised in an evangelical home and community, and attended evangel-
ical grade school and college.
From that upbringing, I bring a sense that religious people and

in particular conservative Christians are not covered by the
media with the kind of nuance they merit. I had a very happy
evangelical childhood. There is a level of personal empathy that
comes from that, of wanting to do justice to evangelical people and
not mock.
Graham notes, as do many seasoned journalists, that empathy toward

everyday sources does not mean avoiding the hard questions or leav-
ing uncomfortable facts out of their stories. “Empathy is an approach
to the subject of the story where you are approaching them as full and
complicated human beings instead of approaching them as villains or
rubes,” she says.
128
She has had to disabuse herself of the notion that her form of evan-
gelism is everyone else’s form of evangelism, too.
I’ve had to teach myself (that) the forms of religious practice I’ve
known most intimately and that are obstensibly more mainstream –
not to measure all other evangelical religion against that. It has
helped me to ask in reporting, “What should I be paying attention to
the most?”
For example, would other reporters have paid more attention to being
prayed and prophesied over, as the followers of the movement around
the bible and its miracle oil did with Graham?
For Graham, the moment was very moving. But she knew it wasn’t
what she should be paying attention to for her story. It was, as she told
me, “a part of the conversation.”
“People would ask if they could pray over me,” recalls Graham, who
often met with the believers in a local gift shop that became a gather-
ing place for the followers.
It feels wrong to say no. It feels like I would disrupt the relationship
to say no. It is a gift freely given and they are moved to do it in that
moment. I receive it respectfully and lower my eyes and stay in that
moment with them. I don’t pray along with them.
The trust that the followers showed Graham was part of the story.
They didn’t speak to Graham because they wanted personal attention
or credit, she notes. They spoke to her out of their evangelical belief
that the good news of the bible needed to be shared. Graham under-
stood that. Her attention was focused on the why, not the how of the
bible and its oil. This was a story about faith, with the oil or without.
This is how Graham ends her story:
. . . On the day I left Dalton, I looked down and saw that my

notebook had a splotch of oil on it. For a split second, my jaw hung
open. Then I felt ridiculous. I’d been shaking hands with people
whose fingers were doused in oil. But I’ll admit I was still, for that one
instant, weirdly energized. The store was homey and bustling with
people who had found each other because they believed in the same
129
wildly improbable phenomenon, which brought them community

and hope. In a few weeks, it would all be over. In that moment I
remembered something that a woman named Leah Lesesne, who
drove from Atlanta to visit the oil a few years ago, had told me in
December: In the end, she wasn’t sure how much she cared whether
the oil Bible was real. “It has brought people closer to God, it has
brought people healing, it has rekindled people’s faith and curiosity,”
she said. “Even if one day it’s proven that all this was a sham.”
WHAT PEOPLE NOTICE

Our senses and minds gravitate to certain kinds of people and events
because of how our brain works. What journalists pay attention to
matters to their reporting because our attention can influence what
we remember, how we evaluate people and the extent to which we
stereotype people. To start, let’s look at what generally grabs people’s
attention2:
• Novelty in one’s immediate surroundings, such as the person

over 70 in a classroom full of 20-year-olds, or a person with
only one arm who is checking out groceries for customers.
• Objects and people that are bright, moving or complex.
For example, a woman in a red dress (bright), someone in
a classroom of still students who is rocking in their chair
(moving) or an abstract piece of art (complex).
• Behaviors that don’t fit one’s preconceptions or prior
knowledge of the person. If you expect your source to be
friendly and helpful, as he always has been, and on this day
he is not, you pay increased attention to his behavior.
• Behavior that is unusual given someone’s social category.
For example, a white-collar professional coming to work in
overalls.
• Unusual behavior in general, especially the negative or
extreme. For instance, a loud, cursing audience member at a
city council meeting.
• The person in your immediate visual field, such as the
person seated right across from you at a long table.
• People who have influence over us in some way, such as a
boss.
130
• Things that are threatening, such as civil unrest or a

tornado.
• Immediate, proximate happenings, such as a hotel fire in
the local community.
A pattern emerges that suggests the mind pays attention to the differ-
ent, unusual or threatening. These qualities that the mind naturally
notices are in many ways assets for journalists: The unusual and the
extreme draw our attention, and such characteristics often drive news
coverage. So why, exactly, do we notice what we notice? And what
does that mean for the news?
What Gets Attention Is Newsworthy
What people naturally pay attention to is strikingly similar to what

journalists pay attention to when working stories. These priorities are
reinforced through the values of the U.S. news industry. Frequently
mentioned news values include conflict, proximity, prominence, nov-
elty, timeliness and human interest. Instead of thinking about news
values as the guidelines for determining newsworthiness, journalists
can think about them as the criteria for judging the characteristics of
the information that naturally attracts people’s attention.3
pause & consider

Quickly scan the home page of your city’s daily news outlet,
and write down the news values represented in the top sto-
ries. Then, compare those news items with the earlier list of
categories of information that get people’s attention. How
similar are the two lists?
Biological Influences on Attention
The news industry is not the only factor influencing journalists’ atten-
tion. It goes back much, much further than that. For ages, humans
have had an innate drive to gather and disseminate news as a survival
131
tool. Surveying for nearby threats is biologically influenced; people

are programmed that way.4 Which brings us to cavemen. Or rather,
early humans.
Human thinking can be seen as the interaction of biology and cul-
ture. The majority of this book is focused on the influence of culture
and society on how journalists think – social cognition. However, it’s
worth noting that biology influences thinking as well. It’s called evo-
lutionary psychology. Our ancestors’ version of breaking news might
have been something like: “Hmph! Tiger outside cave. You stay.”
People are innately interested in news about deviant (as in
abnormal or unusual) or threatening events or ideas because the brain
is hardwired to scan the environment this way.5 Plus, news that involves
the abnormal, exceptional or threatening is usually bad: Disasters, mur-
ders, coups, scandals. People pay attention to bad news because it’s in
their best interest, both biologically (for survival from predators and
danger) and culturally (society encourages surveillance of what is right
and wrong, what threatens the status quo). Our nose for news doesn’t
sniff out commonplace events; it follows the scent of unusually good
things and the odor of unusually bad things.
The human instinct to watch for the threatening and deviant can
help journalists pay attention to things that genuinely matter to the
public. Biology is actually on the side of journalism. Examples of
such coverage include stories about whether or not efforts to com-
bat wildfires across the western United States are effective, or how
the poor enforcement of safety regulations might contribute to a
high death rate among construction workers in fast-growing areas
such as the Las Vegas strip. Reporting on both of those topics won
Pulitzer Prizes. These two examples focus on threats – in these
cases, fires and dangerous work
conditions. The stories may
have been triggered initially by
Human brains are biologi- the reporters’ instinct to look
cally and culturally wired to
for problems or troubles, but
acknowledge the threat-
ening or unusual, which in they succeed by going beyond
part explains why so much that with vigorous research
news is negative. and reporting that made them
award winners.
132
Cultural Influences on Attention
Throughout the ages humans have also been taught to be on the look-
out for threats to safety or security, from looking both ways when
crossing the street to guarding against a radical idea that might upset
the status quo. Culture teaches people what to pay attention to and
why. Humans have an inclination toward surveying their environment
and shaping information in order to emphasize what is divergent from
the norm and what is socially significant.6
Note, however, that norms change over time. A marriage between
a Black woman and a white man made headlines and went to the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 for violating Virginia’s ban on interracial
marriages. Today such marriages are commonplace and not news. In
another example, rapes were typically not covered in the news media
in the 1950s because of their sexual nature. Now, sexual assaults are
typically covered, particularly when the incident involves sensational
details or someone prominent.7
What constitutes news, what our minds pay attention to as nota-
ble, is determined by both a genetic predisposition for surveillance
and cultural determinates about what is the norm and what isn’t. The
cultural explanation for what humans pay attention to involves what-
ever deviates from the norm or the usual: What’s different, extreme,
prominent, controversial, sensational.8 A locally born resident –
white, English-speaking, middle-class – running for mayor in a
small Montana town isn’t unusual or particularly noteworthy, but a
Nigerian-born Muslim running for mayor of a small Montana town
is. News is not apart from culture, but fueled by cultural history and
traditional practice.9
As society changes so does the news. Cultural norms change and
evolve, and cultural norms in part dictate what is news. Journalists
working in today’s multicultural society should cultivate a wide array
of sources from all walks of life. This will help them to note what parts
of cultural norms are quietly but inevitably changing. This on-the-
ground knowledge will certainly help when advocacy groups and
political pundits hold press conferences to advertise their perspec-
tives on societal changes; journalists will have more than a single per-
spective to draw on in deciding these events’ newsworthiness.
133
One thing that strikes me, as a reporter in the Middle East, is that
it’s very easy to hear what you want to hear. Sometimes it’s a little
harder to let people say what they want to say.
Anthony Shadid, Washington Post reporter10
THE CONSEQUENCES OF OUR ATTENTION

What people find prominent or noticeable has consequences. Atten-
tion affects our perceptions of someone’s influence over events, and
also how we evaluate other people and events. So, a person who
stands out in a group is seen as more influential. Simply because she
stands out, she’s credited with characteristics she may not possess.11
When 16-year-old Greta Thunberg spoke12 at the United Nations Cli-
mate Change Summit in 2019, she stood out due to her youth among
the adults present at the summit. Thunberg, while a prominent cli-
mate activist, is not in a formal position of power within the United
Nations, despite her easy recognition in the crowd.
The lesson for journalists, especially when encountering breaking
events with little background or orienting information, is to avoid
assigning characteristics and influence to a source without evidence.
Watch, listen and use that extra sense called common sense to figure
out new situations.
Giving someone our attention also has the effect of exaggerating
our existing judgments about the person.13 If a journalist views a
defendant in a criminal proceeding negatively, the increased attention
via their news coverage can cause them to view the defendant even
more negatively. Of course, reporters will have private judgments, so
professional training and awareness of our attention become essential.
A reporter covering the court trial must keep their attention on the
empirical evidence, so that conclusions made in the resulting news
account are based in fact.
Attraction to Vividness
The brain loves a treat: It is wired to pay attention to things that are
vivid. Information that is vivid is emotionally interesting, concrete
and close to us, in terms of our senses (first-hand information), in real
134
time (the event happened just yesterday) or in actual space (the event
happened in our own community).14 Vivid information produces
strong mental images. This is important because vividly presented
information engenders memory. We tend to recall information pre-
sented vividly far more readily than information presented in a dull
way.15 Like the way you remember the dramatic attire of a classmate
better than the day’s lecture. People remember a car crash they passed
on the way to work far more easily than the day’s dip in the stock
market.
Journalists in the 21st century are well acquainted with the power
of vividness. Their news organizations encourage them to seek
approaches to stories that will make a clear impression on news con-
sumers. The livelier the lead and images accompanying the story, the
more online hits it is likely to receive. This is why personal anecdotes
often lead stories about abstract topics, such as the mortgage crisis or
contaminants in drinking water. It is also why news stories are often
paired with engaging or emotionally-charged photos.
Vivid information is also concrete and imagery-producing. Com-
pare “Jack sustained fatal injuries in a car accident” with “Jack was
killed by a semitrailer that rolled over on his car and crushed his
skull.”16 Journalists use the power of vividness often in conveying the
news. It is a useful tool that captures audiences’ attention. Knowl-
edgeable journalists know how to take the basic recipe (explaining
federal healthcare changes for low-income children) and add enough
tasty ingredients (personal anecdotes, an interactive graphic) to make
consumers want to take a bite of their stories.
Digital Media and the Attention Economy
The news business, as we learned in Chapter 2, has a bias toward the

immediate, the visual and the extreme. The news business plays up
these elements in the digital age of news delivery. Social media posts
by news outlets and journalists, notifications of updated stories and
trending video are all about getting news audiences’ attention.
U.S. adults spent on average 451 minutes daily on digital media in
2020,17 with an additional 229 minutes (almost four hours) watching
television on a daily basis, according to a study undertaken in April
2020. Daily radio consumption averaged 95 minutes, with newspapers
and magazines averaging nine and eight minutes, respectively. The
135
American economist, political scientist and cognitive psychologist

Herbert A. Simon in 1971 first conceptualized18 the idea of attention
as an economic principle. In today’s digital society, the attention econ-
omy is real. Our attention is in short supply, divided as it is among all
the media formats on one’s smartphone alone.
We live in an attention economy, and news media is just one tiny
slice of the media programming competing for audience attention. The
temptation is to sensationalize and exaggerate coverage in order to
earn a bit more of that attention. Journalists now consider how a story
will present on a smartphone, and shorter sentences and paragraphs
are part of the evolution in writing based on how mobile audiences
consume the news. Another change is more video to tell stories, as
audiences, particularly younger consumers, prefer that format.
News Frames and Audience Attention
The conclusions that journalists make about an event shape the news
story. Within each news account, certain elements get more attention
than others, and some elements are left out completely. This selection
and emphasis of information is called framing. Framing is the mag-
nifying or shrinking of elements to make them more or less salient,
which means information that is noticeable, meaningful or memora-
ble to an audience. In journalism, frames define problems, diagnose
causes, make judgments and offer remedies.19 The focus of journalists’
attention affects news frames and, in turn, news frames direct news
audiences’ attention.
News frames are useful to journalists, especially as journalists
are under constant deadline pressure due to the nature of digital
media. News frames allow journalists to quickly process lots of
material and convey it to a general audience, putting it in some log-
ical order and focus for their audience. A news frame guides a jour-
nalist in sorting through which details of a story to include, which
to emphasize and which to exclude. You can likely see the danger in
that as well, as information is neatly slotted into the predetermined
news frame set by the news outlet or reporter. News frames don’t
necessarily yield inaccurate news accounts, but they can result in
accounts that give a news audience a very distinct take on an event.
Here’s an example:
136
After actor and comedian Bill Cosby did a national stand-up

tour in 2013, numerous allegations of sexual assault surfaced, some
going back almost 30 years. Thirty-five of the women told their sto-
ries to New York Magazine in 2015. Cosby maintained that the sexual
encounters were consensual. In 2018, Cosby was convicted of sexual
assault and sentenced in 2018 to three to ten years in Pennsylvania
state prison.
An analysis of news framing selected three news outlets chosen
for their conservative (Fox News), liberal (CNN) and entertainment
focus (E!), to explore whether and how they framed the Cosby sexual
assault allegations differently. Their conclusion? “Although all net-
works address Cosby’s rise and fall of an American hero, agendas set
and story frames presented varied.”20
“CNN, for instance, reported on the powerful role victims/survivors

have with the Cosby case and also wrote about taking a stand
against rape significantly more than the other networks did. Thus,
with an agenda setting perspective, the CNN audience will begin
to view the issue of sexual assault as a social issue that needs re-
adjusting,” the researchers conclude.21
E! and FOX News highlighted Cosby’s support from the black com-
munity, celebrities and co-stars.22
The results show that all three networks tell the same story in
different ways. By only consuming one news outlet’s version of the
story, respective audiences aren’t getting the big picture. To protect
against a single-framing of relevant events, news audiences – and news
reporters – should read widely. “Researchers argue that exposing one-
self to various different frames, or news outlets, not only creates an open
mind, but also contributes in a better understanding of the story along
with the social implications within the story,” the researchers state.
They quote other scholars on media framing, seconding this state-
ment: “Exposing yourself to very different ways of seeing the world
helps to make your own culture more transparent. We learn compar-
isons and come to recognize the assumption and unreflective accep-
tance of our own way of doing things.”23
Frames and fairness. Journalists need to be aware of the power
of framing on accuracy and fairness. The way that journalists frame
137
a story often reflects broader cultural themes and priorities. The

words, phrases and images journalists use to portray a news event
may result in significantly different portrayals of the same event and
lead to different audience reactions. The presentation of public issues
and events affects how news consumers understand them.24
Consider news coverage of a Ku Klux Klan rally in a small Ohio
city. In an experiment, one group of participants watched a local tele-
vision news segment that “emphasized the right of KKK members to
speak to the public and, especially, the right of their supporters and
the curious to hear what the Klan had to say.”25 The second group of
participants watched a segment on the same event that instead “high-
lighted the disturbances that erupted during the rally and included
images of police officers in riot gear.”26 The participants who saw a
news story framing the rally as a matter of free speech expressed
greater tolerance for the Klan than those who saw the story as one of
potential violence.
Framing signals to news consumers what to care about and how
to interpret events and people.27 One framing analysis showed how
the downing by the United States of an Iranian plane was called “a
technical problem,” but the Soviets shooting down a Korean jet was
“portrayed as a moral outrage.”28 How news consumers likely interpret
the event depends on the news frame. In another example, how peo-
ple assigned responsibility for the causes of poverty was dependent on
news frames. Research participants blamed either society at large or
the actual individuals in poverty, respectively, depending on whether
the news media presented poverty as a general outcome or presented
poverty through specific, individual cases.29
Just because the news media covers a story doesn’t mean that news
consumers pay attention. Sometimes the news coverage does not
mirror the interests of news consumers. For instance, the coverage of
Osama bin Laden’s death by U.S. forces dominated 69 percent of the
news stories in one week in May 2011, a near-record amount of news
coverage; but only 42 percent of people polled said they followed the
news of the Al Qaeda leader’s killing more closely than other news
that week. One in five consumers were interested in news about tor-
nadoes and floods in the South and Midwest, but news organizations
devoted only five percent of coverage that week to those stories.30
Coverage does not always follow audience interest, even with met-
rics and analytics telling journalists what interests audiences. The
138
professional criteria for what is newsworthy are powerful, and promi-

nent individuals such as Osama bin Laden being killed in a secret mil-
itary operation are exciting and gripping. However, when measured
against the relevance of damage wrought by natural disasters on the
daily life of U.S. residents, the tornadoes and floods were far more
top-of-the-mind. Relevance does not always supersede drama in news
decisions. This decision may also be due to news outlets appealing to
their often-used, high-ranking sources in the military and in the gov-
ernment, for whom the bin Laden story was paramount.
Visuals and framing. Framing can also be accomplished effectively
through visuals. Visual framing includes the practice of selecting one
image instead of another, cropping out certain details or otherwise
editing the image. For example, showing many images of cheering
people at a parade can give the impression of far more public support
for a candidate or cause than may actually be the case. Have you ever
been to an event and then watched coverage of it on television and
thought, “That’s not what I experienced at all”? Your reaction could
be due to news media’s framing of the event. Think about the impact
on public opinion regarding an underdog presidential candidate when
audiences are shown images of wildly cheering crowds versus sullen
faces at the very same political rally. “A picture can stand for a thou-
sand words, but must also replace a thousand other pictures.”31
pause & consider

Search online for two different images from the same news
event and compare their content. Describe the frames
being used to depict the event.
In news stories, visual framing can convey meanings that might be

controversial or meet audience resistance if spelled out in text. One
area of news coverage in which this occurs is the portrayal of African
Americans in negative news accounts. Here, images provide subtle
stereotyping through implication and suggestion.
For example, a story about AIDS on a Dallas television station didn’t
verbally state that race and ethnicity were involved, but by repeatedly
139
using images of African Amer-

Images can often convey icans dancing in nightclubs,
controversial meaning in more stereotypes of black sexuality
subtle ways than text does.
were reinforced, researchers
found.32 In another instance,
an NBC evening news story
about people moving from welfare to work in the 1990s showed a pre-
ponderance of images of African Americans. The first 14 shots were of
Black people, giving the sense that most people on welfare were Black,
though the voice-over did not explicitly state so.33
JOURNALISM AND THE ETHICS OF ATTENTION

If the unusual and abnormal attract our attention, then emphasizing
what is different from the norm serves to emphasize the norm. But
whose norm is being emphasized? Is there an overarching mainstream,
traditional, American Cultural Norm? If so, is that the norm news
organizations should use as their guidepost in determining whether
events, people and ideas deviate from it? What do journalists do in a
global society in which the news audience represents a multitude of
cultures, and when perhaps even the immediate community is highly
diverse? These questions probe how news shapes values and society,
and journalists’ responsibility to reflect all members of a society.
pause & consider

Take a moment and free write or talk informally with a col-
league about the questions raised in the paragraph above.
One way the news media tells consumers what is normal is by show-
ing them what is deviant.34 The news media can marginalize a group
by portraying its members in a way that diminishes their validity or
by simply by ignoring them. Social change, for instance, can be seen
as innovative and enriching the current society, or it can be seen as a
threat that upsets the status quo, a breakdown of normal operations
that may lead to violence.35
140
News media legitimize the traditional and entrenched systems of

power and privilege in America when reporters pay attention exclu-
sively to official sources and spokespeople. A focus on prominent and
powerful people also contributes to this legitimization. So does neg-
ative coverage of events and ideas that run counter to the status quo.
This coverage of the dominant order of society serves to only enforce
that dominance.
Upholding Journalistic Standards
Excellent journalists keep their attention focused on journalism’s prin-

ciples. As the world changes and diversifies, the tenets that journalists
hold as sure and true become all the more important. Professional
standards relating to priorities in news coverage remind journalists to
broaden the scope of their attention. The principles of the Project for
Excellence in Journalism36 urge journalists to:
• Place society’s varied viewpoints and interests in context,

instead of presenting only extremes and conflicts.
• Give attention in terms of news coverage that is proportional
to the event. “Inflating events for sensation, neglecting
others, stereotyping or being disproportionately negative
all make a less reliable map” by which citizens can navigate
society.
• Serve as an independent monitor of power. Journalists
should be watchdogs of those in authority in a society.
Filling the Gaps in Attention
Journalists can apply professional training and engage in reflective

practice (as discussed in Chapter 2) to consider where their attention
is focused even mid-story. Journalists cannot help what the mind is
naturally programmed to notice. The schoolgirl wearing a hijab amid
a classroom of bare heads may be visually notable. Fires and may-
hem will and should always get coverage. Yet reflection, however
brief, can reveal gaps in attention. It might include questions such
as: What do I know and still need to know?37 Did I cover all perspec-
tives of this event? Who might have a stake in this issue or event
that I haven’t checked in with yet? Did one source in particular get
141
special attention, perhaps too much? Why did I notice that? How do
I know that? Journalists need to knowthey can justify their thinking
and decisions to colleagues, stakeholders in the issue at hand and the
greater public.
Minding Attentional Blind Spots
Additional ways in which journalists can focus their attention on rel-

evant news events and topics that broaden the scope of quality cov-
erage include:
Look for the invisible. Because people naturally turn their atten-
tion to the novel and extreme, journalists need to train themselves to
look where others don’t naturally look. One of the most important
things about attention is to note what isn’t being noticed. Plenty of
significant news is not vivid, dramatic or immediately threatening,
such as the quiet decline in the number of U.S. children living in fam-
ilies where no parent had full-time, year-round employment, down to
18.3 million in 2019 from 24.1 million in 2010.38
The results of parental unemployment for children are an increased
risk of poor health and poor performance at school, as well as a
reduction of benefits that come from stable economic conditions at
home (the opportunity to enroll in music lessons or a baseball league,
to have friends over for a birthday party or to have new shoes). Kids
are easily ignored by society at large. They don’t protest; they don’t
vote; they don’t pay taxes. But their welfare has far-reaching impli-
cations for the greater public, including the strength of the future
workforce and an engaged citizenry.
Don’t follow the pack. Just because a majority of the U.S. news
media anoint an event, person or idea as newsworthy doesn’t mean
it is significant or meaningful to most of the population. What is
newsworthy is a cognitive concept; it is a mental judgment.39 Often,
the most newsworthy angle is the one that best informs the reality
of everyday citizens. This is why solid beat reporting is so valuable.
Talk to everyday sources about their everyday concerns. Follow online
trends. Notice what people talk about on their social media accounts.
Then do the reporting that provides critical, informed coverage about
the public’s concerns.
Christi Parsons, who covered the Obama presidential campaign in
2008 for the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, says she enjoyed
142
diving into campaign crowds to talk with people who made the effort
to attend public events. Going beyond campaign speeches and press
handlers, Parsons sought a context beyond the pack journalism of the
campaign bus. She explains40:
On Assignment
When you’re on the campaign bus, it’s easy to narrow
your focus to the news happening within the campaign
“bubble.” The frame of reference is very limited; it’s
just that bus, and the staffers and the candidate on it.
Of course, in order to develop sources, break news and
develop a deep understanding of the candidate and cam-
paign, you simply can’t do without the bus experience.
It’s beneficial to have reporters rotate off the bus and
to take turns being “ground support” for one another.
The job of the ground support team is to pull back the
lens, to see more and report more. Those reporters are
working the telephones, meeting with sources in person,
flying around the country and jumping into other cam-
paign bubbles to develop the fuller picture.
Within the context of the campaign operation,
reporters are getting similar information. And they are
analyzing it in a similar way because their contextual
information is so similar. The people who are free to pull
back the lens and look at trends and patterns and eval-
uate things with a broader view are fewer and farther
between.
There is less immediate reward for news outlets and
news writers to think about things that way. Sometimes,
the thinking is, “Quick, what’s the next thing we can put
on the website?” It’s not the long view. It’s very short-
sighted. We have to be disciplined and determined in
order to rise above that.
143
pause & consider

Parsons notes that there is “less immediate reward” for news
writers who try to evaluate things with a broader view. Dis-
cuss what that means and how it matters in digital journalism.
Make the dull shine. Strive to make the significant interesting and
relevant. Vivid information is not necessarily the most important infor-
mation to relay to news consumers.41 Overreliance on vivid information
can lead to errors of perception and judgment, such as the striking per-
sonal anecdote that only tenuously relates to the rest of the news story.
Select what is truly informative over what is merely vivid.
The rising cost of food might not sound like a gripping news story,
but the weekly struggle to feed a family on only food stamps can be
the most important story of the day if told through telling details. The
incremental, complex business decisions that compounded into the
national financial meltdown and banking crisis that began in 2008
were not vivid, but the fallout from the crisis was, from homelessness
to bankruptcies.
Challenge the status quo. Challenge it in your newsroom and in
society. Question formulaic news coverage decisions in a newsroom
or editorial meeting, inviting colleagues to reframe issues and consider
them from different angles. This requires you to follow your own moral
compass; journalists should have a personal conscience, a sense of eth-
ics and responsibility that guides their work.42 Journalists obviously
need not embrace all ideas and all types of people as equally newswor-
thy, but they should strive to notice as much of the world as humanly
possible, avoiding selective attention to an elite few in authority.
1. Watch where your attention takes you.
a. Pair up with a peer, preferably one who is different from you
in a specific way, such as in regional background, political
ideology, gender/sexual orientation or physical ability.
144
b. Attend an event neither of you have been to before. During

the event, take notes on what grabs your attention.
c. If you do not have time to attend an event together, select
a television show or movie to watch, taking notes on what
seems significant to you about the script, set and characters
and what got your attention.
d. Compare your findings to those of your peer: What did
you notice that your peer didn’t? What did you ignore or
miss that your peer didn’t? What might be reasons for the
differences or similarities in what caught your attention?
e. Compare and contrast your separate perceptions in a brief
presentation to a training group or class.
2. Review the top three stories over three to five days in your local
news outlets. Select the stories from the student newspaper, a
community radio station or an online local news site, and evaluate
its coverage of current institutions, leadership, laws and policies.
Decide whether or not the coverage furthers the status quo of your
community. Consider how critical the coverage is. Are reporters ask-
ing sources: “How do you know? Why should people trust that?
Who says so?”
a. To do this review, record at least two of the following
elements: The types of sources used (official or non-officials)
and how often they are used; the types of story topics
selected and their relative placement in the broadcast or
online layout; which stories get visuals and the nature of the
visuals used; the emphasis of the lead; the word choice – in
particular note the verbs used to describe sources’ positions
on issues.
b. Summarize your findings in a brief memo and state whether
or not the coverage challenges current norms or provides
a broader perspective on the community. Give specific
examples to support your conclusion.
3. Award-winning journalist Marshall Allen of the Las Vegas Sun says
that journalists need to “earn readers’ attention”43 by writing from
the readers’ point of view. See an example of how Allen and his
colleague Alex Richards did this in their series on the thousands
of cases of injuries, infections and deaths associated with patient
stays in Las Vegas hospitals. The story is told in a variety of ways,
including through primary documents, text, photos, videos and
interactive maps. The series, called “Do No Harm: Hospital Care
in Las Vegas,” is online and also accessible through your library’s
newspaper database.
145
a. After reviewing the series, discuss in a small group how Allen

and Richards earned your attention.
b. Identify the form of storytelling that was most engaging for
you and explain why and how it attracted and kept your
attention.
4. Keep an attention journal for two days.
a. On the first day, log entries at least three times a day
(breakfast, lunch and dinner works well) about what was
most noticeable about your routine environment in the last
few hours.
b. On the second day, with the entries of the day before in
mind, notice different aspects of your daily regimen. Also log
entries three times a day. As you travel to work or school,
note the people you normally see (or don’t see), the language
you overhear, the visual details around you.
c. Note any new information in your entries on the second day.
Think about how you might employ this same devotion to
noticing new things in your next reporting assignment.
FOR REVIEW
• Summarize basic qualities that attract humans’

attention and link as many of them as possible with
a corresponding news value. (You’ll likely repeat the
same news value more than once.)
• Analyze how a news outlet has framed a text or
visual news account.
• Identify a news story that you think indicates that
the journalist “looked for the invisible” or didn’t
“follow the pack.”
NOTES

146
News: Using Biological and Cultural Evolution to Explain the Surveil-

lance Function,” Journal of Communication 46(3), 32–47.
3 Kennamer, J.D. (1998). “News Values and the Vividness of Information,”
Written Communication 5(1), 108–123.
4 Shoemaker, “Hardwired for News.”
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Shoemaker, P.J., & Reese, S.D. (1996). Mediating the Message: Theories of
Influences on Mass Media Content, 2nd ed. White Plains, NY: Longman.
8 Shoemaker, P.J., Danielian, L.H., & Brendlinger, N. (1991). “Deviant Acts,
Risky Business and U.S. Interests: The Newsworthiness of World Events,”
Journalism Quarterly 68(4), 781–795.
9 Koch, T. (1990). The News as Myth: Fact and Context in Journalism.
Westport, CT: Greenwood Press; Shoemaker, “Hardwired for News.”
10 Shadid, A. (June 15, 2004). “The Iraq Experience Poses Critical Ques-
tions for Journalists.” Nieman Reports. Retrieved 12/12/2020 from:
https://niemanreports.org/articles/the-iraq-experience-poses-critical-
questions-for-journalists/
11 Fiske & Taylor, Social Cognition: From Brains to Culture.
12 Milman, O. (September 23, 2019). “Greta Thunberg Condemns
World Leaders in Emotional Speech at UN.” The Guardian. Retrieved
12/12/2020 from: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/
sep/23/greta-thunberg-speech-un-2019-address
13 Fiske & Taylor.
14 Nisbett, R., & Ross, L. (1980). “Human Inference: Strategies and Short-
comings of Social Judgment.” In: James J. Jenkins, Walter Mischel, and
Willard W. Hartup, eds. Century Psychology Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall.
15 Nisbett & Ross, p. 47.
16 Ibid.
17 eMarketer. (April, 2020). “Average Time Spent with Major Media Per Day
in the United States as of April 2020, by format.” Statista.
18 Simon, H.A. (1971). Designing Organizations for an Information-Rich
World. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 37–52.
19 Entman, R.M. (1991). “Framing U.S. Coverage of International News:
Contrasts in Narratives of the KAL and Iran Air Incidents,” Journal of
Communication 41(4), 6–27.
20 Terán, L., & Emmers-Sommer, T.M. (2018). “‘The Destruction of a Leg-
acy’: Agenda Setting and the Bill Cosby Sexual Assault Allegations,” Sex-
uality & Culture 22, 63–89. doi: 10.1007/s12119-017-9453-7, p. 63.
21 Ibid., p. 75.
22 Ibid., p. 63.
147
148
149
7
Critical Decisions
before Deadline
Why Even Experienced Journalists
Neglect Certain Facts and What to
Do About It
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To define and identify confirmation bias.

• To understand how confirmation bias and deadline pressure affect the
information-gathering process.
• To be aware of biases in judgments that can affect thinking.
• To recognize how accountability may improve accuracy.
DEADLINE PRESSURE CAN AFFECT JUDGMENT

Actor Jussie Smollett, one of the stars of the FOX drama series Empire,
reported to Chicago police in January 2019 that two men had attacked
him near his apartment building while he was getting food from a
Subway sandwich shop around 2 a.m.
Smollett, who is Black and gay, said the men walked up, yelled
racial and homophobic slurs at him, including “This is MAGA coun-
try,” hit him and slid a noose around his neck.
Within a day, social media, politicians, celebrities and some news
reports were decrying the incident as a hate crime.
After three weeks of investigation, Chicago authorities charged
Smollett with disorderly conduct, alleging he filed a false police report
151
CRITICAL DECISIONS BEFORE DEADLINE
and lied to authorities about the incident. Prosecutors dropped the

charges the following month, then filed new charges nearly a year later
accusing the actor of allegedly staging a hate crime against himself.
The yo-yo of events, charges and news accounts came in a year in
which more hate crimes were reported than in any year in more than a
decade, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In 2019,
there were 7, 314 hate crime incidents, 200 more than the prior year.1
More than half were motived by race/ethnicity, followed by religion and
sexual orientation. The likelihood of the case being a fake was small but
not infinitesimal, depending on the researcher you listen to; the inci-
dence of fake or falsified hate crimes ranges from half of 1 percent to as
much as 15 percent of the hate crimes reported to the FBI.2
pause & consider

When a well-known person reports a hate crime allegedly
perpetrated by unknown people, complete with vivid
details, how should journalists on deadline report the story?
How can journalists check Smollett’s version on deadline?
THE CONFIRMATION BIAS

Confirmation bias is the tendency people have to seek, interpret and
remember information that reinforces their preconceptions. A confir-
mation bias happens when people give more weight to evidence that
confirms their hypothesis and undervalue evidence that could disprove
it. It often takes more mental energy to reconsider a hypothesis than
to find ways to fit information into an existing framework or decision.
When the confirmation bias is at work in reporting, we see journalists
searching for, interpreting or remembering information in ways that
support their hypothesis or story angle – whether or not the hypothesis
is actually true. The best way to test a hypothesis is to try to disprove it.
But too often, people try to confirm their hypotheses instead.3
Certainly, the Smollett case was a way for journalists to demon-
strate and humanize the rise in hate crimes. Says NPR’s Sam Sanders,
host of the program, “It’s Been a Minute”:
152
I think a lot of well-intentioned journalists glommed onto this story to

advocate for those victims and to draw attention to this overall uptick
in hate crimes . . . as reporters, we have to be very careful about
using the stories we cover as activism.4
Some news reports tended to include in their stories the outpour-

ing of support for Smollett from organizations and celebrities. For
example, an NBC Today show segment by Miguel Almaguer a day
after Smollett filed a report to Chicago police states that Smol-
lett “tells police he’s the victim of a brutal beating that took place
on this Chicago street,” as footage shows the location.5 The piece
includes a social media post by Empire creator Lee Daniels showing
Smollett in the hospital and states that Lee said that the attack was
“a cowardly act.”
The NBC piece emphasizes that the police had no suspects and
were expanding the investigation to include cameras that may have
picked up the incident. The majority of the piece is devoted to pro-
fessions of support: A friend of Smollett on camera, snippets of social
media posts by prominent celebrities, a video tweeted by actor Steve
Harvey about the bigotry of the attack. The segments end with logos
of the NAACP and GLAAD, who were “also among the chorus con-
demning the heinous crime, the one Smollett says took place on these
Chicago streets,” narrates Almaguer.
Other outlets, such as a piece in the Wall Street Journal, were
business-like in their reporting of the facts as known at the time. The
Wall Street Journal’s matter-of-fact reporting approach may also be
because the outlet is text-based and not broadcast, but it did not men-
tion the public support being shown Smollett.
The bias of journalists toward celebrity may have contributed to the
coverage of the alleged attack, and the liberal bent of some news orga-
nizations may have also con-
tributed to the coverage, given
Confirmation bias is the the MAGA-wearing hats of the
tendency for people to search
faceless attackers. A history of
for, interpret or remember
information to support a discrimination against people
preconception and ignore of color and against people who
contradictory information. are gay is part of the backdrop
for this event as well.
153
Recognizing Confirmation Bias
The Smollett story is useful in illustrating the effects of the confirma-

tion bias. In the absence of certainty, one’s thinking pursues what it
seeks to confirm, what it believes to be true. What journalists should
have done is rigorously stress that the story was still unfolding, that
the allegations were not proven, that many details were still unclear.
“Journalists have to be more comfortable saying, hey, some stories,
we won’t have all the answers,” says Sanders. “We have to say, we’re
not psychics, and we’re never a judge and jury. We just don’t know
sometimes.”
Actions resulting from confirmation bias can lead a reporter
to unfairly or incorrectly portray a person or group of people in
the news, especially when a story is still developing and there is
heightened interest in it. Researchers have explored many aspects
of confirmation bias, and many of their findings can be applied to
journalism. For instance, reporters succumbing to confirmation
bias might6:
• Remember information that confirms the hypothesis or story

angle better than information that disconfirms it.
• Seek out only sources that they think will support their
hypothesis.
• Treat sources critical of the hypothesis in an aggressive or
argumentative way.
• Interpret ambiguous responses in a way that infers
hypothesis confirmation.
• Give the comments of sources supporting the hypothesis
emphasis, space or more prominence in a story.
• Evaluate sources and information confirming the hypothesis
less critically.
• Regard disconfirming information as unusual, superficial or
of poor quality.
Social Media Enhances Confirmation Bias
Social media encourages the confirmation bias in users. Why? Because

social media companies rely on formulas called algorithms that adapt
154
to what we have liked, retweeted and shared. To keep us online and

scrolling, the algorithms keep feeding us content similar to what we’ve
enjoyed in the past, and it’s usually information we agree with. The
algorithms that social media platforms use are programmed to figure
out what media we like to consume, and they feed us more of it – a lot
more. We stay in a comfortable, agreeable “filter bubble” of our own
making.
“A filter bubble is your own personal universe of information that’s
been generated by algorithms that are trying to guess what you’re
interested in,” says Eli Pariser,7 author of The Filter Bubble: What the
Internet Is Hiding from You. “And increasingly online we live in these
bubbles. They follow us around. They form part of the fabric of most
websites that we visit and I think we’re starting to see how they’re
creating some challenges for democracy.”
The concern for journalists is clear; we have to actively cultivate
a variety of online sources to ensure we are the ones who determine
what we get fed, and not some algorithm that is based on criteria we
have no clue about. (One tip is to like everything on a social media
platform, for instance, so the site’s algorithm really doesn’t know what
you like!).
The Story Process and Confirmation Bias
At several stages in the story process, confirmation bias can play a

role.
Categorizing Information
First, journalists take new information, such as that many rural Amer-
icans were an important voting block in the 2016 presidential election,
and place it in a mental category (or schema; see Chapter 3) based on
their past experiences and knowledge. The category will influence how
reporters interpret and weigh any subsequent information they discover.
Once a news event is slotted into a category in a journalist’s mind,
ideas take shape about story angles and story focus. Here’s a com-
mon news story category during each presidential election cycle: Por-
traying people living in rural America as white, poorly educated and
angry about elite politicians. Reporters often only seek out people
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in rural America for the requisite political story about “voters in the
Heartland.”
Sarah Smarsh, a reporter who specializes in socioeconomic class
and politics for national and international news outlets, wrote a
book about her experiences with class and place growing up on a
farm in Kansas; it’s called “Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard
and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth.” Smarsh spoke to
the Journalist’s Resource about how reporters get the story of rural
America wrong and how to fix it. Here are some highlights from that
interview8:
Diversity: Rural areas are much more racially diverse than one would
think from reading national headlines . . . Those parts of the country
have always been much more than white people, and as we speak
they are diversifying, in some places quite rapidly, often due to an
influx in immigrant populations taking jobs in industries like industrial
agriculture and meatpacking plants.
On Finding Connections: There’s this obsession with how these

places are different, and there is some validity to that, but I think it
is dangerously exaggerated and, in fact, people are essentially quite
similar in rural and urban places.
In that fixation on difference, an opportunity is missed that would

even be of good service to urban readers: to explore, report on
and establish the direct lines of connection and economic flow in
the way in which the lifeblood of this country courses across these
borders that we construct . . . If you eat food, for example, rural
America touches you every day . . . I think that reporters have a really
overlooked opportunity to talk about the ways in which these spaces
are connected, and how that affects us just in very tangible practical
ways, and that is in one part a frame that gets us past this idea of
cultural divides – but it’s also just an important story that nobody is
telling.
On Language: I have definitely noticed in my 15-plus years as a

reporter that journalists are more given to correcting the language of
sources who are middle- or upper-class or are government officials
or they are experts in some field – if they mis-conjugate a verb,
that’s problematic for the reporter . . . If they’re interviewing tornado
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victims at a trailer park, I find that the industry almost delights in

shining a light on their supposed misuse of the English language.
Ask yourself, are you here to document the sound of a place? In

that case, this question becomes a little bit more complicated. But
if you’re just there to get a story, you should be democratically
applying the same approach to direct quotes in rural America as in
Washington D.C.
Forming a Story Angle
Angles naturally stem from the category into which the story is
placed in a journalist’s mind. If, for instance, a reporter and editor
have seen one too many stories about how opiod addiction starts with
a prescription from a doctor for a pain killer and then balloons into
a full-on addiction, then that is the story angle the reporter pursues
in seeking sources. The category is “good” people who are led into
addiction after a surgery or medical procedure, and the greedy phar-
maceutical industry pushing drugs on hapless patients. But that is not
the full picture, even though many reporters fall into that story angle.
Maia Szalavitz wrote about this bias toward confirming an angle on
the story for Columbia Journalism Review (CJR).9 She began her piece
for CJR this way:
After Jillian Bauer-Reese created an online collection of opioid

recovery stories, she began to get calls for help from reporters. But
she was dismayed by the narrowness of the requests, which sought
only one type of interviewee.
“They were looking for people who had started on a prescription

from a doctor or a dentist,” says Bauer-Reese, an assistant professor
of journalism at Temple University in Philadelphia. “They had
essentially identified a story that they wanted to tell and were looking
for a character who could tell that story.”
Reporting the Story
The story angle is then tested through reporting, which gets at the
questions asked, how they are asked and to whom. If a confirmation
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bias is in full force, the journalist can select sources sympathetic to

the story angle and ask them leading questions to elicit responses
that support the story hypothesis. The journalist can aggressively
question sources contradicting the hypothesis and interpret ambig-
uous answers in favor of that angle. This focus in the opioid addic-
tion story leads to reporters focused on one kind of source: The
innocent victim angle. This angle also perpetuates racist stereotypes
about drug abuse.
“Highlighting ‘innocent’ white people whose opioid addiction
seems to have begun in a doctor’s office sets up a clear contrast with
the ‘guilt’ of people whose addiction starts on the streets,” writes
Szalavitz.
In order to do better, journalists must recognize that addiction is
not simply a result of exposure to a drug, and that “innocence”
isn’t at issue. The critical risk factors for addiction are child
trauma, mental illness, and economic factors like unemployment
and poverty. The “innocent victim” narrative focuses on
individual choice and ignores these factors, along with the
dysfunctional nature of the entire system that determines a drug’s
legal status.10
Finishing the Story
All journalists, regardless of mindset, have to decide when to stop

reporting and conclude that the story is ready for online, broadcast or
print. Confirmation bias comes into play when this decision is prema-
ture and made because an easy or an anticipated answer is reached.
The brain is “frozen,” or closed, to new information. The coverage
often ends once the story angle is confirmed.
The decision to stop reporting is often compounded by deadline
pressure. Journalists are under the dual pressures of having to report
accurately and quickly. One study found that the most frequent
reason for ending the reporting and research process was deadline
pressure.11 Exhibit 7.1 summarizes the tensions at play for journal-
ists as they decide whether or not to stop reporting. The decision
depends on both the time allowed to research a decision and the
need to avoid errors. These competing tensions are explored in the
next section.
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Knowing When to Keep Going
When journalist Andrew Martin was at the New York Times, he was
assigned the banking beat at the tail end of the 2008 financial crisis.
One story he reported involved whether people were being unfairly
kicked out of their homes because of paperwork problems or because
they couldn’t pay their mortgages. The latter scenario might indicate a
fairly straightforward story involving class – people with low incomes
extending beyond their means to buy a home. But in the excerpt below,
Martin describes the information-gathering and evaluation process
that he and his colleague followed to report this problem that touched
homeowners of all incomes throughout the United States. Martin had
to actively suspend any allegiance to a specific story angle to be open
to all kinds of information and differing perspectives in the reporting.
EXHIBIT 7.1 FREEZING OUT INFORMATION
A journalistic tension exists between beating the competition by being the

first to publish and reporting a story fully so it is accurate. Research12 shows
that:
The Digital
FREEZING Compromise UNFREEZING
If people are under in- With online news sites, If people know their
creased time pressure, journalists can publish judgments will be eval-
such as a story deadline, incomplete but accurate uated (such as by news
their minds quit gath- information and keep re- audiences) and accu-
ering information and porting, filling in gaps in racy is important, they
stop considering alter- knowledge with online delay “freezing” their
nate hypotheses more updates. This way, jour- search and allow their
quickly than if time nalists don’t completely minds to be open to
pressures didn’t exist. “freeze” the informa- new information and
tion-gathering part of possibilities.
the story process but can
also get news to con-
sumers quickly.
159
On Assignment
Some of the nation’s largest banks temporarily stopped
foreclosing on homes because of revelations that fraud-
ulent documents were being used to justify the fore-
closures in court. In short, the banks were handling
so many foreclosures that they had low-paid clerks
rubber-stamping affidavits – documents swearing that
the facts in the case are true – without actually verifying
the contents.
So anyway, as this story unfolded, two very differ-
ent versions of events emerged. While acknowledging
mistakes, the banks said that these were mere clerical
errors that could be fixed easily. And many argued that
these homeowners were “dead-beats” who weren’t pay-
ing their mortgage bills and who deserved to be evicted
once the paperwork problems were resolved.
The flip side of this, from consumer attorneys and
advocacy groups, was that this was yet another example
of the banks screwing consumers. Some argued that sub-
mitting fraudulent affidavits on the court was an affront
to the justice system that would take years to unravel.
And the lawyers for the homeowners argued that their
clients deserved some compensation, if not their homes.
How do you report a story that one side says is a non-
story and the other says is one of the biggest stories of the
decade? The answer is simply to talk to everyone –
the banks, the consumer types and the homeowners
themselves – and report what you find out.13
So for instance, in this story on the homeowners, we
stated up front that it may be impossible to know how
many homeowners have legitimate claims against the
banks. And then we laid out three different stories from
homeowners who say they were victims in some way,
attributing like hell what they were telling us.
160
As for confirmation bias, the only way to avoid that is

to make sure that you get – and understand – the other
sides’ viewpoints and give them a chance to express
those viewpoints in your story. It’s okay to have a work-
ing hypothesis, as long as you seek out and listen to the
other sides and accurately reflect their viewpoints in
your story.
If you can’t get the other sides’ views, the best thing
is to not run the story. If that’s not possible, or the other
sides don’t want to comment, then you need to show
that you made a sincere effort to get their perspectives.
Knowing When to Stop
Martin says he knows when he is finished reporting in part because

he feels comfortable writing a definitive sentence. Martin reported
the mortgage story over the span of a couple weeks while also jug-
gling other stories. When time pressure is an issue, Martin acknowl-
edges to readers what he is still uncertain about. The key, he says, is
to be honest and don’t fake what you don’t know. Some questions,
Martin adds, can’t be answered no matter how much reporting
is done.
Giving Both Sides
Once Martin and his colleague stopped gathering information and

crafted the final story for publication, they found that both sides were
right, to a degree. The banks had a credible argument that most of
the people affected were indeed delinquent on their mortgage pay-
ments and would ultimately lose their homes anyway. The critics were
right that the legal issues involved were far more complicated than the
banks were letting on.
Was the nationwide foreclosure story about class as well? Were the
people delinquent on their mortgages mostly lower class? The fore-
closure stories started out focusing on people of lower incomes, says
Martin, but as the economic recession continued, the foreclosures
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spread to middle- and even upper-class homeowners. The stories

became focused on geography, as the foreclosures became concen-
trated in a handful of states. Martin concluded that the perception
among some people (“primarily those with stable jobs and a comfort-
able living”) that those in foreclosure were all low-income deadbeats
was too narrow a view. The truth just wasn’t that simple.
pause & consider

When you know a story you are reporting is “done”? Obvi-
ously, deadline has a lot to do with it. But how do you know
when the full story is told?
OTHER JUDGMENT BIASES AND HEURISTICS

Confirmation bias is one of the more prevalent biases in human judg-
ment. But several others are also common and equally challenging
to the journalistic credo of accuracy. For journalists, decisions are
inherent in the job; they pepper the reporting process from story
selection to final editing, and typically they are private – an indi-
vidual journalist is often on their own in making these split-second
determinations. Each journalist has to be on the lookout for personal
biases as well as those of sources. Journalists can address mistakes in
judgment by:
• Understanding how good judgments are made.

• Understanding common errors in reasoning.
• Asking probing questions.
• Avoiding leading questions.
• Seeking evidence.
• Relying on probability over intuition.
Hardest of all is having the courage to recognize when the facts

don’t fully support the version of the story that will put it at the top
of the broadcast. As a reporter sorting through facts, anecdotes,
observations and quotes, remember that a story is only as good as
it is right.
162
pause & consider

Identify a news story from recent months in which a news
organization published too early, without complete facts
or with erroneous information. An example is the break-
ing news coverage of the shooting of U.S. Representative
Gabrielle Giffords in January 2011, which initially reported
that she had died.14 Discuss with peers how to put safe-
guards in place to catch mistakes before they go public.
Fortunately, many of the ways in which the brain works are highly
efficient and good enough for everyday living. Heuristics are mental
shortcuts or “rules of thumb” that allow people to make judgments
quickly and avoid constant thought about every action they take. In
general, these shortcuts are highly useful, though sometimes they
lead to serious errors.15 A very brief tour of five heuristics and biases
gives one a sense of why trusting our own or our sources’ hunches,
intuition, memory or gut is a bad idea if we’re aiming for journalis-
tic accuracy and fairness – particularly when covering people unlike
ourselves.
Representative Heuristic
This mental shortcut has to do with the way people tend to judge
probabilities on the basis of similarity. We judge things by comparing
them to concepts we already have in mind. Problems arise from such
generalization.16 For example, a journalist might interview a source
who favors a certain political candidate because the candidate fits
the source’s image of what a great leader is, even though the source
knows nothing about the candidate or the candidate’s platform.
Reporters need to be especially wary of such subjective judgments
by sources.
Reporters can fall into the representative heuristic, for instance,
when they extrapolate that an immigrant they interview is represen-
tative of all immigrants. It is easy to do when on deadline and rushing
to top a story with an anecdote or fill a need for a human touch in a
policy story. But ensure that you are not portraying someone as the
163
token representative of a group to which they belong. They are but one
member of a much larger, diverse group.
Availability Heuristic
People judge the probability of an event by the ease in which previ-

ous instances of it can be brought to mind. The more readily we can
think of instances of something happening, the more likely we think it
will be to happen again.17 This is called the availability heuristic. For
instance, a reporter might think to themself: This source is trying to get
me to investigate racial discrimination in hiring practices by the city.
Hmmm. I can think of two African Americans and a Native American
who got hired or promoted by the city in the past few years. I just don’t
see a story here.
With this bias, story leads go uninvestigated simply because of our
faulty logic that if we can remember something easily, it must be hap-
pening a lot.
We can see the availability heuristic at work when editors insist
that reporters find someone for an opioid addiction story who got
hooked through prescription pain killers. Likely the editors have seen
other news coverage that has popularized this fairly narrow path to
addiction and dependence. The story angle is available at the top of
their minds, so it gets remembered and promoted.
The Conjunction Fallacy
A third judgment flaw is the conjunction fallacy, which happens

when two events that can occur separately are seen as more likely to
occur together rather than separately. Again, the immigrant trope is
common here. Latinos and immigration, as well as immigrants and
crime, are often seen in conjunction in news stories.
For example, in two separate studies, one of news articles18 and one
of nightly news coverage,19 researchers found that general coverage of
America’s largest ethnic minority population was minimal, but when
news outlets did report on Latinos, they focused on immigration and
on negative stereotypes. “The primary topics of that meager cover-
age remain focused on Latinos as people with problems or causing
problems. In this case, on news related to immigration or crime, or at
times both combined.”20
164
The conjunction fallacy can mean that a journalist is too willing

to find connections that aren’t valid. The key is to test assumptions:
Because a woman is against abortion doesn’t mean she is a Repub-
lican, or vice versa. Because someone is over 70 doesn’t mean he is
no longer productive in the workforce. Because someone is from a
low-income area doesn’t mean the person didn’t go to (and finish,
with honors) college. The conjuction fallacy can lead reporters into an
“if this, then this” kind of thinking that is best addressed by ensuring
you have facts and evidence for every conclusion you make.
Anchoring Heuristic
A fourth bias is the anchoring heuristic. This is when people base

estimates and decisions on “anchors” or familiar positions and then
adjust for a final answer. However, people are typically biased toward
their initial position and don’t make sufficient adjustments. They
change their answer slightly relative to the anchor position without
thinking more critically about it.
For journalists, the anchoring bias can be wrongfully used, espe-
cially when conducting reader polls or in questioning sources, for
example. A journalist can lodge a number favoring a story angle into
the heads of sources, and most people will unknowingly base their
reactions on that number. As in: “Other metropolitan areas are raising
residential taxes by about $250 a year per homeowner to help pay for
housing for people who are homeless. Should our city council adjust
taxes more or less than that?” In reality, what other cities are doing
has little or nothing to do with the city in question. Due to current
housing, the number of homeless people and current tax levels, the
city may need to raise taxes by $500 a year to address the problem, or
find a way that doesn’t involve raising taxes at all! The $250 figure is
irrelevant. But it will now be stuck in people’s minds as they formulate
an answer.
Hindsight Bias
Anyone who watches TV news and certainly any reporter will find
hindsight bias instantly familiar. The hindsight bias describes how
people view something that has happened as being relatively inevita-
ble before it happened.
165
“People believe that others should have been able to anticipate

events much better than was actually the case. They even misremem-
ber their own predictions so as to exaggerate in hindsight what they
knew in foresight.”21 How many times have reporters interviewed a
neighbor after the kid next door committed a crime and the neigh-
bor said confidently: “I always knew that kid was a bad apple. I told
everyone who’d listen that he was trouble, and no one paid attention
to me”?
pause & consider

Select one of the judgment biases in the previous section
and identify a time at which you fell victim to it. Share your
recollection with a small group.
TOWARD BETTER DECISION-MAKING

Both the desire to be accurate and the expectation of accountability
can improve decision-making and keep reporters from falling into the
bias traps discussed in the previous section. For reporters, this should
be welcome news! After all, the journalism profession expects both
accuracy and accountability, as highlighted in the Society of Profes-
sional Journalists’ ethics code22:
• Seek truth and report it. Journalists should be honest, fair

and courageous in gathering, reporting and interpreting
information. Journalists should test the accuracy of
information from all sources and exercise care to avoid
inadvertent error. Deliberate distortion is never permissible.
• Minimize harm. Ethical journalists treat sources, subjects and
colleagues as human beings deserving of respect.
• Act independently. Journalists should be free of obligation to
any interest other than the public’s right to know.
• Be accountable. Journalists are accountable to their readers,
listeners, viewers and each other. Journalists should clarify
and explain news coverage and invite dialogue with the
public over journalistic conduct, encourage the public to
166
voice grievances against the news media, admit mistakes

and correct them promptly, expose unethical practices of
journalists and the news media and abide by the same high
standards to which they hold others.
Accuracy
A devotion to accuracy helps correct judgment biases. When peo-

ple are motivated by accuracy in their decision-making, they expend
more effort on reasoning through issues. They pay more attention to
relevant information. They process it more deeply and more carefully
when they desire to be accurate.23 So many good things come from a
desire to be accurate.
Getting the facts wrong is a serious error and can lead quickly to
a reporter’s termination. If readers recognize anything in the story
as inaccurate, they may doubt everything else in it. The late City
News Bureau of Chicago had its motto emblazoned on an office wall:
“If your mother says she loves you, check it out.” The idea was that
no statement should be accepted at face value, and the only way to
be accurate is to confirm every detail, assertion and utterance with
another source. Many news outlets require reporters to fill out exten-
sive questionnaires whenever something erroneous is included in the
final version of the story, so the reporters conduct their daily work
defensively when it comes to accuracy, always reporting with proof
in mind.
With that said, however, research shows that people in general are
more likely to arrive at conclusions they want to arrive at and not
necessarily the most accurate one. They just have to be able to jus-
tify their conclusions.24 So despite what an accurate news story might
state, some news consumers will conclude what they want to con-
clude, right or not.
What does all of this mean for journalists? It means the profes-
sional commitment to getting the story right should stand above get-
ting it first. A drive to be first can lead to expediently confirming a
preconceived story angle. The discipline-wide emphasis on accuracy
helps support a journalist’s own motivation for accuracy as an end to
itself and over any motivation to arrive at a particular conclusion. Edi-
tors help by championing a search for truth above the confirmation of
any neat hypothesis that fits their early imaginings.
167
Accountability
Accountability helps to counter some judgment biases. Account-

ability is the implied or clearly expressed expectation that one will
be called upon to justify one’s beliefs, feelings or actions to others.25
For journalists, this happens automatically when work is published
or broadcast. Accountability involves the expectation that journalists
will have to explain their news reporting decisions to others, includ-
ing their colleagues, editors, sources and news audience. Simply put:
Can you defend your story as factual and fair?
In general, people who are accountable to an audience, as journal-
ists are, think about arguments from more than one side. They tend to
take more things into account. People think at a more complex level
and with more open minds when they know they will be accountable
to an audience.
Self-critical thought, meaning a person is on the lookout for bias
and is expending a lot of mental effort in making decisions, is most
likely activated when decision makers know from the start that they
will be accountable to an audience. It’s also strongest when the audi-
ence (a) has views that are unknown, (b) is interested in accuracy, (c) is
reasonably well informed and (d) has a legitimate reason for inquiring
into the reasons behind a judgment.26
Sounds a lot like a news audience, doesn’t it?
Journalists know they have a lot of people to answer to when
making judgments in reporting and writing a story. That knowledge
encourages journalists to regularly monitor what influences their
judgment; in addition, it can help them anticipate counterarguments,
weigh their merits impartially and factor those most relevant into
their overall opinion or assessment of a news situation.27 If journalists
know before they make decisions that they will have to justify those
decisions, they will explore options more impartially and more thor-
oughly and try to make the best decisions possible. If decision makers
aren’t held responsible for decisions until after they are made, they
rationalize their decisions and look for reasons to bolster their judg-
ments.28 For examples, look into the fumbling efforts at justification
by journalists caught fabricating and plagiarizing.
Accountability implies that positive or negative consequences
hinge on one’s decisions. Positive consequences include having the
most-read story of the day, the one that leads the broadcast or receives
168
recognition through thousands of shares on social media. Negative

consequences include receiving online complaints about the story,
having to publish a correction or being put on probationary status. In
particular, audience feedback via online comments can be swift and
mighty, especially in the case of an obvious slant or inaccuracy. (See
Ch. 10 for a discussion on dealing with hostile sources.)
A notable downside to accountability is that if a reporter knows
the audience prefers a specific outcome, the reporter may be inclined
to distort the decision process to justify that outcome.29 News orga-
nizations slant coverage in an attempt to match their audience’s pref-
erences, researchers assert.30 An example of “giving the people what
they want” is evidenced in newspaper coverage of immigration. Likely
due to pressure to please audiences, news organizations close to the
U.S.-Mexico border were found to be more likely to provide negative
news coverage of immigration.31 Continual exposure to negative news
coverage reinforces negative public attitudes about immigrants and
immigration, and a cycle ensues.
Sometimes, accountability causes decision makers to overthink
and give irrelevant information too much significance. A journalist’s
overthinking of information can be offset by editors who provide
essential distance and perspective on news coverage. In one amus-
ing example, study participants trying to predict a hypothetical
student’s grade point average were so concerned that they would
be held accountable for their prediction that they considered such
irrelevant information as the fact that the student had failed to date
the same person for more than two months. They would have fared
much better if they’d focused on the single valid predictor of suc-
cess, which was, shockingly, the number of hours the student stud-
ied per week.32
Accountability to Yourself
Part of a journalist’s job is reactive: Find out what is happening, how,

to whom or what, when and why. Get the information.
Another part of a journalist’s job is proactive: How will I select,
interpret and present this information? This part of the job is cogni-
tive. It involves choices and decisions.
A journalist’s decisions are often made quickly in the race to pub-
lish. So make this decision now: Find time to reflect on how your
169
mind makes decisions and what errors you have repeatedly made in
your past judgments. Seek training to improve decision-making. Look
for patterns. (“I always seem to cut off my reporting too soon because
I want more time to write”; “I trust my memory too much and don’t
dig up my past notes to check information”; “I tend to pay attention
to silly data”; “I am too eager to focus on sources who agree with my
story angle.”) Be accountable to yourself and decide to address one
shortcoming in the next breaking news battle you’re in. The battle will
come soon enough. There’s always another chance to be even better.
Decision on Deadline: What Does My Audience

Need to Know?
For Christi Parsons, who was born and raised in Alabama, landing her
first job in Chicago at the Chicago Tribune meant confronting per-
sonal assumptions as she went about her work.33
In a way, she says, “it really was a gift to be practicing journalism
somewhat outside the cultural context in which I was raised.” So while
a majority of the news staff was white, as Parsons is, other aspects of
her Southern upbringing were challenged in her new environment.
“I tried very hard to develop a practice of being aware of my assump-
tions and my biases.”
The daily course of business held a variety of small but noticeable
differences for Parsons (starting with the fact that, almost daily, some-
one commented on her accent). She explains:
When personal interactions are slightly unfamiliar, you tend to

examine them a little more closely. What does it mean to say
“you guys,” for example? To whom does that refer, exactly? How
do people react when I say “y’all”? Is that word communicating
something I don’t intend? Is it reflecting a point of view I need to
think about more carefully?
Parsons, who has worked as a senior editor at The Atlantic and is

now an assistant managing editor at CNN, recommends to young
journalists to “get out of the place you grew up to investigate your
biases. You cannot rely on as many habits of thought. Chicago was
different enough for me that I couldn’t rely on my basic read of
people.”
170
Her move to the Midwest showcased in a stark way for Parsons that
while “people are always making wrong assumptions about other peo-
ple, you don’t always realize how wrong those assumptions are until
you’re in a place where you become very aware of investigating your
own biases.”
For example, Parsons is from a conservative religious background
(her mother was Lutheran, her father Baptist). Where she grew
up, it’s not uncommon to sort religious people based on the differ-
ences between “what you believe and what I believe.” Her religious
background was foremost in her mind, when, early in her tenure
at the Tribune, she was assigned a daily story about a patriarch of a
Baghdad-based Christian church. He had traveled from the Middle
East to visit members at U.S. parishes, including one in Chicago. In
the 30 short minutes she had before meeting her source, she scram-
bled to read all she could about the man and his church and its
believers.
She recalls: “I was cramming. I was so aware that I was about to
take my religious bias into this interaction with me.” To counter any
potential bias, she made herself focus on her audience and on what
would be relevant to readers. “I asked myself what makes this per-
son interesting right now? What makes this person interesting to this
community of faith?”
1. Try your hand at being purposefully biased in your reporting.
a. Select a newsworthy local event or issue.
b. Decide what bias you are going to adopt on this event or
issue. What will be your predetermined slant on the story?
(e.g. Cost-cutting is leading to a lower-quality education for
students at a given university.)
c. To show your understanding of how confirmation bias can
influence all stages of the story process, write a paragraph on
each of the following areas: Story categorization or type and
its effect on story focus, reporting and interviewing choices,
and selection of information and when to freeze out new
information. Show how you would apply bias each step of
the process to arrive at your predetermined conclusion.
171
d. Finally, read through your strategy for producing a biased

story. Write a closing paragraph about how you feel after
reviewing your choices. Comment on what, if any, version of
the truth remains in your biased story.
2. Read the string of online reader comments on a major news story in
your community.
a. Note the sorts of issues that the news audience raises in
reaction to the coverage.
b. In what ways do the comments hold the journalist(s) on the
story accountable? Are the comments focused on accuracy?
Do they offer a different perspective not considered in
the account? Question the story focus? Mention missing
information or offer other angles to pursue? Are they simply
mean-spirited and not meant to hold a journalist accountable
but just bash them?
c. Discuss and compare your findings with those of your
colleagues.
3. Think of a time when you tried so hard to be right and accountable
for a decision that you overthought to the point of making a wrong
one. (This may happen when you overthink what an editor wants
or second-guess the right answer on a multiple-choice test.) Write
a one-minute monologue of what went on in your head.
4. Watch “How false news can spread.” It’s a TEDed talk at https://
bit.ly/3sYWrMt. Then watch “How news feed algorithms super-
charge confirmation bias” by Eli Pariser, the co-founder of Upwor-
thy. After viewing both, write a summary of what you learned
about how social media algorithms contribute to the confirmation
bias.
FOR REVIEW
• Explain confirmation bias to a friend.

• List the five judgment biases or heuristics described
in the chapter.
• Notice the point at which you freeze out new
information when reporting your next news story.
• Name the two techniques that improve
decision-making.
172
NOTES

173
and the Fear of Invalidity,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin

II(4), 479–487; Kruglanski, A.W., & Freund, T. (1983). “The Freezing and
Unfreezing of Lay-Interferences: Effects on Impressional Primacy, Eth-
nic Stereotyping, and Numerical Anchoring,” Journal of Experimental
Social Psychology 19(5), 448–468.
13 Andrew Martin, personal interview with author, November, 2010.
14 For a useful recap, see Tenore, M.J. (January 10, 2011), “Conflicting
Reports of Giffords’ Death Were Understandable, but Not Excusable.”
www.poynter.org
15 Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1982). “Judgment Under Uncertainty:
Heuristics and Biases.” In: Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Amos
Tversky, eds. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 3–22.
16 Almond, L., Alison, L., Eyre, M., Crego, J., & Goodwill, A. (2008). “Heu-
ristics and Biases in Decision-Making.” In: Laurence Alison and Jonathan
Crego, eds. Policing Critical Incidents: Leadership and Critical Incident
Management, Portland, OR: Willan, pp. 151–180, 154.
17 Ibid.
18 Sui, M., & Paul, N. (2017). “Latino Portrayals in Local News Media:
Underrepresentation, Negative Stereotypes, and Institutional Predictors
of Coverage,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 46(3),
273–294, doi: 10.1080/17475759.2017.1322124
19 Subervi, F. (January, 2017). “Latinos in TV Network News 2008-2014:
Still Mostly Invisible and Problematic.” Conducted for the National
Association of Hispanic Journalists with funds from the Communication
Workers of America and The Newspaper Guild.
20 Subervi, p. 20.
21 Fischhoff, B. (1982). “For Those Condemned to Study the Past: Heu-
ristics and Biases in Hindsight.” In: Daniel Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and
Amos Tversky, eds. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 341.
22 Society of Professional Journalists, “Code of Ethics” (1996), Retrieved
7/15/2010 from: http://www. spj.org/ethicscode.asp
23 Kunda, Z. (1990). “The Case for Motivated Reasoning,” Psychological
Bulletin 108(3), 480–498.
24 Ibid.
25 Lerner, J.S., & Tetlock, P.E. (1999). “Accounting for the Effects of Account-
ability,” Psychological Bulletin 125(2), 255–275.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.; Arkes, H.R. (1991). “Costs and Benefits of Judgment Errors: Impli-
cations for Debiasing,” Psychological Bulletin 110(3), 486–498.
28 Lerner & Tetlock, “Accounting for the Effects of Accountability.”
174
175
8
The Power of Words
and Tone
When Words Suggest
Unintended Meanings
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand the significance of speaker, audience and context on language.

• To recognize four problematic areas of word choice: Otherness words,
politicized words, judgment words and code words.
• To learn three tools to become more attuned to word choice and tone: The
Blab Test, challenging sources and the Language Self-Check.
“BLUNTLY VULGAR LANGUAGE”

When President Trump reportedly referred to Haiti and some African
nations as “shithole countries,” the New York Times labeled his word
choice as “racially tinged remarks denigrating immigrants.”1
The Associated Press (AP) story used the phrase “bluntly vulgar
language.”2
Fox News’ headline atop an AP wire story stated: “Haiti calls
reported Trump remark ‘racist,’ says ‘shocked’.”3
Trump in a later tweet denied having used that language. However,
the reported word choice raised for journalists a challenge they face
more and more frequently: When to call an action, word choice or
person “racist”?
177
THE POWER OF WORDS AND TONE
“Racist” as an adjective or descriptor is defined as “coming from

or having the belief that people who belong to other races are not as
good, intelligent, moral, etc. as people who belong to your own race.”4
AP GUIDELINES
The Associated Press Stylebook is the guide that most mainstream
newsrooms follow in editing copy. The guidelines5 for including race
or ethnicity are clear, careful and well worth close reading. Some of
the highlights include:
• “Begin by assessing the facts: Does the statement or action

meet the definition of racism? That assessment need not
involve examining the motivation of the person who spoke
or acted, which is a separate issue that may not be related
to how the statement or action itself can be characterized.”
• “Do not use euphemisms for racist or racism when the latter
terms are truly applicable. Mississippi has a history of racist
lynchings, not a history of racially motivated lynchings.”
• “Avoid racially charged, racially motivated or racially
tinged, euphemisms which convey little meaning.”
• “In general, avoid using racist or any other label as a noun
for a person; it’s far harder to match the complexity of
a person to a definition or label than it is a statement or
action. Instead, be specific in describing the person’s words
or actions. Again, discuss with senior managers, colleagues
and others from diverse backgrounds when the description
may be appropriate for a person.”
pause & consider

How do you think the phrase reportedly used by President
Trump should be characterized in a news story?
Use descriptive language instead of labels. Updates to the AP

style and other news outlet style guides show an evolution in empha-
sizing description over labels. For example, instead of stating that
178
someone “is bipolar,” state their diagnosis, as in that someone “was

diagnosed with bipolar disorder.”
Similarly, people’s immigration status should be described in as
much specificity as possible to indicate their unique circumstances.
So, instead of “illegal immigrant,” the preferred AP style is, for
example, “living in a country without legal permission.” Whenever
possible, state how someone entered the country illegally and from
where.
Word choice helps frame a story for news audiences. Framing a
news story is part of the job. A story of any length and complexity has
a frame. So a journalist’s job is to seek the frame that is (a) most rep-
resentative of the issue at hand, (b) is as neutral as possible, (c) avoids
sensational word choices to enhance the frame and (d) is firmly rooted
in reported facts. Avoid framing news situations from your personal
point of view.
LANGUAGE AND MEANING

Words are flexible. Their meanings change depending on influ-
ences such as politics, religion, economics, history, culture or
geography. Humans categorize each other as a way to describe dif-
ferences. It is essential for journalists to handle these differences
with respect and humanity. Complicating matters is that language
is continually changing, and terms acceptable in the past are no
longer. Further, some audiences may not understand current ter-
minology, so clearly define new terms. People who share common
characteristics should not be assumed to be similar in all ways, and
groups are not monolithic, so specificity in language is important
and valued. Always strive to include sources from a wide range of
backgrounds and life experience in all stories, not simply stories
dealing with that particular group or topics of interest or concern-
ing that group.
Mobile technologies allow reporters to file early and often. Since dig-
ital news travels well beyond a news organization’s coverage area, the
context of cultural comments
Infuse your reporting with
and images is critical. Context
the diversity of human allows consumers of all back-
experience. grounds to better understand
the significance of news events.
179
Keith Woods, now vice president for diversity in news and operations
at National Public Radio, has identified how the meanings of words
change depending on speaker, audience and context6: Who is speaking
to whom and in what circumstances. The answers influence the mean-
ing of the words used and how journalists determine the significance
of statements.
EXHIBIT 8.1 UNDERSTANDING CONTEXT
CONTEXT
speaker audience
For example, “A man (speaker) asking a female colleague (listener) to get a

cup of coffee during a meeting (context) does so at the risk of coming across as
chauvinistic.”7 By contrast, a female boss (speaker) asking a male subordinate
(listener) to get a cup of coffee during a meeting (context) comes off as assert-
ing her authority in the organization. A female colleague asking another female
colleague to get a cup of coffee during a meeting is likely seen as collegial. The
same request for coffee is assigned different meanings based on who is doing
the asking to whom.
Another example would be a teenage African American male (speaker) call-
ing his Black friend (listener) the “n-word” in irony and solidarity (context). The
same word spoken by the teens’ white football coach (speaker) to the same
Black friend (listener) during practice (context) has a different meaning charged
with a history of hate and racism.
Think about the ingredients of speaker, audience and context as you read
the following anecdote.
On Assignment
A student in one of my classes was reporting a story
on the level of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
queer (LGBTQ) activism on our campus. He kept asking
sources about “the queer culture on campus” and wasn’t
180
getting far. Finally, the head of the university’s program

on students who are LGBTQ told him that while being
reclaimed by some in the gay community as an affirming
term, the word queer is still seen as a label many felt was
offensive, particularly when used by a heterosexual male.
The student learned a lesson about the importance of
speaker, audience and context. People within the LGBTQ
community could use the term queer in conversation
to others in the LGBTQ community far more acceptably
than could a heterosexual reporter asking interview
questions. Once the student reporter dropped the term
from his intro pitch to sources, his interviewees were far
more receptive.
THE MEANINGS OF WORDS

Many words really have two meanings: (1) The literal definition, its
denotation, and (2) the association the word carries, its connota-
tion. Connotations suggest a meaning apart from the explicit word.
For example, the denotation of the term 9/11 is simply a date on the
calendar, the 11th day of the ninth month. But the political, social
and physical realities of the attacks in New York, Virginia and Penn-
sylvania on September 11, 2001, make up its connotation. Because
they have both a literal and a suggested meaning, certain words and
phrases require extra thought before going into news coverage. These
words and phrases fall roughly into four categories: Otherness words,
politicized words, judgment words and code words.
Otherness Words
Some words needlessly highlight someone’s “otherness.” Otherness is

relative. You are not an “other” in your own social group. But you’re
an “other” to the social groups that you are not a part of. (Refer back
to Chapter 5 on ingroups and outgroups for more on this.) So whose
social group gets to decide otherness? One example is that in the
past, the U.S. news media mentioned a subject’s race only to alert
181
the audience that the person was not white. As noted in Chapter 2
by New York Times National Editor Marc Lacey, many news outlets
write for an audience they presume is white. Strive for news cover-
age that is fully representative of the breadth of human expression
in our society. Be specific and inclusive. For white journalists, to see
how often your white privilege influences your thinking will require
serious work in recognizing your socialization in a racial identity. To
learn more, see NationalSEED-
Most reporting is a form of Project.org and this revealing
representing the “other.”8 list: https://bit.ly/3brtZNb.
To avoid “otherness” words,
journalists should think inten-
tionally about the descriptors they use and ask themselves:
• How relevant is the term?

• Is it accurate?
• Is it helpful to understanding the news issue at hand?
• What does its use convey to the news audience?
• If it is used, is it as specific as possible?
• Why is it being used? Justify the inclusion of the descriptive
language.
Ask sources for their preferred terms. It is always best to ask peo-
ple how to identify them in a news story. People of Latin Amer-
ican heritage come from a rich array of locations, each of them
distinct. The gender-neutral phrase “Latinx” should not be univer-
sally applied, for example. Many U.S.-based Latinos choose to be
described as from their family’s country of origin, such as Mexican
or Salvadoran.9 The National Association of Hispanic Journalists’
handbook states that:
“Hispanic” only refers to persons of Spanish-speaking origin or

ancestry, while “Latino” is accurate to refer to anyone of Latin
American origin or ancestry. Note: Latino applies to men, boys and
mixed-gender groups (i.e. Latino community); Latina applies to
women and girls.10
Basic research and reporting is usually a defense against unfair gen-

eralizations. For instance, the Muslim population in the United States
182
is not monolithic, but news accounts sometimes portray it as such.

Muslims represent many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds. A
follower of Christianity is evangelical or conservative. However, this
is not to say that all mentions of religious identity, ethnicity or other
descriptors should be avoided. The more that Muslims and other “out-
groups” are woven into the fabric of daily U.S. news reporting, the
better the journalism gets. The voices are not singled out as excep-
tional or special but are one perspective amid many.
“Language reflects the culture from which we emerge,” wrote
author and activist bell hooks.11
Carefully consider the implications before mentioning someone’s
race or ethnicity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation or other status
in a news account. Ask yourself: Is the status relevant to the news or
relevant because it seems so different from your life and background?
If it is important to mention someone’s status, then be specific. “A
member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma” is more descriptive
and orienting than the term Native American. Another area in which
clarity of language is essential is reporting on transgender individuals.
Transgender terminology. According to NLGJA: The Association of

LGBTQ Journalists, Generally, transgender describes people whose
gender identity and/or expression may not match their physical,
sexual characteristics or sex assigned at birth. But the word can mean
different things to different people. Journalists covering transgender
people must ensure they correctly understand and communicate the
parameters of the community or communities about which they are
reporting.12
A good resource is the Association’s stylebook (https://www.nlgja.

org/stylebook/). Because of the private nature of transitioning (the
process of changing one’s gender presentation permanently to accord
with one’s internal sense of gender identity) and because of the stigma
and hostility toward transgender people, journalists must be espe-
cially careful in word choice and language when writing about trans
people.
A feature story about a revolutionary golf putter inventor named
Essay Anne Vanderbilt ended up outing the so-called Dr. V. The
mistake was a profound one and the severity of outing a transgender
person was underestimated by the publication. “We weren’t educated,
183
we failed to ask the right questions, we made mistakes, and we’re

going to learn from them,” writes Grantland editor-in-chief Bill Sim-
mons.13 Read the story, the publication’s apology and a letter from a
board member of GLAAD here: https://bit.ly/2Jt3jR6.
Here are some tips14 from the Human Rights Campaign at HRC org:
• Someone is transgender, not transgendered.

• Know the difference between gender identity, gender
expression and sexual orientation.
• Transition is a process that some transgender people
undergo when they decide to live as the gender with which
they identify, rather than the one they were assigned at
birth. A transgender person transitioning is not “becoming”
a man or a woman; they are starting to live openly as their
true gender.
• It’s important to understand the level of privacy required
of the person that you’re working with. Many people do
not share their trans status or gender identity very publicly
due to the looming presence of anti-transgender bias and
discrimination. If you are writing a story about someone that
includes reference to their transgender identity, be sure to
obtain explicit consent in order to avoid “outing” somebody
and putting them in a dangerous situation.
• Proper names and pronouns used by the transgender person
should be used by others, regardless of their legal name or
gender marker on identification documents.
• Contrasting transgender people with “real” or “biological”
men and women is a false comparison. Transgender people’s
gender identities are real, and using this framing can
contribute to the inaccurate perception that transgender
people are being deceptive or less than equal, when, in fact,
they are being authentic and courageous.
Politicized Words
Some words have become highly politicized. The passage of time

brings new issues and new labels that journalists must think deeply
about before legitimizing them in a news story. Journalists should
avoid word choices in news stories that obviously promote or
184
comment upon a particular political agenda such as pro-life and pro-

choice; better to use more straightforward terms such as abortion
rights supporter and anti-abortion advocate.
Sometimes a word has the power to slant an audience’s interpre-
tation of a news story. Consider the use of the label illegals to refer to
undocumented immigrants. The word illegals is shorthand for ille-
gal aliens. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ)
describes both illegals and illegal aliens as negative terms to describe
the millions of undocumented people living in the United States.15
Calling someone an illegal is not only grammatically incorrect, but
also implies the person is a criminal. The label alien used to describe
a foreign-born person who is not a naturalized citizen is not only
bureaucratic-speak, but also serves to cast someone as strange and
from another world. Further, NAHJ notes, too often, when a person
who immigrated to the United States is mentioned in relation to a
crime, their status is mentioned. “By meshing the names and the
undocumented immigrant status together in the suspect’s identity,
the press is limiting the public’s perception of this person,” an NAHJ
press release states.16
The Associated Press Stylebook no longer recommends17 illegal
immigrant to describe someone who has entered or resides in the
country illegally; the term illegal should only be used to describe an
action, such as that someone entered a country illegally. The entry
also states,
Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country

illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa?
What nationality? . . . People who were brought into the country as
children should not be described as having immigrated illegally.
Whether a label is politically biased depends on one’s perspective,

notes teacher and scholar Martin Levinson:
What’s the difference between a “freedom fighter” and a “terrorist”?

Were the victims at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq subjected to
“abuse” or “torture”? Are organizations that comment on news
reporting “media watchdog groups,” or are they “pressure groups”?
Don’t look to the dictionary to answer these questions. Their answers
depend on how people perceive things.18
185
Some labels highlight cultural divides in the United States and beyond
its borders. For example, serious debates have ensued over the use of
the word terrorist. The debates typically focus on the use of the word
as describing an action (a violent, politically charged act) and on the
nationality of the perpetrator (a foreigner or a U.S. citizen).
For example, in June 2014, a young Nevada couple fatally shot
three people before killing themselves; two were police officers, one
of whose bodies they “covered with a Nazi swastika and the Revolu-
tionary War-era ‘Don’t Tread on Me’ flag, a symbol of the Tea Party
movement.”19 The couple held strong anti-government conspiracy
views. They yelled about “revolution” during their attack. Most news
outlets did not describe them as terrorists or what they did as a terror-
ist act, which caused Muslim-American advocacy groups to question
the lack of label as a double standard.
“Without a doubt, if these individuals had been Muslim, it not
only would be called ‘terrorism’ but it would have made national and
international headlines for weeks,” said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman
for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based
group. “It was an act of terror, but when it’s not associated with Mus-
lims it’s just a day story that comes and goes.”20
A different response occurred when the Capitol riots happened
on January 6, 2021. Lawmakers in both parties were quick to call
the attack on the 117th United States Congress an act of terrorism.
Federal prosecutors as of March 2020 had charged and arrested hun-
dreds of people in connection with the attack, including current or
former military members. The attackers were overwhelmingly white
people, and many were involved in white supremacy, far-right and/
or para-military organizations. The FBI director called it an act of
domestic terrorism in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
Conservative writer and attorney Rachel Alexander wrote an opin-
ion piece21 published in The Hill expressing concern over what she
sees as the censoring of conservative words in favor of more liberal
terminology in updates to the Associated Press Stylebook, which is the
guide that most mainstream newsrooms follow in editing copy. Alex-
ander takes issue with the guidance on many points that she asserts
are not neutral terms but instead bake liberalism into the acceptable
language of news stories. Among her concerns are guidelines to refer
to AK-47s as “assault rifles” and to avoid the words “illegal immigrant”
and “abortionist.”
186
Her assertion is clear: “How can the mainstream media correct

their bias, when the bias is already built into their stylebooks?”22
pause & consider

Discuss Rachel Alexander’s argument about the AP Style-
book’s biased language choices. Read her piece (https://bit.
ly/3lxMD82) and debate some of the specific examples she
raises.
Judgment Words
As journalists, we must evaluate language for judgment or assigna-

tion of blame. Avoid terms that are evaluative, such as “poorly edu-
cated.” Instead, offer specifics, such as “he left school in the 8th grade.”
Negatively charged language such as “confined to a wheelchair” or
victim-focused language such as “suffers from bipolar disorder”
should also be avoided; try “uses a wheelchair” and “is diagnosed with
bipolar disorder” instead, the National Center on Disability and Jour-
nalism recommends.23
Judgment is implied in verb choices such as “The man admits that
he is gay.” Or, “She claims that she isn’t racist.” These phrases imply
negativity and doubt. Words such as refuse and fail imply rebuke.
News media polarize and play up opposites. It’s no surprise that
one news value is conflict. Judgment can seep into news accounts that
cover conflict, simplifying positions to extremes that don’t convey the
full picture. Someone is a hero or a villain. Liberal or conservative.
Winner or loser. Right or wrong.
Journalists are at their best when they can appreciate that most
people live in the ambiguous, gray middle of society and not on the
extreme black-and-white fringes, where conflict often happens. The
great gray middle is the origin of many valuable news stories, because
those stories reflect the lives of average citizens. Writing that makes the
everyday challenges people face as interesting and significant as they
are to the people involved is truly artful and representative journalism.
In addition, avoid passing on judgment words through quotes with-
out explanation. When a source, particularly one in a public position,
187
whether a sports star or a lawmaker, makes a knee-jerk judgment, do

more than post it as fast as possible. “Gotchya” journalism doesn’t
enlighten or explain. Ask probing questions to figure out what the
source has in his or her or their mind; what’s behind the statement?
Get experts to give context as to why the statements are insulting or
insensitive or defamatory.24
Reporters covering the then-U.S. President Donald Trump had
to fine-tune their word choice when it came to calling out the pres-
ident for his inaccurate statements. This advice applies to any news
source who spreads misinformation or inaccuracies. “Lies” by dictio-
nary definition are untrue statements made with the intent to deceive.
The idea of intent is what compels journalists to choose their words
so carefully; how can they climb inside Trump’s head and know his
intentions? Was an inaccurate statement an exaggeration, a deflec-
tion, a misunderstanding, perhaps?
Rather than focusing on whether or not to use the word “lie,” many
journalists argue for describing the context and offering evidence to
refute the statement. Let the audience decide what it is. The key, how-
ever, is to challenge every inaccuracy, every time, professionally and
consistently, no matter what the inaccuracy is called. As president,
Donald Trump posed a challenge for journalists in when to use the
word “lie” to describe his inaccurate statements.
When New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman tweeted on the
morning of May 26, 2018, about Trump’s “two demonstrable false-
hoods,” she was caught in a social media firestorm about her careful
word choice. Many insisted she call what Trump said lies – or LIES,
as the tweets went, and others replied that “demonstrable falsehoods”
is easier to prove and is less accusatory, as he might be confused or
ignorant. See the string of tweets here: https://bit.ly/3adm2LA.
pause & consider

Make your own determination about Haberman’s word
choice and defend it in a paragraph.
One approach to reporting on ambiguous situations is to frame

the event as a question. Journalists can report the debate about the
188
issue, as occurred with Hurricane Katrina photos we’ll consider in the

following paragraphs.
Words that assign blame shouldn’t be used casually. When is
someone looting and someone else finding? Is the most accurate word
choice taking or raiding or making off when it comes to people remov-
ing goods from unattended grocery stores, as happened on a wide
scale after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast in 2005?
Two photographs of New Orleans residents surrounded by chest-
high flood waters received different photo captions for what looked
like the same thing. A controversy erupted online as the two photos
were compared side-by-side. Photographers, journalists and others
debated the use of the two verbs in the photo captions.
Writer Aaron Kinney described in a story on Salon.com the two
images:
One of the images, shot by photographer Dave Martin for the

Associated Press, showsa young black man wading through chest-
deep waters after “looting” a grocery store, according to the
caption. The young man appears to have a case of Pepsi under
one arm and a full garbage bag in tow. In the other, similar shot,
taken by photographer Chris Graythen for AFP/Getty Images, a
white man and a light-skinned woman are shown wading through
chest-deep water after “finding” goods including bread and soda,
according to the caption, in a local grocery store.25
Graythen posted on SportsShooter.com the day before Kinney’s arti-

cle was published:
I wrote the caption about the two people who “found” the items.
I believed in my opinion, that they did simply find them, and not
“looted” them in the definition of the word. The people were
swimming in chest deep water, and there were other people in the
water, both white and black. I looked for the best picture.26
The AP director of media relations was quoted in Kinney’s story as

confirming that the photographer who took the image of the dark-
skinned man did witness people looting a grocery store. “He saw the
person go into the shop and take the goods and that’s why he wrote
‘looting’ in the caption,” said the director.27
189
The captions launched strings of posts debating the photojour-

nalists’ truthfulness and intent. Some posts argued about whether
unconscious stereotyping of the Black man occurred (similar to the
discussion of implicit associations in Chapter 4). These arguments
suggested that involuntary negative associations with stealing and
Black people (and conversely, involuntary positive associations with
not stealing and white people) influenced the word choice by the
photojournalists.
The overarching lesson for our purposes is the power of a single
word: looting vs. finding. Just one word.
Code Words
Journalism that illuminates and educates uses concrete language. It

avoids sweeping characterizations and relies instead on relevant detail.
It shuns squishy labels that lump everyone together into the same
basket: Minorities, blue-collar workers, fundamentalists, activists.
It avoids overgeneralizations in favor of individualizing actions and
motivations. Quality journalism despises euphemisms. Euphemisms
employ the use of a less direct word or phrase to avoid one that might
seem offensive. Some light-hearted examples: Alcoholic drinks are
“adult beverages.” A used car is a “pre-owned vehicle.”
Euphemisms are intentionally vague so as to avoid bluntness. Jour-
nalists looking for a more polite or politically correct way to say some-
thing should consider more reporting. The urge to pad a story with
squishy language may mean some difficult questions need to be asked
to get at the real issues. For example, when armed forces bomb a mil-
itary target and, in doing so, also kill civilians, that is euphemistically
called “collateral damage.”
Dog whistle language. Max Rizzuto, a research assistant at the
Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which follows con-
flicts in real time using digital technologies, wrote about politicized
terms such as referencing COVID-19, the coronavirus that swept the
globe in 2020, as the “China Virus.” Rizzuto calls such stigmatizing
language “‘dog whistles’ – coded language that can be used to deni-
grate a group while publicly denying you are doing it.”28
On March 8, 2020, Representative Paul Gosar, a Republican con-
gressman from Arizona, tweeted the term “Wuhan virus.” That day,
there was a 650 percent increase in retweets using the term and others
190
like it. By March 9, there was an 800 percent increase in deployment

of the terms in articles by conservative news outlets, research found.29
A day later, House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy used the term
“Chinese Coronavirus” in a tweet. On March 10, President Donald
Trump retweeted a post that used the term “China virus,” and a day
later in an Oval Office remark, he referenced COVID-19 as a “foreign
virus.” The spread of the racialized term – the World Health Orga-
nization specifically chose a name for the virus that did not attach
a location or ethnicity to the disease to avoid stigmatization – was
nearly immediate. The term logged nearly 80 million Twitter impres-
sions the following day.30
“Rhetoric is not harmless,” asserted the team of researchers who
studied the effect of stigmatizing news coverage of the epidemic
upon Asians. “This analysis suggests that the use of terms like ‘Chi-
nese virus’ had an immediate, measurable impact on our collective
biases,” the researchers stated. “Specifically, this stigmatizing termi-
nology more deeply entrenched the notion that Asians are ‘perpetual
foreigners’ – a pernicious stereotype with troubling historical roots
and measurable real-world consequences.”31
For 13 years, from 2007 to early 2020, the racist belief that Asian
Americans were less American than European Americans had
declined steadily. That is, until March 8, 2020, when then-Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo referenced the fast-spreading COVID-19 virus
as the “China virus.” Conservative media outlets picked up on the
stigmatizing language and the result, the research indicates, was an
increase in subconscious beliefs, or implicit beliefs, that Asian Ameri-
cans are, and always will be, “foreigners.” This trend reversal was most
pronounced among extreme conservatives compared to other politi-
cal identities, the researchers found.
Due to misinformation about covid-19, there was a “surge”
in verbal insults and violent attacks against Asian Americans, the
Massachusetts-based Asian American Commission stated.32 As the
disease spread globally, anti-Asian sentiment soared, so much so that
leading U.S. civil rights groups issued a joint call against racism and dis-
crimination related to the novel coronavirus. News outlets covered the
rise in racism: One study led by researcher Russell Jeung showed a 50
percent increase in news articles about discrimination against Asians
in four weeks in February and March 2020, and 471 cases of xenopho-
bia and discrimination were reported – that’s an average of 16 a day.33
191
Another legitimate aspect to the coverage was the swell of

response by Asian-American citizens supporting Asian-owned busi-
nesses facing racism. Nearly 30 percent of the articles during this
time chronicled the government, health officials and/or Asian Amer-
icans speaking out against the continued, high rates of coronavirus
discrimination.34
The press can continue to report on what’s going on in the Asian-

American community, provide platforms for Asian-American officials
and groups, use accurate terms like COVID-19, use pictures that are
more representative of who’s getting the disease. In the US, Asians
are probably the great minority,
Jeung, a professor of Asian-

“For example, someone asked American studies at San Fran-
me, ‘Can I speak to someone cisco State University, tells the
who’s been a victim of anti- Columbia Journalism Review.35
Asian violence?’ And I go,
Jeung says a lack of language
‘Well, yeah, but they’re hes-
itant and they’re scared.’ So skills is a real hurdle for sources
you need culturally sensitive to feel comfortable talking with
and linguistically appropriate journalists, who usually don’t
reporters.” have a translator.
– Russell Jeung, professor of “They tend to neglect us,”
Asian-American studies at San
Francisco State University.
Jeung says of the mainstream
media. He continues:
And again, stereotype us. They’ll do stories about Chinatown in

places where most people don’t live in Chinatowns. They’ll go to
the same spokespersons all the time rather than get real people’s
perspectives. The hard thing is talking to people in their language,
so they can be more eloquent and more well spoken. That’s the hard
thing – not having enough language access to the community. Not
having the reporters, and not even trying to have the reporters try
to get access, because the reporters are so rushed and they have to
find people who can speak right away. For example, someone asked
me, “Can I speak to someone who’s been a victim of anti-Asian
violence?” And I go, “Well, yeah, but they’re hesitant and they’re
scared.” So you need culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate
reporters.
192
The year 2020 saw many instances of dog whistle language that only
thinly veils racist, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic and other
hate-filled speech. More than simply a euphemism, dog whistle lan-
guage is a subtle (and more and more often, not-so-subtle) alert to
loyalists and followers.
Journalistic response. What should journalists do when con-
fronted with dog whistle language?
First, recognize it. And second, call it out and call it what it is: If
it is homophobic speech, say so. Make plain what is being implied by
the words.
Reporters use the “dog whistle” phrase when they want to signal
that word choice is meant to speak in a subtle way to a certain group,
usually a source’s followers or adherents. But increasingly, the lan-
guage being described is not subtle, notes Bill Grueskin, Columbia
Journalism School faculty and former editor at Bloomberg News,
Miami Herald and the Wall Street Journal.36 Writes Grueskin:
“Dog whistles are messages ‘that seem innocent to a general

audience but resonate with a specific public attuned to receive
them,’ as William Safire, a former Nixon speechwriter and New
York Times columnist, wrote in his Political Dictionary. In today’s
journalism, it means that a politician – often Trump, but not always –
is using language that some supporters will appreciate, but that
is subtle enough that he feels he can be credibly exonerated of
racism.”37
For instance, Grueskin notes, news outlets described Trump’s

choice of words as a dog whistle when on July 14, 2019, President
Trump tweeted that Democratic congresswomen of color who
oppose his policies come “from countries whose governments are
a complete and total catastrophe,” and they should “go back and
help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which
they came.”38
Sexist language. Blatantly sexist language is no longer frequently
evident in news accounts, but subtle word choices continue to belie
sexism. For example, researchers asked 269 university students about
a small-town mayoral race, changing the gender and words to describe
the candidate.39 The “feminine-coded” language used words such
as “compassionate” and “loyal,” and the masculine-coded language
193
used words such as “ambitious” and “assertive.” A female politician

described in “masculine-coded” language was nearly ten percent more
qualified and seven percent more competent than a woman described
with feminine descriptors.
“Such language choices, we found, do have an impact,” state the
researchers.
For journalists, this finding should be a wake-up call. While we know

little about the effects of subtle sexism in the descriptive language
used in normal news coverage, our results suggest that superficially
harmless language choices can potentially change how the electorate
views certain politicians. While more research on the subject is
needed, journalists should be aware that even small, seemingly
stylistic writing choices might have an impact on public opinion.40
In addition, the words journalists don’t use can deliver an unspoken

message. What isn’t said can be as important as what is. Reporters
obviously cannot describe people in full. There’s not the space or time
or consumer attention to do that. But journalists should be aware of
what they do omit when characterizing news subjects.
For instance, describing a woman throughout a story as “a mother,”
“a mom of three” and “a wife” emphasizes her familial role to the
exclusion of other aspects of her identity. That might be appropriate
if she is one of many sources in a parenting story, but not if the story
is a personality profile. If the woman is also a partner in a local law
firm and an accomplished marathoner, then describing her primarily
in her domestic role portrays her in a discriminatory way.
“Excessive political correctness is as unwelcome as stereotyping,”
says the Reuters Handbook of Journalism (2020). “A personality piece
based on an interview with a CEO who juggles work with raising five
children could make valid references to these personal challenges. A
spot news story about this CEO under fire over corporate strategy
would not.”41
Stereotyping by omission. A study was conducted about how
people communicate about others whom they view ambivalently with
respect to warmth and competence. Researchers found that commu-
nicators accentuated the positive attributes in outgroups and didn’t
comment on the negative qualities they saw in people.42
194
They found that audiences draw negative inferences from faint or

one-dimensional praise of others. Not being negative isn’t the same
as being overwhelmingly positive, and accuracy is obviously compro-
mised. Interestingly, the researchers, who conducted five separate
experiments, found that retaining positive stereotypes while omitting
negative ones served to perpetuate ambivalence toward outgroups.43
So silence is not always golden.
LANGUAGE AND AUDIENCE

The words that journalists use influence their audiences. The words
that sources use, or don’t use, affect news audiences, too. For example,
the deluge of news coverage of then-President Trump so dominated
the coverage during his tenure that other topics that had previously
received news attention no longer did. A study of LGBTQ issues in
the news found that terms such as “gay” or “lesbian” and related terms
“essentially vanished after Trump was elected and have remained
largely absent from coverage for the past three years.”44 The data was
based on July 2009 to fall 2019, using data from the Internet Archive’s
Television News Archive processed by the GDELT Project. Goo-
gle trend search data shows that interest in the terms has increased
during the same time period, so it is not as if public interest in the
topics has diminished.
The subtle effect of words on audiences was shown in a study
on racial prejudice in sports announcers’ speech.45 While sports
announcers are not typically journalists, the study illustrates how
words convey associations. After reading transcripts from nationally
televised National Football League (NFL) games, 180 undergraduate
students (half white, half African American) had to guess whether the
players were Black or white based on the sports announcers’ language.
The names of the players and their teams and teammates were all dis-
guised. The announcers were all white. The students correctly iden-
tified the race of the player 56 percent of the time – more often than
expected by chance.
Noteworthy is the fact that the two transcripts in which students
guessed incorrectly more often than correctly involved stereotypical
racial descriptions. For example, an announcer said one player “lacked
rhythm and all those things.”46 Students thought the player was Black
195
based on that statement, but he was white. The study shows that while
the denotation of the words was correct, they carried a connotation
that implied a player’s race.
Setting a Tone
Tone is the style of writing and mood of a news piece, its personality
and voice. Each publication has a different tone based on its audience.
It might be conversational or intimate, businesslike or sympathetic.
Tone is determined by audience and subject matter and can influence
the word choices a writer makes. Bloggers use casual and conversa-
tional language; slang and epithets are acceptable. You’ll rarely find
either slang or cursing in a straight news account, which is more for-
mal. Word choice helps set a tone. Using casual or formal language,
specialized language (jargon) or simplistic vocabulary – it all creates a
tone that is communicated to an audience.
Sources and tone. Journalists should be aware of adopting the
tone of sources. Christina Samuels has been a staff writer for the
Washington Post and the Miami Herald. She now covers educational
equity for Education Week. Samuels’ reporting on people with dis-
abilities highlights the importance of tone when interviewing sources
and selecting quotes. Samuels says she has to be on the lookout for
sources using a tone that suggests that money is “wasted” on children
in special-education classes.
On Assignment
Often this comes up in terms of school district budgets.
There will be budget stories, and the underlying ques-
tion is, “Do we have to spend so much money to educate
these special-needs kids?” With gifted kids, I don’t think
there would be the underlying tone of: “They don’t
really need it. Why are we spending so much money on
kids who can’t really do anything with it?”47
Samuels strives to detect the disparaging tone of
sources and is careful not to allow that same attitude to
seep into her word choices and her approach to stories.
196
pause & consider

What other areas of reporting can you think of in which
sources may frequently show bias toward other groups of
people? How do you know this and what word choices sup-
port your conclusion?
PRACTICING PRECISION
All journalists have to use words to do their work, whether it is tele-
vision and radio scripts, print or online news stories, blogs or photo
captions. Crafting clear, accurate and informative sentences is fun-
damental to news writing. Strategies to avoid overly cautious or
unintentionally insensitive language are discussed in the following
sections.
Take the Blab Test
To examine your writing for euphemisms and overly broad lan-

guage, take the Blab Test. For every abstract word or phrase, sub-
stitute a “blab.” Stuart Chase called these ill-defined words “noises
without meaning” in his book, The Tyranny of Words.48 The Blab
Test is a great way to highlight how much – or how little – you are
actually communicating. Let’s put the following sentence through
the Blab Test:
The seeming explosion of welfare mothers is causing concern among
many in this small town, as they see the abuse of food stamps and other
government aid.
Translate that sentence into blab-speak: The blab blab of blab blab
is causing concern among blab in this small town, as they blab the
abuse of food stamps and other government aid.
Why did some words become blabs? Because they lacked speci-
ficity and precision. What is a “seeming explosion”? Either the num-
ber of parents on state assistance is increasing or it isn’t. How can
it be “seeming” to do so? And what constitutes an “explosion” of
cases – 10? 20? 100? What is a “welfare mother”? There are many
types of government assistance, so be specific about which programs
197
are experiencing an increase in caseload. How much is “many” and

who are the “many” – citizens or local government officials or state
workers? Be clear about why it matters that these people are con-
cerned; do they hold power to do more than be concerned? How
do these people “see” the abuse? Are they standing at the cash reg-
ister when the WIC stamps come out for ineligible items such as
cigarettes?
The multimedia news agency Thomson Reuters publishes Reu-
ters’ Handbook of Journalism written by and for its staff. Exhibit 8.2
includes three guidelines from the handbook regarding the use of pre-
cision and common sense when writing about religious, cultural and
national groups.
EXHIBIT 8.2 REUTERS’ GUIDELINES FOR WRITING

ABOUT RELIGIOUS, CULTURAL AND NATIONAL
DIFFERENCES.49
Seek precision with religious descriptions. ‘Islamist’ indicates an emphasis

on Muslim principles. The adjective ‘Islamic’ refers primarily to the religion
while ‘Muslim’ has both religious and cultural connotations. . . . Also be clear
about distinctions within religions, indicating whether Muslims are Sunni or
Shi’ite or noting which Christian denomination is involved.
In cases where the line between nationalism, religion and culture is un-
clear . . . try to explain the historical and demographic background instead
of glossing over the problem with oversimplified tags.
When reporting on tragedies, we should be sensitive to the risk of implying
that a Western life is worth more than an African or Asian casualty . . . [write]
from a global perspective, while applying common sense and news judg-
ment in cases where one group of victims deserves to be highlighted.
Source: Reuter’s Handbook of Journalism, 2020. Emphases added.
Challenge Your Sources
Sources talk in euphemisms too. So ask and ask again to clarify what
people are saying. Jonathan Blakley, executive director of radio pro-
gramming at KQED in San Francisco, started out as a reporter in
Detroit, where he often heard sweeping generalizations about the
city’s violence.50
198
On Assignment
“People are dying in Detroit every day.” You see that
quote all the time. I grew up in Detroit. I was born and
raised in Detroit. I’ve never been shot at nor have I ever
shot anyone. And I didn’t grow up in the richest part of
Detroit. I grew up in a regular neighborhood.
I think: Really? People are getting shot every day?
What do you mean? “Well, a guy got shot here a couple
months ago.” Well, that’s different. Or they say: “I don’t
feel safe.” Now, we’re getting somewhere; that is proba-
bly what that person meant.
“People are getting shot every day.” That is a great
quote. But is it true? I’d rather have the quote that
may not sell as many newspapers or may not make the
stock prices of some cable networks go higher. I’d rather
have the quote of, “I don’t really feel safe these days
because. . .” rather than “People gettin’ shot every day.”
You can easily get that quote.
You need to know more about a city before you just
let someone say that. You also need to interview more
than one person. This is a city built for 2 million people.
Which part of the city are we talking about?
A news truck used to be a rarity. But in today’s environ-
ment, you’re videotaping yourself, so it’s no big deal to have
a microphone and camera in front of you. So a lot of times
you have to be careful and looking out for someone telling
you what they think you want to hear – be it in Baghdad or
Detroit. As a reporter, you can’t just walk away. You need
to challenge folks. You need to ask: “What do you mean?”
In the wake of controversial comments, journalists need to focus

on gathering information before handing out judgment. Audiences
need insight, not inflammatory coverage. Journalists need to under-
stand sources’ personal backgrounds and intentions before publish-
ing. When he was dean of the Poynter Institute, which provides
199
training for journalists, Keith Woods provided advice on how to

cover eruptions over word choices involving race and ethnicity.
Woods suggested51 that journalists ask the following questions to
help audiences gain information after a news subject makes contro-
versial comments:
1. What did they say? Don’t get seduced by the sexy sound bite and
leave out important facts. Be precise and avoid paraphrasing. That
enhances fairness and sharpens accuracy.
2. Why does it matter? If someone has uttered a racial or ethnic
insult, remember that not everyone knows the history or context
of the words and, therefore, might not understand why anyone
would be upset. That context also helps your audience put the
remarks in perspective and judge for themselves the severity (or
lack thereof) of the words.
3. What did they mean? Beware of assumptions here. [They] might
not mean what you think. Even if the words rank among the most
profane or bigoted terms in the language, ask the neutral question:
“What do you mean?” Another question that gets to the heart
of the story: “Do you know why those words would anger some
people?” Another: “What would you most want people to know
about you right now?”
4. Who are your sources? Remember that opinions vary among and
between people. If the insult is aimed at Arabs, don’t just seek
reaction from Arabs. Ask Latinos, Native Americans, white people,
etc. That includes and expands perspective.
Self-Check Your Language
If a story involves racial or other identifiers, and if it focuses on dis-

enfranchised groups, before sending your story to an editor, quickly
review this “Language Self-Check” to ensure your coverage is straight-
forward and balanced:
• Use only relevant description. Ensure that any personal

details included about sources are essential to understanding
the story.
• Use labels with caution. Labels encourage audiences to
shoehorn all aspects of a person’s behavior into a neat
200
category. For example, one study showed that labeling

a child as “poor” prompted people to label the child
as less intelligent as well, even though no evidence
was presented regarding intellect.52 Instead, follow the
next tip.
• Use accurate, specific language. It’s preferable to
explain what someone did clearly and accurately than to
label it.
• Vet quotes for negative stereotypes. This doesn’t mean
you shouldn’t run such quotes, but clarify what sources
mean to say, and include context as to why the quote
is offensive to some groups of people. Provide historical
context whenever necessary so audiences understand the
inferences made.
• Use neutral language. Avoid politicized terms or language
that mirrors the viewpoint of influential sources.
Appreciating the power of words and tone to influence audience’s

understanding and perception of news events is critical for excel-
lent journalism. A journalist has the opportunity to educate and
inform, instead of to inflame or confuse. As journalists, many of
us entered the profession because we love to write. Writing inclu-
sively and with many perspectives in mind is challenging, but doing
so means that journalists can attract a far broader and more diverse
audience.
1. The New York Times’ parenting section stopped using the phrase
“natural birth.” Read about why here, and react to the decision in
a paragraph: https://nyti.ms/37jTApl.
2. Read the August 11, 2009, piece by Cintra Wilson, style columnist
for the New York Times, called “Playing to the Middle.” It’s about
the JCPenney department store and is available online at https://
nyti.ms/3ml4EGQ. The column concludes with:
No matter how many Grand Slam breakfasts you’ve knocked

out of the park, Penney’s has a size for you. Ladies will find
201
kicky little numbers that fit no matter how bountiful the good
Lord made them; in the men’s Big & Tall section, even Voltron
could find office casuals.53
a. Characterize the tone of the column. Is it helpful? Critical?

Sarcastic? Informative?
b. How was the tone established? Identify words or phrases that
contribute to that tone.
c. Do you agree or disagree with the Times’ ombsbudman,
who later wrote that he could feel “a virtual sneer”54 coming
through Wilson’s tone?
d. Explain your answers in a one-page blog posting, and
reference the words or phrases you identified in answer (b) to
support your conclusion. (Be aware that you are evaluating
a column and not a straight news story, so more personality
and viewpoint should be evident in the prose.)
e. In a small group, brainstorm other ways that the author might
have written about this topic that would be less offensive but
still have voice and personality.
3. How should news outlets handle describing a news subject’s race

or ethnicity? Create a newsroom or classroom policy advising other
reporters on the use of racial identifiers in news stories. Consider
these questions when doing so:
a. In what circumstances might a racial or ethnic identifier be
useful in a news story? How much does the identifier (such as
“a Hispanic male”) tell the audience about someone’s looks?
How different can people of the same race or ethnicity look?
What is the effect on the news audience when a story notes
someone’s race and/or ethnicity?
b. Read the guidelines for racial identifiers in the RTDNA.
org website here: https://www.rtdna.org/content/racial_
identification. Make changes to your policy in light of this
guidance.
c. Publish your policy in an online discussion group or a
journalism listserv for others to learn from and to offer
feedback.
4. Put one of your recent stories through the Blab Test. Circle words
that lack specificity and concrete meaning and replace them with
blabs. Read your “blab-speak” story aloud. Then replace the blabs
with words that add clearer meaning to your writing.
202
FOR REVIEW
• Select a word and give its denotation and

connotation.
• Find an example from each of the four categories of
problematic word choice.
• Put a recent story you reported, or one you recently
read, through the steps in the Self-Check Your
Language section above; note whether the story’s
words, phrases or tone needs to be changed.
NOTES
1 Davis, J.H., Stolberg, S.G., & Kaplan, T. (January 11, 2018). “Trump
Alarms Lawmakers with Disparaging Words for Haiti and Africa.”
New York Times. Retrieved 12/1/2020 from: https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/01/11/us/politics/trump-shithole-countries.html?_r=0
2 Fram, A., & Lemire, J. (January 12, 2018). “Trump: Why Allow Immi-
grants from ‘Shithole’ Countries?” Associated Press. Retrieved 12/3/2020
from: https://apnews.com/article/fdda2ff0b877416c8ae1c1a77a3cc425
3 Associated Press. (January 12, 2018). “Haiti Calls Reported Trump
Remark ‘Racist,’ Says ‘Shocked.’” Retrieved 12/1/2020 from: https://www.
foxnews.com/world/haiti-calls-reported-trump-remark-racist-says-
shocked
4 Cambridge Dictionary. (2020). Racist, Adjective. Retrieved 12/14/2020
from: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/racist
5 Associated Press Stylebook. (2020). “Race-Related Coverage.” Retrieved
12/1/2020 from: https://www.apstylebook.com/race-related-coverage
6 Woods, K. (2008). “Diversity Tip Sheets: Is It Something I Said?,” Poy-
nter.org. Retrieved December 14, 2020 from: https://www.poynter.org/
reporting-editing/2008/diversity-tip-sheets-is-it-something-i-said
7 Ibid.
8 Fürsich, E. (2002). “How Can Global Journalists Represent ‘Other’?,”
Journalism 3(1), 57–84, p. 80.
9 Hernadez, D. (December 17, 2017). “Op-Ed: The Case Against ‘Latinx’.”
Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 12/2/2020 from: https://www.latimes.com/
opinion/op-ed/la-oe-hernandez-the-case-against-latinx-20171217-
story.html
203
204
205
206
9
Attribution, Images
and Editing without
Bias
When to Include Data, What
Images Communicate and How to
Determine Cause
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To learn to edit stories for relevant anecdotes and accurate data.

• To evaluate news accounts for incomplete explanations.
• To recognize the influence of images on shaping audience understanding.
• To self-assess two qualities of thinking style that may affect your journalism.
QUESTIONING WHAT’S TRUE

When a 19-year-old student who had been expelled from Marjory
Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, opened fire with
a legally purchased AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, killing 17 people and
wounding 17 others, the 2018 rampage became the deadliest shooting
at a high school in U.S. history.
It also became associated with another number: The horrific attack
was, according to numerous news organizations and social media
posts reporting on the event, the 18th school shooting in the country
that year. It was only Valentine’s Day. Eighteen school shootings in 45
days. It was a shocking statistic, and as it turned out, it wasn’t true.
Washington Post reporters John Woodrow Cox and Steven Rich
unpacked1 the often-cited statistic from Everytown for Gun Safety,
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AT T R I B U T I O N , I M A G E S A N D E D I T I N G
which is a nonprofit organization aimed at preventing gun violence that

tweeted the statistic the day of the shooting. That statistic was repeated
throughout the ensuing hours, Cox and Rich noted, including by
MSNBC, ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, Time, MSN and the BBC.
A closer examination of those 18 school shootings by the two
reporters showed that the number was highly misleading. Every-
town’s website defines school shooting as “any time a firearm dis-
charges a live round inside a school building or on a school campus or
grounds,” the Washington Post article noted. Those figures included
a man who killed himself outside a Michigan elementary school that
had been closed for months and had no teachers or students on the
grounds. Another incident included in the tally was from someone
firing several rounds from a gun in the parking lot of a Michigan high
school while a basketball game was underway. No one was injured and
classes were not in session.
In fact, “just five of Everytown’s 18 school shootings listed for 2018
happened during school hours and resulted in any physical injury,” the
analysis noted, acknowledging that any shooting of any kind can be
traumatic, whether or not physical harm results.
Gun violence is a horrific and real problem in the United States,
with tragic impacts on children in particular. But the lesson of these
figures is that the 18 total school shootings are misleading. Each of
those 18 cases does not represent the understood meaning of a shoot-
ing spree by a student during school hours. Journalists have a respon-
sibility to check the methodology and the criteria of statistics before
touting them in stories.
The Washington Post article explained why reporters took the time
to scrutinize the tally:
The figures matter because gun-control activists use them as

evidence in their fight for bans on assault weapons, stricter
background checks and other legislation. Gun rights groups seize on
the faults in the data to undermine those arguments and, similarly,
present skewed figures of their own.
DATA IN CONTEXT
The only way to accurately tell a story that is reliant on data is to give
the context of that data. Context matters.
208
The origin of the word “data” is Latin, meaning “that which is

given.” Scholar Johanna Drucker suggests a better word might be
“capta,” meaning “that which is taken.” Why? Because data is actually
information that is captured for a specific purpose. Drucker writes,
“Capta is ‘taken’ actively while data is assumed to be a ‘given’ able to
be recorded and observed. From this distinction, a world of differ-
ences arises.”2
Behind the search for data is the original purpose for seeking such
information. Catherine D’Ignazio on the DataJournalism website that,
Thinking of data as capta invites us to consider why an institution

invested their resources in collecting information, how the institution
uses that information, who the information benefits (and who it
doesn’t), and what the potential limitations of the information are . . .
In short, it points us back to how data are never neutral ‘givens’,
but always situated in a particular context, collected for a particular
reason.3
Journalists can pick and choose from data to tell the story their editor
wants them to tell, or that would most appeal to their news audience.
But honest journalists seek the data that is most representative of
what is actually happening, and when the data is incomplete or only
gives part of the picture, they explain that in their reporting.
Journalists were caught flat-footed in 2016, when polls overwhelm-
ingly predicted that Democrat Hillary Clinton would win the presi-
dential election. As we all know, Republican Donald J. Trump became
the 45th president of the United States. The overreliance on polling,
some of which was not carefully conducted, contributed to the slower-
than-usual journalistic reaction to the election results. Before jour-
nalists can write intelligently about poll results, they must pause to
examine how the poll was conducted: Is the polling procedure clearly
and transparently explained? Does the organization who paid for the
poll stand to benefit from its results? Will it publish the data no matter
what the findings? How are questions worded? Be sure to closely read
the wording of the questions and stick to that precisely when report-
ing the findings.
A reporter has to understand the methods used to collect the data
and how those methods influence results. Poll data might come pack-
aged neatly and ready to insert into a story, but do not do so without
209
pause. Get educated about how polls work and the questions to ask. A
quick primer is here: https://bit.ly/2VER2eO.
ANECDOTE VS. DATA

People tend to favor anecdotes over data, and journalists are no excep-
tion. Too often, story trumps statistics in order to make deadline,
enliven the account or cater to the audience. All three of those things
are useful tools, but not at the expense of facts. Journalists sometimes
focus on the extreme example that makes for a lively tale but might
not be truly representative of a problem. To make a news account cap-
tivating, journalists seek out the dramatic elements of events some-
times to the exclusion of the larger perspective. And journalists know
that distracted news audiences require attention-grabbing images and
an isolated shocking data point, not a heap of numbers.
The digitalization of news has brought multimedia storytelling to
the forefront. Journalists can now select the format for which a story
is best suited. We can match the content to the format so that a story
is told the way it needs to be told – in images, video, infographics,
text, audio or all of them. Sophisticated multimedia packages are
labor-intensive to do well, and many daily stories are a straightfor-
ward blend of text, still images or video.
News stories use anecdotes to humanize statistics and to make an
otherwise dry story of data and experts more vivid. Finding a per-
son who represents the data being reported in a new health study is
a central need for health reporters.4 In one research study, in fact,
one “unexpected finding” of the study was that journalists sometimes
evaluate the worth of findings in a population-based study by whether
or not they can find a fitting example to support the finding. It isn’t a
story until reporters can find an example, in other words.
Numbers as Context
The preference for anecdotal instead of population-based information

can lead people to mischaracterize events. Such information is called
base-rate information; it is data about the percentage of cases in a
population or the frequency with which an event occurs in a popu-
lation. Base-rate information provides perspective. Such information
might answer how many local grade-school children receive free or
210
reduced-price lunches, or the number of practicing Buddhists in a

region, or the level of education attained by second-generation Gua-
temalans in a community.
Population-based data may not be scintillating, but it’s more reli-
able than a string of specific individuals and their tales. It helps avoid
language that hides a lack of concrete evidence – phrasing such as
“seemingly” or “it appears that” or “some say.” (This author has written
all three phrases in her news writing career, she’s certain.)
Knowing this, why do journalists sometimes overgeneralize based
on a compelling anecdote instead of using more valid statistics to
anchor a story?5 A vivid example makes for a good story, but not
always the most accurate one. Journalists should at least know that
they, their sources and audiences tend to:
• Assume a sample from a particular population is highly

representative of that population and is similar to it in all
essential characteristics.6 Example: One house from the Near
East Side is essentially the same as any on the Near East Side:
All are rundown and their residents engage in illicit activities.
• Concentrate on nonessential information instead of on
relevant data when making a conclusion.7 Example: The
number of houses in a neighborhood in which occupants
are of a particular race or ethnicity is nonessential
information when it comes to concluding whether the
dwelling is a place where illegal drugs are bought and sold.
• Give undue consideration to descriptive information
rather than statistical information and make unwarranted
generalizations based on the vivid information.8 Example: A
highly visual raid on a home led by a heavily-armed SWAT
team is inherently more captivating to the imagination
than a collection of numbers on actual arrests made.
News viewers may persist in believing that illegal drugs
are a widespread problem in the neighborhood – even if
the arrest numbers and police corruption cases indicate
otherwise.
Being aware of these basic tendencies will help journalists remember

to seek out numbers to anchor a story. Data and interviews work
together to produce the most accurate story. “The best stories
211
almost always emerge from talking to people, whether they are experts
or just ordinary people affected by the issues we write about,” says Ben
Casselman, economics reporter at the New York Times.9 “They’re the
ones who pose the questions that data can help answer, or who help
explain the trends that the data reveals, or who can provide the wrin-
kles and nuances that the data glosses over.”
pause & consider

Review some of the winners at https://datajournalism.com/
awards. Learn how narrative and numbers work together.
Editing with an Eye for Evidence
Editing is a process that occurs throughout the development of a

story. In larger news organizations, photojournalists, reporters and the
graphics team work together with editors to develop a story. In smaller
operations, a single journalist might create text, photos and graphics sin-
glehandedly. In either scenario, journalists producing the stories can and
should serve as their own editors throughout the story process. Editing
is about perspective. It invites reporters to step back from their work and
evaluate it from its initial premise: Is the foundational reporting there,
or is the story built on information that hasn’t been verified? Editing is
the chance to check whether assumptions have overruled evidence. If so,
revisions are the opportunity to correct your assumptions.
Journalists can build two questions into their self-editing routine,
keeping both in mind throughout the story process, as they formulate a
reporting plan, gather information and assemble their stories:
1. Is there a use for base-rate data in the reporting? Since base rates
describe how often something happens in a given population, they
are useful in predictions. They also help determine the probability
of events and offer information about general tendencies. They
quickly give context and perspective. Cognitive biases are less apt
to run wild when hemmed in by hard data. You can humanize the
numbers with interviews and observation.
212
An example of base-rate data is the number of confirmed cases

of cancer in children in a neighborhood near a nuclear power
plant out of the total number of children living there. This sort
of data helps prevent panic coverage and incorrect judgments
about the randomness of events
(which are more random than
Remember that the plural of you think), particularly in small
anecdote is data.11 In other
sample sizes.10 While anecdotal
words, look for personal
stories that reflect genuine information is powerful and vivid,
trends instead of squeezing a data is more reliable and valid.
trend from a couple of good Stories about trends and patterns
anecdotes. (such as crime and drug busts in
a community) need data.
2. If an anecdote is used, is it relevant to the larger point of the
story? Journalists can’t help how news consumers process infor-
mation; people will always prefer a colorful story. But journalists
can control how they themselves make judgments and ensure
that the anecdotes they use represent the larger point of the news
account. Anecdotes shouldn’t be the extreme odd example, unless
that example is clearly highlighted as the exception to a general
pattern.
Let Numbers Keep You in Line
Reporters tend to go too easy on causes they support and with sources
they like, notes Benjy Hamm, the former editorial director at Land-
mark Community Newspapers, which owns more than 50 commu-
nity papers in 15 states. Hamm also used to be managing editor at
the Spartanburg Herald-Journal in South Carolina, where he once
edited a story about teen pregnancies. Hamm recalls that the reporter
returned “all fired up” from his interview with a source at a local orga-
nization working to prevent unwanted pregnancies. But the report-
er’s pitch was weak. It had no numbers to back up sources’ claims
that there was a “crisis” of teen pregnancies in the area. Nationally,
the number of teen pregnancies was down, so why not locally, too,
Hamm wondered. He explains12 how the rest of the editing process
proceeded.
213
On Assignment
We needed to ask, “What part of this is based on informa-
tion versus assumptions?” So I said, “Go back to the source
and ask what the teen pregnancy rate was 5, 10, 15 years
ago.” He came back and said, “They don’t want to give
me those numbers because that will take away from the
story. The numbers aren’t up here; it’s just a crisis here.”
The source’s thinking was that if one teenager gets
pregnant, that’s a problem. We said we’ll do a story about
issues involved in teen pregnancy but we need the num-
bers. The assumption from the reporter was that this is
terrible, and this is bad; teen pregnancies are going up.
[In the end we] were able to write about the difficulties
of teen pregnancies along with an article about successful
efforts to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies.
Journalists often are criticized as being too cynical. I have
not found that to be true for most of the people I’ve met
in journalism. If anything, many journalists can be too trust-
ing when it comes to causes they support, people they like
and sources they trust. They can lower their guard and relax
their standards when reporting on those topics and sources.
Who would oppose worthy efforts to reduce
unplanned teen pregnancy? So, reporters – consciously
or subconsciously – often see [the issue] as a cause to sup-
port through their news articles. That support can make
them less likely to ask tough questions, to insist on docu-
mentation to verify claims and to differentiate between
fact and opinion. I see examples of this all the time when
newspapers cover particular sources, government agen-
cies and nonprofits. Editors need to challenge reporters
to question conventional wisdom and ask tough ques-
tions of all their sources.
For example, if the police chief requests that the
city council impose a curfew on people under age 17
because of late-night vandalism and violence, check out
214
the numbers. A reporter did so when I was editor at a

newspaper in Lancaster, South Carolina, and found no
evidence of late-night crimes or mischief involving chil-
dren under age 17. Upon questioning, the police chief
admitted there were no problems. He said he was simply
trying to avoid the potential for future problems.
So: Challenge your sources. Challenge the premise of
your own story. Challenge the “facts.” There are numer-
ous examples of people telling reporters things that sim-
ply don’t add up when you look at the numbers. You still
may have a story; it’s just a different, and better, story.
pause & consider

With a peer, make a list of a half dozen or so worthy causes
that you support. Take one cause (such as a clean environ-
ment) and discuss hard questions you can ask sources to
avoid a blindly positive news account on that topic.
The above sections describe the importance of editing to avoid bas-

ing stories on a single compelling anecdote or conventional wisdom
and to determine when a story needs anchoring in data and statistics.
Now, let’s look at another way editing can eliminate assumptions that
creep into stories. Revising your work as you report can help clarify
cause and context and root out unintended bias in your writing.
EDITING FOR ACCURATE ATTRIBUTION

In journalism, attribution is the identification of the source of informa-
tion in a news story. But in cognitive terms, the word attribution refers
to how people explain the causes of behaviors and events.11 People tend
to attribute the cause of another person’s behavior either to elements
within that person (internal) or to environmental elements (external).12
Because reporters are in the business of trying to make sense of
human behavior – to understand motivation and cause and explain
215
it to the public – the concept of attribution has everyday utility for

newsrooms. The mind can too quickly infer the personality traits of
others. We assume that a person’s behavior will be the same in very
different situations and circumstances.13 These assumptions ignore
the fact that behavior is often a function of the situation rather than a
reflection of someone’s personality, character or habits.14
For example, giving someone’s race or ethnicity in relation to a
crime they allegedly committed suggests a link between the two if
there is no other reason for the reference. This sort of attribution error
introduces cause simply by naming a person’s race or ethnicity. Is a
person’s criminal history important to the telling of a current story?
(If so, have the criminal histories and similar details of other sources
in the story also been vetted and included?) Is a person’s history of
being a victim of sexual assault that led to a conviction relevant to a
current story? It depends on the story, right? If the story is about the
person running for office and championing more funding for sexual
violence prevention measures, it likely is. If the story is about the per-
son being named CEO of a local company, it is not.
Framing of a news issue does affect how audiences perceive it. For
example, CBS This Morning emphasized the criminal background of
Alton Brown when reporting on his fatal shooting by police in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, in 2018. The video of the incident was shown repeat-
edly on social media, and in the CBS report as well. The reporter listed
some of Brown’s past charges and showed his “rap sheet.” The question
to ask is: What did Brown’s criminal background have to do with the
police action during that encounter? How does this emphasis frame
the story? Focusing on Brown’s past crimes emphasizes something
internal in Brown, a “criminal element” to him. If Brown’s criminal
background was known to police during the latest encounter, how did
it affect their decisions during the current interaction? Focusing on
the particulars of the encounter with police emphasizes the environ-
mental elements external to Brown that led to his shooting.
pause & consider

Watch the CBS story about the shooting of Alton Sterling in
Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 2018: https://bit.ly/3lLPg6c.
216
In another example, in a study13 in which participants read a news

article that framed obesity as a societal issue, they were more likely
to attribute the obesity problem to social conditions and not individ-
ual behaviors such as personal responsibility and choices. This in turn
“led to stronger beliefs in the responsibility of the government, food
industry and marketing sector to solve the problem.”
Let’s walk through how attribution might work in real life: Attri-
bution errors can lead to the stereotype that successful women get
to their position purely through long hours and hard work (exter-
nal factors), not through their own intelligence (an internal factor).
Attribution errors can perpetuate gender-based stereotypes by offer-
ing different explanations for the same behavior.15 For instance, a
sexist version of attribution would conclude that if a man succeeds
at business, it’s due to his innate abilities (internal). If a woman suc-
ceeds at business, it’s due to luck, effort or affirmative action policies
(external).
Attributions are inferences people generate to explain events,
others’ behavior and their own behavior. Attributions are a power-
ful force in all societies, as they seek to explain causes and, some-
times, to assign blame. How journalists assign cause to behaviors
and events can have implications for how groups of people are
viewed in the larger society, because news influences peoples’ per-
ceptions of events and of other people. Attribution has far-reaching
effects. It is important for journalists to accurately label the causes
of people’s circumstances as much as access and time allow. For
instance, a common tendency in a capitalistic society such as the
United States is to attribute people’s economic success to disposi-
tion: “He pulled himself up by his bootstraps.” Or, “She worked her
way out of poverty.” By this rule, people deserve the economic fate
they get.
Research indicates that the way people explain the causes of men-
tal illness or obesity affects how much citizens are willing to help peo-
ple who are mentally ill or obese. If citizens believe people can control
their conditions – that is, that the condition is due to internal, con-
trollable factors, such as will power in the case of obesity – then they
are less likely to help them.14
In a journalistic example, Wayne Drehs of ESPN.com found in Kurt
Warner, who at that time was the Arizona Cardinals starting quar-
terback, an example of a man driven by his internal beliefs, not by
217
his external circumstances. In 2009, Drehs spent time with Warner

for a multimedia profile of the player. Drehs says15 he was careful to
look for evidence that supported his explanation of the causes behind
Warner’s behavior.
Kurt Warner. . . could not be further from the stereotypes. The
whole piece was about that. Here’s this incredibly Christian man
who had all these values yet goes to work everyday in a locker room
full of men who cheat on their wives and go to strip clubs. Even with
Kurt, I expected a certain type of Bible pusher, someone who would
hammer at me with his religion and hammer at his teammates. His
belief is,
I am going to live my life in the way of the Lord and my goal is that
other people will see that and ask, “How are you able to be that
way?” And then I can tell them as opposed to standing on the bench
in the locker room yelling.
Drehs’ piece makes conclusions about Warner’s behavior and the

causes for it. He sought to substantiate those conclusions with
detailed writing and concrete specifics garnered from paying atten-
tion to a wide spectrum of information, not just Warner talking about
Warner. In his writing, Drehs tried to show Warner in context. Here’s
the top of his story:
PHOENIX – It’s a chilly, wet December afternoon in the alleged Valley

of the Sun and a mud-covered Kurt Warner is lost. He’s just finished
helping build an elementary school playground and is driving home
to stuff Christmas stockings for more than 100 foster kids when his
cell phone rings.
It’s Arizona Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt, congratulating the

37–year-old quarterback for making his third Pro Bowl, his first as a
Cardinal. Warner asks which of his teammates made the team, then
reacts to his own good fortune with the enthusiasm of someone who
is yawning. . . .
And just like that, the conversation is over, the career renaissance
complete. Eight years since Warner came out of an Iowa
218
supermarket to lead the St. Louis Rams to a Super Bowl title, he

is once again one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL. Despite his
struggles the past two weeks, Warner’s on-the-field success has
shined an even stronger spotlight on his off-the-field deeds, which,
depending on your perspective, are either saintly or too good to be
true. . . .
On this day, at least Kurt Warner is lost. At least in the middle of all
this selflessness, humility and utter lack of ego, the man is texting
while driving, paying little attention to the road and can’t remember
if the path home follows I-10 East or I-10 West. Because otherwise,
ugggh. Otherwise, this story might need to come with its very own
barf bag. And Warner knows it.16
You can access Drehs’ multimedia piece on Warner at https://

es.pn/33OaJoR.
Excellent reporters dig in and let evidence decide attribution:
What fuels this subject? What drives his or her actions? How do we
know?
Most people aren’t great judges of their own behaviors. We’re likely
to interpret our worlds in order to maintain a strong self-image; suc-
cesses are ours alone, and failures are due to bad luck or other outside
circumstances. That means we are actually not as savvy/sophisti-
cated/smart/talented as we think we are. So journalists should ask
questions of not only news subjects but also a subject’s friends and
enemies in order to form more accurate attributions about a subject’s
behavior.
Being attentive to just one narrative about a community or cul-
ture is unfair and risks misunderstanding, says novelist Chima-
manda Adichie in her TED Talk. It is well worth watching if you
haven’t yet to learn about the distortions that happen when we
focus on only a single storyline about a person or place: https://bit.
ly/2VI6HtO.
The Fundamental Attribution Error
One form of attribution is especially pertinent to journalists because

it involves playing the role of observer, which is what news people do.
219
Here’s a quick multiple-choice quiz to better understand the concept

behind the fundamental attribution error:
1. When you are speeding down the street late for work, you are
violating the speed limit because:
A. Your alarm didn’t go off.

B. Your car wouldn’t start.
C. You love to drive fast.
D. You couldn’t find your keys/purse/wallet/cell phone.
2. When a driver passes you on the right and is going 20 miles per
hour faster than you, he’s violating the speed limit because:
A. His wife is in labor in the back seat.

B. He’s irresponsible.
C. He has aggression issues.
D. He can’t read speed limit signs.
This brief quiz hints at how we often erroneously explain the causes
of others’ behavior: If you chose A, B or D for Question 1 and B, C
or D for Question 2, then you have demonstrated the fundamental
attribution error. The fundamental attribution error describes the
tendency for an observer to overestimate the role of personal, inter-
nal factors in affecting behavior and to underestimate the influence of
situational factors.
In the example above, you speed because of circumstances; it has
nothing to do with your being incautious or disorganized. But other
people speed because of their own idiocy; it has nothing to do with
circumstances.
When a preschooler slipped away from his mother during their
visit to the Cincinnati Zoo, he fell into the gorilla enclosure and was
dragged through the moat by a gorilla. The fundamental attribution
error way of assigning blame goes like this: If it were your child who
slipped from your hands at the zoo and slid into the gorilla enclosure,
then your child is really fast, you were distracted, the crowds got in
your way and so forth. If it is someone else’s child who falls into the
enclosure, the parent was negligent and at fault. In a particularly indi-
vidualistic culture like modern America, the fundamental attribution
error tends to play an outsize role.
220
Journalists and the Fundamental Attribution Error
To put it in terms of the news profession, a reporter and editor may

tend to explain behavior as due to a source’s disposition – such as per-
sonality, habits or character (“that’s just what those people are like”)
– as opposed to the source’s environment or circumstances. The fun-
damental attribution error is common in part because when people
try to explain someone’s behavior, their attention is usually on the
individual and his or her appearance, language and outward attitude.
Attention is focused less on the situational context or the relevant
social roles, which can take longer to piece out when reporting.19
Imagine that a journalist observes a political candidate joking and
laughing with people of her own ethnicity at a campaign stop at a
local burger joint. Later that day, the journalist witnesses the candi-
date being reserved and serious with people of a different ethnicity at
a fundraising session in a supporter’s home.
pause & consider

Make a quick mental list of possible reasons for the candi-
date’s differing behavior at the two events.
The journalist would be committing the fundamental attribution

error if he decided that the candidate’s differing behavior was due
to her inherent favoritism of people of her own ethnicity and a dis-
comfort with people of other ethnicities. Actually, it is much more
likely that the circumstances determined the candidate’s behavior.
The degree of formality of the venues dictated the style of the candi-
date’s actions; the burger joint invited quips and banter, the fundraiser
called for decorum.
The fundamental attribution error is also pertinent to journalists
for a second reason: It can close the mind to alternate explanations for
someone’s actions. Studies in general suggest that the urge to explain
a source’s behavior in terms of personality will cause a reporter to
discount situational evidence even if the reporter knows that circum-
stances are influencing the source’s behavior.20
221
Here’s an example of this discounting in news work: A reporter

on the court beat learns that a woman on trial for stealing money
from her employer did so because she was broke and needed to buy
food for her three kids. The reporter covers her hearing, at which
the woman is bitter and sarcastic to the judge. The reporter’s story
focuses on how crafty and sinister the woman was about pilfer-
ing cash from the checkout drawer at the locally owned hardware
store where she worked (and stole) for the past two years. The story
quotes the angry, betrayed owner extensively.
However, the reporter also learns the woman is a paycheck away
from eviction. The reporter chooses not to pursue this angle and
concludes that basically she is lazy; after all, she hasn’t used the food
pantry available to her each week. Had the reporter looked into bus
routes to the pantry from her low-income housing complex, the
reporter would have found the trip to and from the pantry (with three
young children in tow) takes an hour each way. And, the pantry closes
at 1 p.m. on Saturdays; she gets off work at noon. None of this is to
say the woman isn’t guilty or unpleasant or that she should have done
what she did. But there’s a more complete story here that goes beyond
the rightfully angry employer.
Unseen situational forces such as poverty, racism and unemploy-
ment are “invisible social chains” that control people’s behavior. So
noted an influential social psychologist named Gustav Ichheiser in
1949, and his comments still have worth today. Ichheiser wrote that
“the complete tragic blindness of the privileged concerning the lifesit-
uation of the underprivileged is the result of just this kind of not see-
ing the invisible factors in the situations of others.”21
The next section discusses a way journalists can discover the invis-
ible circumstances influencing sources’ actions.
REPORTING AND EDITING FOR COMPLETE

EXPLANATIONS
As a story takes shape, revising and editing to provide correct expla-
nations for actions are among the most important tasks at hand.
Audiences typically don’t ask what other forces might have influenced
the subject of a news story; they take the news accounts at face value.
So a journalist must take the concept of cause seriously.
222
Question Official Sources
In 2017, the number of assaults on U.S. border patrol agents soared

to 786 – an increase of 73 percent from the year prior. This occurred
even though the number of apprehensions of people crossing at bor-
ders fell by more than 100,000, according to an investigation by the
Intercept digital news outlet (Nathan, 2018).
Some news media reported the startling rise in assaults. Vice Pres-
ident Mike Pence cited the 73 percent spike as a reason more funding
for border patrol was needed.
However, an investigation by the Intercept17 found that a total of
126 assaults in that 786 were due to just one incident on February 14,
2017. That day, seven agents were assaulted by six people throwing or
brandishing rocks, bottles and tree branches.
This new data collection method multiplied the number of agents
by attackers by the number of objects in the assault. The new and
irregular method of reporting inflated the numbers, which are usually
based on just the number of assaulted agents.
The Intercept questioned the sharp rise in the number of assaults
instead of accepting the federal agency’s figures as fact. The Intercept
wanted to know the cause of the increase. They looked behind the
figures to the accounting of them and found the data wasn’t telling an
accurate story.
Uncovering the Full Story Takes Time
One way journalists can learn the motivations and causes behind
sources’ actions is to enter their private worlds. Doing so leads to a
more accurate explanation for behaviors. It helps reveal the “invisible
social chains” that direct some people’s actions. This means inter-
viewing a source in his apartment instead of meeting at a coffee shop.
Sitting with him over a dinner with his family instead of at work.
Going to his place of worship, or his weekly 7 a.m. pickup basketball
game. Journalists can make venue choices that assist their efforts to
see beyond a person’s outward appearance and public disposition.
A journalist’s presence influences people’s behavior. Reporters and
photojournalists fortunate enough to get time to follow a story sub-
ject around for a length of time can melt into the background and no
223
longer be seen as an audience. The journalistic observer needs to see

how the source behaves when not on stage.
Journalists can fairly and fully explain their sources’ behaviors by
seeking circumstantial evidence for their actions. A full explanation is
a fair explanation. As much as possible, journalists should consider a
complete array of causes for a source’s behavior. Interviews with a vari-
ety of sources can help determine cause. So might documents. Explore
how forces of time, money, birthright, education and social network
may explain a source’s actions just as much as her character does.
A story’s conclusions should be dictated by the most aggressive
reporting that time allows. If a journalist doesn’t have time to go
beyond artifice and public statements, then a story should acknowl-
edge that. It can be as straightforward as “During a 30-minute in-
person interview, Source A seems confident and composed.”
Know Yourself
A second way that a journalist can fully consider the motivations

behind a source’s actions is, ironically, to consider their own ways of
thinking. It’s helpful for editors to know a journalist’s individual style
as well. It’s easier to address gaps and oversights in story coverage
when working as a team. Interestingly, some people tend to attribute
more readily than others. Two personality characteristics that affect
the way people explain the behavior of others are category width and
certainty orientation. Both have to do with one’s thinking style.
Category width. This refers to how broadly a person categorizes
things.22 Is a woman selling cosmetics out of her home considered a
businesswoman? A broad categorizer would say yes. A narrow cate-
gorizer would say no, because the professional trappings of a separate
office, regular business hours, colleagues and office attire are missing.
Broad categorizers allow for lots of discrepancy among members of
the same category, while narrow categorizers generally do not.23
Broad categorizers tend to perform better than narrow catego-
rizers on tests that require thinking about how things interrelate.
Narrow categorizers tend to perform better on detailed, analytic pro-
cessing. Broad categorizers are tolerant of conflicting information;
they tend to search for the appropriate interpretation of a situation,
such as evaluating the behavior of someone from another culture,
rather than making an uninformed judgment. Narrow categorizers
224
are unaccepting of conflicting information and tend to make strong

judgments based on their own cultural viewpoint.24
Pay attention to how you categorize things, people and events. Talk
to friends and colleagues about how they sort the world, and you’ll see
differences. It’s important to know how you think so you can check
yourself and your assumptions when telling others’ stories.
Certainty orientation. Another personality trait that can influence
a journalists’ attributions about people is how certainty-oriented they
are. People who are uncertainty-oriented have a need to understand
others. They are open-minded and evaluate ideas on their own merit,
integrating new and old ideas and changing belief systems accordingly.
Conversely, certainty-oriented people generally are not interested
in finding out information about the world and others. They have a
high degree of confidence in their explanations for a stranger’s behav-
iors. However, those explanations might not be correct.26 While it is
desirable to be authoritative in your reporting, this authority should
not come from your own tendency to neatly explain behaviors but
from fully reporting the circumstances.
Steve Gunn, Director of Strategic Products and Audience Devel-
opment at The Charlotte Observer, noted how one story moved from
narrow categorizing to broad categorizing:
Life is unclear. Life is getting greyer and greyer and how you present
a story should reflect that. We had a guy running for sheriff . . .
and he basically outwitted the establishment and was not always
following all the rules. So the first day story was very much, “This
guy is like a crook.” The second day story got more and more
nuanced. It was more that “he’d worked his way up.”18
Journalists who tend toward narrow categorization or who are certainty-

oriented have to be aware of either tendency when assigning cause.
Editors can ask reporters questions to prompt a review of interview
questions and research to ensure the reporters didn’t focus too soon
and too specifically on certain elements of a story to the exclusion of
other valid information. Together, editors and reporters can set goals
for story coverage that includes reporting out an array of explanations.
The professional tenets of journalism can help reporters develop
good habits. It stands to reason that professional practices are espe-
cially helpful to journalists who tend to be narrow categorizers and
225
certainty-oriented. Core tenets of journalism include fairness, accu-

racy and balance. Modern additions to that list include a commitment
to represent all constituent groups in society, verification of informa-
tion, providing a public forum for a variety of points of view and inter-
ests and including news from all communities.27 Striving to follow
these principles on the job helps offset a disposition toward shunning
new ideas, making strong judgments quickly or being closed-minded.
VISUAL JOURNALISM
Visual journalism is a powerful tool in a journalist’s toolbox. Visu-
als more easily prompt emotional connection and visceral reactions
than text stories. Visuals are usually the preferred method of explain-
ing a complex issue, such as a map showing how a wildfire spread
and grew throughout parts of California or an infographic detailing
the way a rocketship orbits. Visual journalism is also an effective way
of creating an intimate connection between audiences and sources,
such as a portrait series on people who have lost their homes due to
chronic unemployment or a video on families separated by COVID-
19 illness.
This chapter has discussed attribution theory in detail. Visual jour-
nalism must also consider attribution theory. We cannot control how
people perceive the images that accompany a news story. But we can
work to ensure the images fairly portray the story. If attribution theory
is concerned with how ordinary people explain the causes of behavior
and events, a visual that suggests blame can bias a news consumer. For
example, imagine a feature story about whether young people’s com-
pulsive technology use is due to an internal weakness – their own lack
of discipline and self-regulation – or an external source, such as the
lure of social media like Facebook and YouTube. Showing an image of
a teenager talking on a smartphone while sitting in front of tablet with
earbuds in suggests the teenager owns the blame. Including photos of
CEOs of social media companies testifying before Congress suggests
blame rests on them.
Visual journalism encompasses still images, video, infographics,
360-degree video and virtual reality video. The array of visual ele-
ments that can accompany a news report keeps expanding. Unfor-
tunately, due to cutbacks in news outlet staffing, photojournalists
with years of training and experience in visual journalism have been
226
cut from many news staffs, and reporters with less formal training
have been tasked with taking images and videos to accompany their
stories.
IMAGES AS STORY
Have an outsider’s perspective on your own community.
In the mid-1950s, photographer Robert Frank traveled the United
States taking about 27,000 images that eventually were distilled into a
set of 83 black-and-white photographs contained in his seminal book
published in 1958 called The Americans. Frank, who was born in Swit-
zerland but moved to the United States in the 1940s, was able to see
America as it was, not as a stylized version of itself. Frank captured
scenes and people that showcased racism, poverty, political disap-
pointment and consumerism. His images remain noteworthy today
for their technical innovations and for their unflinching representa-
tion of daily American life in everyday locales – drug stores, coffee
shops, parks and train stations.
A term that may help you as a journalist to see how your “eye”
for images can be destructively detached from sources is colonialism.
Colonialism is a practice of domination of one country over another,
with the more powerful country using the less powerful territory to
increase its own power and wealth. Colonialism’s roots are deep in
history, and in the contemporary U.S., the power structure of colo-
nialism is evident in factors such as wealth disparities between Blacks
and whites, and unwarranted violence toward Black communities by
law enforcement.19
Immigrants and Images
So what does this have to do with modern-day photojournalism? At

the heart of colonialism is the concept that one culture and way of
being are superior to those that are less powerful and less dominant.
The belief of superiority yields images that reveal that belief. People
are portrayed as victims or as caricatures, not as fully formed individ-
uals. Examples of this sort of portrayal are images of immigrants in
the United States.
For instance, studies have found that text and images often
frame immigrants in a negative light. One study examined images
227
accompanying news stories in three national news magazines: News-

week, Time and U.S. News & World Report.20 The analysis of 338 images
between 2000 and 2010 showed a disproportionate number of images
of immigrants in low-wage jobs or images that focused on their legal
status as immigrants (such as at the border, in arrests or in detentions).
More than half of the images studied showed immigrants as unau-
thorized to be in the United States, but less than a quarter of the U.S.
foreign-born population is unauthorized, the researchers note. The
images were not consistent with actual lives of immigrants, and that
only serves to promote inaccurate perceptions.
pause & consider

Review the National Press Photographers Association Code
of Ethics (https://nppa.org/code-ethics). Discuss in small
groups the elements that seem most difficult to achieve.
Images Communicate Associations
The images that accompany a news story are integral to the story; they
inform it, accentuating key points through visual examples and life
in action. Visuals communicate in ways that words cannot, affecting
audience emotions and memories. The visual element of news stories
is as important, if not moreso, than any text, written or spoken. Visu-
als celebrate, inflame, provoke, reveal and reflect.
Brain scan studies show that “effective photojournalism provokes
an emotional reaction and leaves a lasting impression upon the
viewer.”21 Also, images are easier for people to recall than words and
can quickly capture an event in a single frame. Citizen engagement
through social media is driven in part by visuals that prompt emo-
tional responses and connection.22
Headlines and Visuals
There is one thing online stories consistently have: A visual. Online

content relies on visuals to get audience attention. The other element
online content relies on is an attention-getting headline. Both of
228
these – a visual and a headline – are powerful ways to communicate a

narrative efficiently to distracted audiences. Getting and keeping audi-
ence attention is part of the commercial bias of journalism discussed in
Chapter 2. News outlets make money by selling digital ads, advertisers
will pay more for sites that have a lot of web traffic and traffic is driven
by page views, likes and shares. Studies show people don’t spend a lot
of time on news stories – about 1.9 minutes per page on a smartphone,
according to one study.23 Also notable: Six in ten of the links shared on
Twitter have never been clicked. That means that people don’t appear
to read past the headline before retweeting.24 So a headline matters,
which makes sensational headlines particularly problematic.
When five Dallas police were shot and killed by a Black military
veteran who was angry at police killings of Black men, some news
outlets led their breaking coverage with racist headlines that got the
story wrong. The outlets incorrectly characterized the vet as part of
the Black Lives Matter activist movement when he was acting, police
said, as a lone gunman. The New York Post was derided by other news
outlets for its July 8, 2016, headline “Civil War” to lead the sniper
shooting story.25 The headlines matter because that is often the only
thing people read before sharing.
Images of outgroups. When photographing people who are not
like you, it is human nature to be awed by things that seem uncom-
mon or surprising to you. Think about why a visual element is awe-
inspiring or surprising before publishing the photo. Think about what
your lens on someone else’s world focuses on, literally and figuratively.
Avoid mug shots if possible. Some outlets in search of a visual will
use old mug shots as lead art for stories about victims. “When choos-
ing images to run with stories about Black and Brown victims of state
and police violence, make every attempt to use sourced photos pro-
vided by family or that come from their social media accounts,” advises
Race Forward, an organization that conducts research on racial justice
topics.26 “Running an unrelated mug shot with a story contributes and
uplifts the narrative that people of color are criminals and that their
deaths are related to their apparent abhorrence for authority.”
Exhibit 9.1 offers tips on how to tell visual stories. The tips are from
Sima Diab, a Syrian-American photographer based in Egypt and Leb-
anon; Tanya Habjouqa, a photographer, journalist and educator based
in East Jerusalem; and Karen Brown, a reporter for New England Pub-
lic Radio whose expertise is on the effects of trauma.27
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EXHIBIT 9.1 TIPS: TELLING VISUAL STORIES
Everyone has a right to dignity. For example, consider one portrait of a boy
who lost his legs. His dream had been to become a professional swimmer. He
is looking straight at the camera. The photo shows how the destruction plays
out in the lives of people – and sometimes you have to take a devastating,
uncomfortable photo. To be forced to look at the injustice.
In a world saturated with images, use creative approaches in photography.
One reason people stop really seeing pictures is because they’re all shot in
the same way. Avoid the tropes, and capture the refugee face in dignity. Tell
a story through facial expressions – like a mom holding the hands of her sons.
Sometimes photos can ask more questions than give answers – and promote
important conversations.
If you’re limited in what you can shoot, photograph the objects of people’s
lives. Show belongings of someone who’s leaving everything behind. Or use
objects to tell a story – like, children’s shoes – to show their concrete expe-
rience.
Always think about why you’re there. What is your purpose in watching
this misery unfold? Know that your work is important, and you’re not just
adding to the noise. You’re there to come up with a new way to tell the
story, a better way. If you’re there for one story, always keep your eyes open
to another.
Think up creative ways to maintain confidentiality, to not show faces. May-
be have someone cover their face with their hands. Or have a child cover her
parent’s face. Making this process collaborative with your subject, so they
maintain their agency, can be an important tool.
Work with reporters/writers you trust. It’s important to respect each other’s
work and each other’s space. Work together to build trust among subjects,
sometimes over many months. When this isn’t possible, talk to the reporter
beforehand so no one is stepping on each other’s toes. Talk about how to
approach sensitive subjects together, and be on board with each other’s code
of ethics.
Spot news can be very chaotic and quick. Shocking images are part of reality.
Sometimes you don’t have time to get consent in hectic situations. But re-
member you are human, and professionals break down, too.
It can be very hard to photograph your own community – and very painful.
You always imagine yourself in that situation. It’s common to feel guilt at not
having it as bad as your subjects.
To tell a better story, think about how you’d want your own story told. Give
people agency in how they want to tell their story. Ask where they’d like to
be photographed, or how they’d like to be photographed.
230
Don’t be afraid of taking time to perfect/layer/compose a more meaningful

image. Sometimes you feel guilty about paying attention to the aesthetic of a
photo when your subjects are going through such pain – but taking a truly good
photograph gives more meaning to the subjects’ time and experience. Maintain
a strong sense of purpose and know you’re doing this work for a reason.
Work with the time you’re given. If you’re only given a few minutes to shoot
a story (often after a long interview with a writer/journalist), use that wait-
ing period to take in the environment, to look for clues or visuals that will
enhance the story.
Live Streaming
Journalists have a camera in hand all the time with their smartphones.
Shooting still images and video of breaking news events is common-
place for reporters now. The results are immediate, are often compel-
ling, put the audience at the scene and provide unfiltered, firsthand
witness to events.
Audiences (and editors) have almost come to expect a live stream of
demonstrations, rallies, speeches and protests – and so much more. The
ability to go live is easy and inexpensive with a phone app and services
such as Facebook or Instagram Live. Live streaming serves the role of
a journalist to bear witness to events, but it can also pose the danger of
providing graphic content that is repurposed on social media.28
Shooting content live adds immediacy, and that is good and bad.
Live streaming removes any opportunity to edit, clarify and assess. It
is immediate, and the role of journalist as fact-checker, context-giver
and clarifier is completely eradicated by live streaming. Also, remem-
ber that in live streaming, anyone in your shot is visible, including chil-
dren and victims; that is a potential ethical problem that should not be
underestimated when deciding whether or not to live stream an event.
1. Watch the TED Talk, “Can You Spot the Problem With These Head-
lines” found here: https://bit.ly/2JQ88E3. Review headlines online
for the day, and offer at least two that overstate the story to get
audience attention.
231
2. Take a moment and scan the images of news sites from mass shoot-
ings. The Gun Violence Archive (gunviolencearchive.org; then go
to Reports tab) tracks gun-related violence in the United States by
date and address and you can use the listing to search news images
from the shootings. (The archive defines a mass shooting as a single
incident in which four or more people are shot or killed, not includ-
ing the shooter.)
Select at least three mass shootings and analyze the images:
What commonalities do you see? Who is usually pictured in the
images that news media publish online, in print or in broadcasts?
Who is missing? Is there blood shown? If so, where is the blood –
on people or the physical surroundings? Is the image framed to cut
out the setting, be it a suburban street or a row of school lockers?
List your observations and compare them with a peer’s analysis.
3. Look at the year in pictures for the most current full year. Compare
the compilation by an international news outlet with a U.S.-based
outlet. Also, compare the compilation by a conservative outlet with
that of a liberal one.
a. What events are in all of the compilations?

b. What events or images are notable exceptions?
c. If the guidelines do not state them, what do you think the
criteria were in selecting these images? Likely responses might
include newsworthiness, photographic excellence and an
iconic moment. Make a list of criteria that explain the images
selected.
4. During the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, British

Columbia, Nodar Kumaritashvili, 21, a luger from the Republic of
Georgia, fatally crashed in a training run on the notoriously high-
speed track at the Whistler Sliding Centre. News reports subse-
quently grappled with the cause of the crash: Was it driver error
or the construction of the course that caused the athlete to lose
control? Read the excerpts below from an editorial in The Sunday
Times of London. The paper acknowledges that while the sport’s
professional association blamed the death on the athlete, concerns
persisted about the dangers of the track.
DEATH AT 90 MPH – Was Georgian Really the Only One to

Blame for Crash That Killed Him at Winter Games?
Having completed their investigation overnight, officials
from the FIL (the International Luge Federation) concluded
swiftly that the blame for the horrific accident lay not with
the course but with the rider. Kumaritashvili, they said only a
232
few hours after the seven-man Georgian team had marched

into the opening ceremony for the 21st Winter Games wearing
black armbands, a black streamer flying from the national flag,
had made a fatal mistake, coming late out of turn 15 and losing
control of his sled midway through the last of the 16 corners.
Television viewers around the world saw the 21-year-old
Georgian collide with both walls before being catapulted out
of the shute headfirst into an unprotected trackside pillar.“
Technical officials of FIL concluded that there was no indi-
cation that the accident was caused by deficiencies in the
track,” said the FIL. Officials denied Kumaritashvili had trou-
ble on at least two of his six training runs on the track or that
there were indications well before the accident that the track
was dangerous . . .
But why, if the track was not to blame, did the officials
lower the start, raise the height of the wall on the exit of curve
16 and alter the ice profile of the curve to reduce the risk of
riders being hurled out of the track?29
a. Consider the different cultural or geographic viewpoints that
might inform various news accounts’ explanation of cause.
To do this, conduct an online search for news coverage of the
crash in U.S., Canadian and European outlets. Decide whether
there is a pattern in the attribution of blame in this case.
For example, do U.S. and Canadian news outlets emphasize
Kumaritashvili’s actions as a cause of the crash? Do European
outlets dwell more on the course’s speed and design?
b. How does attribution theory apply to this story? Write two
to three paragraphs describing your findings and make
conclusions about any differences in coverage.
5. Keeping in mind the points made by Benjy Hamm in the “On
Assignment” in this chapter, look at teen pregnancy rates in your
community.
a. Map out a plan to report a story using population-based data.
Find the rates for your city or state and compare them with
national figures.
b. Make a list of three places in your community in which you
might find local sources to help humanize the numbers in a
relevant way.
c. Identify the type of lead anecdote that would not be
representative of your local situation. Then craft a
hypothetical anecdote that would be representative.
233
FOR REVIEW
• Seek the base-rate information for a news story on

which you’re working or for a story currently in the
news.
• Explain the fundamental attribution error to a peer.
• Review the Tips on Telling Visual Stories and apply
them to a photo essay on a group of people who are
not like you in some important way. For example, if
you are a college student, seek out photo subjects
over age 70 for a portrait series for your campus or
community.
NOTES

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10
Addressing Negativity
How to Manage Hate Speech,
Hostile Sources and Misinformation
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To be able to identify hate speech and know how to report on it.

• To develop skills for coping with hostile sources.
• To understand how misinformation is spread and why.
• To know verification techniques for online information.
COVERING HATE
The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017
drew white supremacists, neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists,
alt-right supporters, Klansmen and right-wing militia members. The
protesters chanted anti-Semitic slogans. They carried Confederate
flags, Nazi symbols, items with anti-Muslim symbols, and weapons.1
They gathered to oppose a proposed removal of a statue of Confeder-
ate General Robert E. Lee from a local park.
Counter-protesters gathered about a half-mile away from the rally.
It was into this crowd that self-described white supremacist James
Alex Fields Jr. drove his car. In doing so, he killed counter-protester
Heather Heyer and injured 19 others. He was later sentenced to life
imprisonment.
237
A D D R E S S I N G N E G AT I V I T Y
At a press conference on August 15, 2017, then-President Donald

Trump was asked about his reaction to the violent white supremacist
rally. He said, “You also had people, that were very fine people, on both
sides.” Trump’s word choice received significant news coverage criti-
cal of the president for not outright condemning white supremacists.
In the rally and nearby counter-protest, there were white supremacists
on one side and the counter-protesters objecting to their racist views on
the other side. Are these equal? Do they deserve equal coverage?
CNN Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta said of
Trump’s comments:
I think that was a very important moment, not just for the press but
for the American people. I don’t believe there are two sides to a story
when it is a matter of right versus wrong. It just doesn’t work that
way. In this era, reporters have been thrust into a position where we
are not only calling balls and strikes but we are calling fouls.2
A reporter pressed Trump to clarify his statement during the press

conference, and Trump did:
You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking
down, of to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming
of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name . . . I’m not talking
about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should
be condemned totally – but you had many people in that group
other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has
treated them absolutely unfairly. Now, in the other group also, you
had some fine people, but you also had troublemakers and you see
them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the
baseball bats – you had a lot of bad people in the other group too.3
WHAT IS FALSE BALANCE?

False balance, sometimes called “false equivalency,” refers disparag-
ingly to the practice of journalists who, in their zeal to be fair, present
each side of a debate as equally credible, even when the factual evi-
dence is stacked heavily on one side.
The problem with the false balance doctrine is that it masquerades
as rational thinking. What critics of “both sides-ism” really want is for
journalists to apply their own moral and ideological judgments to the
238
candidates.4 For example, National Public Radio (NPR) received a lot

of criticism for airing an interview with the organizer of the Unite the
Right rally. NPR and other media outlets struggled with whether and
how much coverage to give a white supremacy organization.
Said Karen Grigbsy Bates of NPR’s Code Switch team5:
On the other hand, you do have people who say, you know, listen.
We understand you’re journalists. We understand you think there’s
two sides at least – maybe multiple sides to every story. But some
things do not have a side that needs to be covered. How do you
argue that you need to cover the other side of genocide? Shouldn’t
happen. What are you doing? On the other hand, if you don’t cover
it, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. And maybe covering it
shows the extent of the horror in the case of genocide and perhaps
can go to trying to stop it or mitigate it.
It also helps to understand that no outlet wants to miss a story. The

fear of missing out on a potential event is enough to drive reporters to
a scene such as the Unite the Right rally and other events. A legitimate
question to ask in those instances is whether the news media is giving
too much attention to an event, idea or person, to the point that it
makes the subject far bigger than is warranted.
pause & consider

If you were a journalist at the August 15, 2017, press con-
ference, how would you have handled the president’s
statement? How do you think news outlets should cover
gatherings such as the Unite the Right rally?
Ignoring Hatred Is Not an Option
Journalists are obligated to expose movements that are fueled by

hatred. Exposing the misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, anti-gay
and other beliefs of hate groups are essential to holding the groups
accountable and shedding light on their intentions. It is not appropri-
ate or useful to ignore them. But that also doesn’t mean news outlets
need to give full voice to their hatred and publish their manifestos,
their mission statements or their contact information.
239
By acknowledging that hate groups exist, and reporting on them in

careful and measured ways, journalists can clearly show the real chal-
lenges facing various populations in our society. It is a difficult path to
alert society to the hateful groups in its midst while not unduly cham-
pioning or giving voice to the words and actions of hate propagandists.
For instance, the shooting rampage at an Orlando, Florida, gay night-
club in June 2016 killed 49 people. The lone gunman’s action spawned
further hate speech against the LGBTQ community. Covering events of
violence aimed at specific groups requires care and consideration about
fully informing news audiences while also not amplifying hate speech.
Defining Hate Speech
“Hate speech is any expression that vilifies an identifiable group – a

race, religious community, or sexual minority, for example – and thus
prompts harm to members,” writes Cherian George in a report for
the Ethical Journalism Network.6 “Even free speech advocates agree
that hate speech requires special handling, especially when levelled
against minorities too weak to counter it in the marketplace of ideas.”
If words are offensive, that does not necessarily make them hate
speech. Language that criticizes societal institutions, dominant values or
prevailing norms is not necessarily hate speech either. “Ethical standards
pertaining to hate speech remain a work in progress,” George notes.
Hate Speech Is Protected Speech
Hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, and the U.S.

Supreme Court has upheld this position. “The proudest boast of our
free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express
‘the thought that we hate,’” wrote Justice Samuel Alito in his opinion
in the 2017 case Matal v. Tam.7
However, just because the speech is protected doesn’t mean the
press has to cover it. Further, the U.S. Constitution requires context,
notes Jasmine McNealy, associate professor of telecommunication at
the University of Florida.8 The Constitution was written by white men
who owned human beings as slaves. The Bill of Rights, which contains
the First Amendment, was inspired by Thomas Jefferson and drafted by
James Madison, both of whom owned slaves. This framework was cre-
ated within a system of power that silenced Black Americans and Native
Americans, two groups that today are often the targets of hate speech.9
240
EXHIBIT 10.1 HATE SPEECH: A FIVE-POINT TEST

FOR JOURNALISTS10
241
How Newsworthy Is It?

Hate groups troll for attention. They issue press releases about
marches they don’t plan to hold. They hold protests to get news media
attention. By causing unrest, they cater to the news value of conflict.
News outlets are trained to cover conflict. But is this really conflict?
Or is it manufactured propaganda? Journalists must carefully con-
sider whether or not to give hate groups any kind of attention, and
thereby power, by covering them.
There is no need to use the euphemistic names of hate organiza-
tions, cautions the tip sheet from the Journalist’s Resource on cover-
ing white supremacy groups. Call them what they are: Hate groups
or white supremacy organizations, or whatever clear descriptor
is most accurate. Avoid fuzzier terms such as alternative right or
alt-right.11
How Powerful Is the Speaker?
If the hate group is hosting a speaker, let that be part of the valua-
tion of newsworthiness. Consider the reputation of the speaker. “Is the
speaker a prominent figure in society, government or industry? Does
the speaker have a significant following, and how likely is that group to
commit hateful or unlawful acts?”12
Governors, mayors and local officials publicly attacked Muslims
and Islam often from 2015 to 2020, a news analysis found.13 When
the speaker is an elected official or prominent local politician issuing
hate speech regarding Muslims and Islam, it plays to the news biases
of conflict and of covering the words of a prominent public figure.14
News organizations need to continue to develop ethics policies about
how to manage hate speech from elected officials and other promi-
nent people.
Give Hateful Comments Context
These issues are part of U.S. history. Don’t assume your audience
knows that history. Tell them, explicitly. Do not assume your news
audience will know or pick up on the allusions in hate speech. For
example, if a white supremacist references a noose in his comments,
explain the long and vicious history of lynchings and hangings of
Black slaves by white owners and white mobs.
242
“The context might be historic, it might be social, it might be legal,”

said Amy Eisman, assistant professor of communication at American
University. “But you have to be a reporter, not a recorder, and you have
to offer context to whatever it is you’re reporting.”15
REPORT IT OUT
Journalists are wise to address hate groups with an investigative
approach. Follow the money: Who is funding hate campaigns and
extremist groups? How are groups sustaining their work? Who is ben-
efitting from their message?
Additionally, investigate what online platforms groups are using
to convene and share information and to attract new followers.
Reporting on the social media platforms and online forums that
benefit from these groups’ activity is a legitimate news story and
worth the effort.
Advocate for What’s Right
“Remember, journalism at its best advocates for what is right and

works to improve the world we live in,” wrote Kevin Benz, the for-
mer chairman of the Radio Television Digital News Association,
the world’s largest organization dedicated to broadcast and digital
journalism.
There are certain inalienable truths that journalism seeks to

reinforce – hold the powerful accountable, give voice to the voiceless,
protect the vulnerable. Racism is wrong and deserves a place in that
conversation.16
However, as Cherian George notes in her report, progressive parti-

sans can be intolerant and limiting of free speech:
One noteworthy development, particularly in the West, is the rise

of left-wing intolerance among segments of the political spectrum
previously thought of as open-minded and progressive. Their
attempts to censor offensive speech on campuses are ostensibly
243
intended to create safe spaces for victimised and disadvantaged

groups. But some of their campaigns also smack of political
opportunism, milking indignation to advance more self-serving
organisational objectives. The backlash from the right includes
charges of ‘political correctness’ run amok. . . .
If you’re uncertain whether you’re treating different groups equally,

have other people read, view or listen to your drafts before publica-
tion to offer input on fairness. Strive for neutral language and tone,
and provide evidence instead of inferences. Develop objective stan-
dards for evaluating statements from groups across the political spec-
trum, and apply them equally.
Avoid Amplification
Name a violent perpetrator just once. Don’t reward hate with notori-
ety. Further, avoid interviewing white supremacists, as it gives them
a platform. If you must, then be sure to record the interaction to pro-
tect yourself. Also, don’t link to their websites within your stories,
and don’t promote their rhetoric or writings via social media, either.17
Some people advise journalists not to quote white supremacists
directly, as these sources may embed their comments with signals and
code words to followers. Certainly, expansive coverage is not neces-
sary or wise. However, it is not journalists’ job to protect audiences
from any potential code speak. It is journalists’ job to ensure that the
speech is clearly labeled as racist and to explain why.
After a 2017 New York Times profile about a white nationalist,
readers criticized the piece for “normalizing” a Nazi sympathizer. In
reaction to the deluge of negative feedback by readers, the New York
Times’ National Editor Marc Lacey, responded. In part, he said, “What
we think is indisputable, though, is the need to shed more light, not
less, on the most extreme corners of American life and the people
who inhabit them. That’s what the story, however imperfectly, tried
to do.”18
Focus on the Targets
One option for journalists is not to cover an event about hate and
white supremacy, but instead to cover the counter-narrative. Cover
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the community response. Focus on the impact of the hate groups’

actions and rhetoric on their targets. Tell the story of those harmed
or potentially harmed by hate speech, says Whitney Phillips, author
of “The Oxygen of Amplification: Better Practices for Reporting on
Extremists, Antagonists, and Manipulators Online.”19 Include the
history of abuse and discrimination aimed at a particular group of
people; timelines can be very effective storytelling tools in these
instances. Put the hate speech within a history of targeted speech
against a group.20
Religious Hate
Experts note that hate speech against religious groups is particularly

problematic because religion is about beliefs. Beliefs are not facts and
are open to critique. A tension exists between allowing critical anal-
ysis of a belief system and the actual maligning and discriminatory
speech toward a belief system. If someone publicly attacks a belief
system, at what point does that encourage attacks on the supporters
and followers of that belief system?
Attacks against Muslims in the United States rose in response
to an aggressive push for a ban on Muslims immigrating to the
United States. Specifically, anti-Muslim hate crimes rose in 2015
after national elected officials pushed for a ban, according to a 2016
report from California State University–San Bernardino’s Center for
the Study of Hate and Extremism. Looking at daily data following a
terrorist attack, such as 9/11 or the 2015 terror attack in San Ber-
nardino, the report found that “a tolerant statement about Muslims
by a political leader was accompanied by a sharp decline in hate
crime, while a less tolerant announcement was followed by a pre-
cipitous increase in both the severity and number of anti-Muslim
hate crimes.”
COVERING HOSTILE SOURCES

President Trump maligned journalists during his presidency, and it
was a habit he began as candidate Trump. Some of his insults toward
journalists include calling them “sick people,” “really bad people,” “fake
news,” the “opposition party” and “enemies of the people.” (Remember
that “fake news” isn’t news at all; it’s misinformation.)
245
According to a Committee to Protect Journalists analysis of

Trump’s posts on Twitter, his attacks have focused on the press in
general since taking office. Overall, since announcing his candidacy in
June 2015 through early 2019, Trump sent 1,339 media-related tweets
that were critical, insinuating, condemning or threatening, the com-
mittee’s analysis found. “Trump has tweeted over 5,400 times to his
more than 55.8 million followers; over 11 percent of these insulted or
criticized journalists and outlets, or condemned and denigrated the
news media as a whole.”21
Christi Parsons, an assistant managing editor at CNN who cov-
ered the White House for eight years and was president of the White
House Press Corps during the 2106 presidential election, urges jour-
nalists to remember the following:
It’s not about you. Don’t make it about you . . . This has to do with
news judgment. If the name-calling is newsworthy, then we write
about name-calling, but in a smart way, and not just repeating the
name calling. We bring our brains to bear on the issue and put it in
context. Name-calling for the 155th time after a certain point doesn’t
qualify as a story anymore.22
For example, using Parsons’ advice, a journalist might do a piece that

considers the history of divisions between the press and public offi-
cials in a community, and what, if any, concrete policies or practices
resulted from an official’s distaste for the news media. Whatever the
case, Parsons’ advice is to rise above the insult and focus on its signif-
icance, if there is any.
“It’s especially operative now. Journalists by nature . . . are interested

in things that are bigger than us and more interesting than us. We
see ourselves as observers and questioners and investigators, not the
star of the show. That is a good mindset to cultivate,” says Parsons.
Remember Your Purpose
Yamiche Alcindor, a correspondent for PBS NewsHour, challenged

President Donald Trump about comments he had made on Fox News
questioning whether New York state needed as many ventilators as it
had requested.
246
Trump bristled. “Why don’t you act in a little more positive? It’s
always trying to ‘get you, get you, get you’. And you know what? That’s
why nobody trusts the media any more. That’s why people –”
Alcindor was firm. “My question to you is: How is that going to
impact –”
Trump seethed. “Excuse me. You didn’t hear me. That’s why you
used to work for the Times and now you work for somebody else.
Look, let me tell you something: Be nice. Don’t be threatening.”
It was not the first time Alcindor had been a target of Trump’s ver-
bal assaults. Later that March
day, she tweeted23: “I’m not
“Be steady. Stay focused. the first human being, woman,
Remember your purpose. And, black person or journalist to be
always press forward.” told that while doing a job. My
– Yamiche Alcindor, correspon-
take: Be steady. Stay focused.
dent for PBS NewsHour.
Remember your purpose. And,
always press forward.”
How do you cover any source who is openly disparaging to you?
A source who questions your professionalism, accuracy and values?
Who encourages others to join in to the attacks?
One of the responses to Alcindor’s tweet was from the account
of Curtis Houck, editor of News Busters, which describes itself as a
watchdog of liberal media bias. The tweet stated: “You’re literally the
female Jim Acosta. I know you probably think that’s a compliment,
but it’s not. And how you’re funded by us, the taxpayers? Terrible!”
Houck’s tweet received 4.6K likes.
To unpack Houck’s comment: Political conservatives are generally
not in favor of public media outlets, as the outlets are funded by tax-
payer dollars, and seen by conservatives as overly and overtly liberal in
their coverage. CNN’s Jim Acosta was called an “enemy of the people”
by President Trump. As chief White House correspondent, Acosta was
a frequent target of not only Trump but also the president’s support-
ers, who drowned out his on-air comments during at least one Trump
rally with the chant, “CNN sucks.” The divide between conservatives
and liberals when it comes to the news media and its worth increased
greatly during the Trump Administration, as Exhibit 8.1 shows.
Presidents have often had tense relationships with the news media.
But the frequency of President Trump’s disparagement and its visi-
bility through social media made for an unprecedented combination
247
that affected public trust in the news media. CBS veteran Leslie Stahl
said that Trump told her that he continually attacks the press “to dis-
credit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative
stories about me no one will believe you.”24
The Committee to Protect Journalists’ North America program cre-
ated a database25 to track Trump’s tweets that mentioned the media.
For an archive of Trump’s tweets, see www.thetrumparchive.com.
EXHIBIT 10.2 REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS

SHARPLY DIVIDED ABOUT VALUE OF NEWS MEDIA26
Parties show more disagreement on attitudes about news media

% of U.S. adults who say ...
Media criticism of political News organizations Information from national National news media
leaders keeps them from tend to favor one side news organizations is do very well at keeping
doing things they shouldn’t very trustworthy them informed
89% Democrat 87
84
77%
34-point
47-point
74% gap
gap
64
53
34 33
42% Republican 27 28
23-point 15-point
gap gap
24
18
15 11
2016 2017 2016 2017 2016 2017 2016 2017
Note: Independents not shown.

Source: Surveys conducted March 13-27, 2017, and Jan. 12-Feb. 8, 2016.
“Americans’ Attitudes About the News Media Deeply Divided Along Partisan Lines”
PEW RESEARCH CENTER
Control What You Can Control
We can’t control hostile sources, but we can control our reaction

to them.
Observe CNN’s Paula Reid following that advice during a White
House briefing on April 13, 2020.27 She is persistent in her questioning.
Reid repeats her question about what Trump and his administration
248
did during the month of February to prepare for the COVID-19 epi-
demic in the United States. That month is referenced by Reid as time
that Trump “bought” by temporarily banning the admission of some
people who were in China 14 days prior to their attempted travel to
the United States. What is notable here is not the details of the argu-
ment but the nature of the exchange between an elected official and a
journalist.
REID: But what did you do with that time you bought? The argument is
that you bought yourself some time and you didn’t use it to prepare
hospitals, you didn’t use it to ramp up testing. Right now nearly 20
million people are unemployed, tens of thousands of Americans are
dead.
TRUMP: You’re so, you’re so, you’re so, it’s so disgraceful the way you say
that. Listen, I just . . .
REID: What did your administration do in February with the time that your
travel ban bought?
TRUMP: A lot.
REID: What?
TRUMP: A lot. In fact we’ll give a list. Part of what we did was up there
(gestures to something off camera)
REID: (keeps asking her question)
TRUMP: Look, look you know you’re a fake. You know that your whole net-
work, the way you cover it is fake. And most of you, but not all of you –
but the people are wise to you, that’s why you have a lower, a lower
approval rating than you’ve ever had before, times probably three. . . 28
What should journalists do when a source they are covering insults

and denigrates them? It may be more likely that a journalist is being
aggressively confronted by a mayor, city commissioner or police chief
than a U.S. president, but the lessons are basically the same.
Managing hostile situations
Many reporters have had to grapple with hostile sources, but the pub-
lic animus toward journalists has increased in recent years. Even more
challenging is when the source is on a beat that a reporter regularly
has to cover, so there is no avoiding the confrontations. How to cover
a hostile, aggressive source?
249
When managing interviews with hostile sources, here are some

practices I have found helpful:
• Stay calm; don’t engage in aggressive rhetoric. Sources

who mock journalists in group settings use this technique to
embarrass journalists and silence their questions.
• Listen closely. Put yourself in the source’s position to
understand the source’s point of view.
• Try to separate your personal feelings from the
professional task at hand. It’s hard, but don’t take the
comments personally, as that is a bully’s goal.
• Limit interactions to essential interviews; use other sources
to get information whenever possible.
• Ask for a colleague to partner with you on major stories to
help ensure reporting and writing on a piece stays accurate.
• Meet in safe places with others present. Never meet alone in
a source’s private residence or office.
• If things escalate, ask to be removed from a beat or from
interactions with a particular source, especially if you feel
threatened physically or your mental or emotional health is
being compromised by these interactions.
FEMALE JOURNALISTS AND THE CHILLING EFFECT

OF ONLINE HARASSMENT
As we have seen from the discussion above, the targets of hate are
sometimes journalists themselves, as anti-media sentiment has been
growing in recent years. News outlets have a clear expectation that
their reporters engage with audience members on social media. The
result, however, particularly for female journalists and female jour-
nalists of color, is too often online threats and harassment.
Research published in 2020 found that nearly all journalists experi-
ence some online harassment.29 Fortunately, it is infrequent for most
journalists. However, the representative survey found that “online
harassment against journalists disproportionately affects women (par-
ticularly young women) and those who are more personally visible in
the news but not necessarily those who work for larger newsrooms.”
The result of such harassment is that journalists may begin to ques-
tion the value of audience engagement. The researchers found that,
250
“It is clear that the more often a journalist is harassed online, the
more likely they are to take a dim view of the audience by seeing
them as irrational and unlike themselves, and to perceive interaction
with them as less valuable.”
Multicultural diversity in newsrooms is critical to getting stories right.

Journalists from a robust variety of backgrounds are critical to report-
ing accurately and fully on an ethnically diverse America. But women of
color are not well represented in newsrooms. Women are more than half
of the U.S population and people of color nearly 40 percent. But women
of color make up just 7.9 percent of U.S. traditional newspaper staff, 12.6
percent of local TV news staff and 6.2 percent of local radio staff.30
Apps for women journalists to stay safe while reporting, and guides
on managing trolling and doxing and online harassment, are a response
to the growing harassment online of female reporters. Women who
cover politics, video gaming, sports, technology, feminism, race or
immigration are particularly targeted by hateful, vile, sexist and threat-
ening comments online. A number of research studies that included
female journalists in the United States and globally found significant
online harassment of women journalists.31 In some cases, women
reported that the harassment made them less satisfied with their job,
and also that they altered what they reported on and how due to the
anticipation of harassment and insults online. This chilling effect causes
self-censorship to avoid negative commentary and threats.
Scholar Gina Massulo Chen and colleagues found that female
journalists
have developed a variety of strategies for dealing with the abuse,

including limiting what they post online, changing what stories they
report on, and using technological tools to prevent people from
posting offensive words on the journalists’ public social media pages.
Results show that this harassment disrupts the routinized practice of
reciprocal journalism because it limits how much these women can
interact with the audience in mutually beneficial ways without being
attacked or undermined sexually.32
Washington Post reporter Janell Ross described the tweets, comments

and email messages in response to her coverage of 2016 presidential
candidate Bernie Sanders from his supporters:
251
They use a variety of curse words and insults typically reserved for
women. More than one has suggested that I deserve to become the
victim of a sex crime. They critique the “objectivity” of what is clearly
political analysis based on polling data and other facts; they insist that
black voters are dumb or that I have a personal obligation to help
black voters see the error of their Clinton-voting ways. It is vile.33
FALSE INFORMATION VS. HONEST JOURNALISM

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election and Britain’s departure from
the European Union (“Brexit”), the dissemination of false informa-
tion online has been a growing issue worldwide. Journalism is more
important than ever, as journalists are trained to be skeptical, to fact-
check and to seek accuracy and evidence in their work. Misinforma-
tion and lies work against facts and accuracy.
Online misinformation is everywhere, and journalists are both vic-
tim and sometimes inadvertent distributor of it. Some of the main
reasons that misinformation is spread so far and wide is because peo-
ple are in a hurry, and their attention is not on fact-checking but on
giving and getting an emotional response to content. Anger and out-
rage fuel the most sharing online.
Second, misinformation makes money for its purveyors, since
websites that receive a lot of clicks, views and shares can charge more
for advertising on the site. The world’s largest social media companies,
including Google and Facebook, have sought to implement policies to
remove the financial incentives of promoting and spreading misinfor-
mation, but in an ever-changing landscape, it is an especially difficult
problem to solve.
Third, algorithms used by social media giants such as Facebook
limit and curate content so that users only see what they will like and
enjoy. This preference-based sorting system limits users’ exposure to
ideas and counter-arguments. It creates parallel realities in which cit-
izens of the same country are being fed and believe completely differ-
ent sets of “facts” from one another.
Fourth, bad actors want to create chaos in a healthy democratic
system such as the United States, and creating an atmosphere in
which no source of information is widely viewed as credible is an
effective way to undermine democratic systems. Think about this:
When no source of information is perceived as trustworthy, then all
252
information becomes suspect. Decision-making as a collective people

becomes impossible, as a society’s members don’t share a common
foundation of facts and understanding. Information chaos reigns.
pause & consider

Watch this TED Talk by Sinan Aral called “How We Can Pro-
tect Truth in the Age of Misinformation.” Available at https://
bit.ly/3gtpwuv. Another useful TED link is on how to decide
what news sites you should follow: https://ed.ted.com/
lessons/how-to-choose-your-news-damon-brown#watch.
The majority of Americans get their news from social media, notably
Facebook. Facebook still argues it is a platform for publishing, and not
a publisher in itself, which hampers initiatives to instill standards and
guidelines for content on the site. Skirmishes erupt regularly over Face-
book’s content regulation system and the lack of insight that automatic,
machine-driven review has over nuanced content. One famous exam-
ple is when Facebook blocked the iconic photo of a naked girl running
from a napalm attack during the Vietnam War. The journalistic ele-
ments of context and perspective were missing from Facebook’s algo-
rithmic determination that because the photo involved nudity, it should
be blocked. The company has since reversed its ban of the photo.
As online platforms have grown exponentially, news organizations
are suffering mightily due to the new economic system of informa-
tion and news, which relies on digital advertising. Traditional revenue
streams of classified advertising and subscriptions have dried up in the
digital era, and editorial budgets are squeezed, leading to significant
layoffs of staff and hundreds of news outlet closures. Many local out-
lets are mere shells of their former selves, pared down to a handful of
reporters tasked with covering several counties and public agencies,
which is an impossible task. The result of all of these changes is that
communities have access to less verified and vetted information about
their local governments and spending of tax dollars.
The future of journalism in a democracy will rest on news outlets’
ability to connect with audiences, to consistently prove the value of
transparent and accountable information and to repeatedly deliver
253
news coverage that spans cultures and groups in a society. More and
more news outlets are turning to nonprofit and subscription-based
models of online news delivery. What honest news reporters do well
is combat discrimination and fight for inclusion in storytelling. Fact-
based reporting with context differentiates honest journalism from
the rest of the online cacophony.
The Journalism of Verification
Journalists are often the first line of defense for news audiences when
it comes to fact-checking information. But journalists can be fooled
by false information too. Some useful verification tips include:
1. Use reverse image searches such as TinEye.com or reverse image

search on Google to track the origins of an image found online
that is supposedly “proof” that an event occurred. Amnesty Inter-
national has a tool to check the origins of videos, too: https://
citizenevidence.amnestyusa.org/.
2. Verify that primary documents that supposedly offer evidence are
from valid, credible institutions or organizations. Check the date on
all information sent to you, as often social media will resurrect old
content and repackage it for the moment. For documents, check
the “properties” under the File tab to see when it was created.
3. Triple-check the URL of websites that you’re directed to, as many
are fashioned to look at first glance like a legitimate site – a favorite
is to add a “.co” at the end of a familiar URL. Look at the “About”
link on websites; any legitimate website should have a specific
name and contact information readily available.
4. Don’t trust sources you don’t know personally. Fake names, web-
sites, phone numbers and emails are easy to create and can give
the impression of legitimacy. Ask other sources in a subject area
to vet someone you haven’t heard of or who is new to the scene.
Along those lines, don’t open emails and files from unknown send-
ers, as they may be malware that will infect your computer files.
Misinformation Is Contextual
As dana boyd, founder and president of Data & Society Research

Institute, asserted in her 2018 talk on media literacy, the reliance on
254
evidence and critical thinking may not be enough to communicate

real-life events and real-life issues to a public so distrustful of news
media. “We need to recognize that information can, is, and will be
weaponized in new ways,” says boyd.34
Misinformation is contextual. Most people believe that people

they know are gullible to false information, but that they
themselves are equipped to separate the wheat from the chaff.
There’s widespread sentiment that we can fact check and
moderate our way out of this conundrum. This will fail. Don’t
forget that for many people in this country, both education and
the media are seen as the enemy – two institutions who are trying
to have power over how people think.35
Epistemology is the science of knowing; it’s the philosophical theory

of knowledge – how people come to know and believe things, and the
limits of knowledge. News media have long been a source for knowl-
edge in democratic societies. But if honest news media are being ques-
tioned as fake, as frauds and as promoting only certain political points
of view, then they are useless to democracy. This distrust of media is
real, public opinion surveys show. Scholars David Barker and Morgan
Marietta wrote the book, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling Facts in
American Democracy. In an article published in Nieman Lab,36 they
explained how the values people hold shape their knowledge acquisi-
tion. Values and perceptions are intertwined, they found in an analysis
of data from five years of national surveys from 2013 to 2017:
The most important predictor of whether a person views racism as

highly prevalent and influential is not her partisan identification. It is
not her general ideological outlook. It is not the amount or type of
media that the consumes. It isn’t even her own race.
It is the degree to which she prioritizes compassion as a public virtue,

relative to other things like rugged individualism.
Values not only shape what people see, but they also structure what
people look for in the first place.
Journalism needs to consider how people come to their worldviews

via information and interpretation. “This requires developing a strong
255
sense of how others think and where the differences in perspective

lie,” boyd says.37 She continues:
From an educational point of view, this means building the capacity

to truly hear and embrace someone else’s perspective and teaching
people to understand another’s view while also holding their view
firm. It’s hard work, an extension of empathy into a practice that is
common among ethnographers.
So much of this book, Overcoming Bias, is aimed at conveying jour-

nalistic knowledge through the careful, detailed and accurate por-
trayal of others’ lives and beliefs. Inclusive journalism helps a public
to empathize with others unlike themselves because it situates news
audiences squarely in the position of the “others” in this world. Inclu-
sive journalism does not stop at the simple 5Ws and H, but expands
and breathes depth and life into those 5Ws: Who people spend time
with and rely on; what they earn and how; when they choose to trust
unlike others and why; where they go for support, love and belonging;
why they believe what they believe and how they make their choices
in life.
1. Consider how hate speech affects target populations. Research
the current community guidelines on either Facebook, Twitter or
YouTube in terms of hate speech and offensive or abusive con-
tent. Compare and contrast the standards, and suggest your own
improvements to the guidelines.
2. Choose one of the fact-checking games listed here: https://bit.
ly/30dV68d. Discuss your results with others, in particular what you
were fooled by and why.
3. Get in the habit of checking a variety of news sites from all politi-
cal and ideological perspectives in order to inform yourself broadly
about issues. The website and app AllSides.com makes it easy to do
this by offering news stories from the left, center and right politi-
cal biases. A balanced news diet can help avoid being manipulated
by online misinformation. Check the news outlets you often access
against the AllSides Media Bias Chart: https://www.allsides.com/
media-bias/media-bias-chart.
256
4. A recent Stanford Graduate School of Education report, “Evaluating

Information: The Cornerstone of Civic Online Literacy,” assessed
the news literacy of students from middle school through college.
Go to https://purl.stanford.edu/fv751yt5934. Test your own skills
at assessing the information presented to survey takers. How well
did you do?
5. Check out the three-part lesson at Reuters.com sponsored by
the Facebook Journalism Project called “Identifying and Tackling
Manipulated Media.” Specifically, click on this link to practice your
skills: https://reut.rs/3rSAIor.
FOR REVIEW
• List the five questions to ask to determine hate

speech.
• Explain why people believe false information.
• Use reverse image search to verify the origins of
online photos.
• Evaluate the authenticity of the websites you
frequently view.
NOTES

257
258
259
D. (2019). “‘We Wouldn’t Say It to their Faces’: Online Harassment,

Women Sports Journalists, and Feminism,” Feminist Media Studies
19(3), 428–442. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2018.1446454; Westcott, L.
(September 4, 2019). “‘The Threats Follow Us Home’: Survey Details
Risks for Female Journalists In the U.S., Canada,” Committee to Pro-
tect Journalists. Retrieved 12/14/2020 from: https://cpj.org/2019/09/
canada-usa-female-journalist-safety-online-harassment-survey/
32 Chen, G.M., Pain, P., Chen, V.Y., Mekelburg, M., Springer, N., & Troger, F.
(2018). “‘You Really have to have Thick Skin’: A Cross-Cultural Perspec-
tive on How Online Harassment Influences Female Journalists,” Journal-
ism 21(7), 877–895. doi: 10.1177/1464884918768500, p. 877.
33 Ross, J. (March 10, 2016). “Bernie Sanders’s Most Vitriolic Supporters
Really Test the Meaning of the Word ‘Progressive’.” Washington Post.
Retrieved 10/20/2020 from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/
the-fix/wp/2016/03/10/bernie-sanderss-most-vitriolic-supporters-
really-test-the-meaning-of-the-word-progressive/
34 boyd, d. (March 9, 2018). “You Think You Want Media Literacy . . . Do You?”
Points: Data & Society.” Retrieved 10/1/2020 from: https://points.dataso-
ciety.net/you-think-you-want-media-literacy-do-you-7cad6af18ec2
35 Ibid.
36 Barker, D., & Marietta, M. (May 8, 2019). “Fact-Checking Can’t Do
Much When People’s ‘Dueling Facts’ Are Driven by Values Instead
of Knowledge.” Neiman Lab. Retrieved 12/1/2020 from: Https://
www.niemanlab.org/2019/05/fact-checking-cant-do-much-when-
peoples-dueling-facts-are-driven-by-values-instead-of-knowledge/
?utm_source=Daily+Lab+email+list&utm_campaign=40e92abca2-
dailylabemail3&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d68264fd5e-
40e92abca2-396342197
37 boyd, 2018.
260
11
Journalism and
Reflective Practice
Cultivating an Open Mind
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• To understand what debiasing is.

• To know the three categories of debiasing.
• To implement strategies for debiasing.
ASSET FRAMING
Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times wrote about Ana Rodarte,
a young woman with a disorder called neurofibromatosis that creates
severe facial disfigurement. Ana looked very different from most peo-
ple, and as Curwen wrote in his story:
The face is our calling card to the world. . . . It also elicits reactions
from others that shape our lives. Every day we read faces and make
assumptions about identity and character without any basis other
than appearance.1
Curwen sought to go beyond surface definitions to explore Ana’s

inner life. In reporting the story, Curwen had questions about facial
261
JOURNALISM AND REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
disfigurement, appearance and stigma. He describes2 how he used his

emotions to guide his reporting.
On Assignment
My reaction was complicated. I had seen a few photo-
graphs of Ana and was taken aback by the size of the
tumors. These were clinical shots taken by the hospital
(her face from three different angles), and I was sur-
prised that the disorder had progressed as far as it had. I
wasn’t yet aware of her childhood surgeries.
When I met Ana, though, I immediately saw a young
woman whose life had been defined by very difficult
odds. She was shy, nervous and uncertain about her
future. I couldn’t help but feel empathy for her and
admiration for her agreeing to go ahead with these sur-
geries and for letting the Los Angeles Times follow her.
All of these emotions – surprise, empathy and
admiration – guided me throughout the reporting, and I
wasn’t particularly concerned about how they would dis-
tort the narrative because I knew that I wouldn’t be alone
in my reaction. All of our interactions with friends, family
and strangers are constantly influenced and moderated
by the judgments we make based on appearance – as
determined by DNA or social pressure and fads – and I
knew that readers would also have to sort through their
own reactions to Ana. This is why I incorporated my
impressions into the story (those first-person elements);
they allowed me to be a foil for readers’ own emotional
reaction.
I framed the story with the idea that we’re all differ-
ent. Ana’s differences are extreme, but by showing her
daily life, her struggles and hopes, I hoped to focus on
what she shares with everyone else.2
262
Curwen embarked on reporting Ana’s story with labels leading the

way – “neurofibromatosis,” “disorder” and “facial disfigurement.” His
story process echoes a lesson of inclusive reporting that I raised in
Chapter 1.
This book is about how journalists acquire, filter and judge infor-
mation, and how, as journalists, we must do our utmost to remove
as many preconceptions and assumptions from the information we
provide as possible. Contemporary U.S. society is rife with labels that
sort us into various factions, partisanships and alliances. Part of the
job of a journalist is to figure out which of the labels matter and why.
We have to know the why in order to get out of the way of the story
and allow the truest story at that moment to tell itself.
In writing about Ana, one could use the narrow label “disfigured”
or the broader label “young woman with hopes for a future.” Curwen
approaches his subject by what she has, not what she does not have. This
is called “asset framing.”3 This framing is often emphasized in inclusive
narrative to approach people and groups by their hopes and goals, as well
as their contributions. It does not fall back into the familiar deficit frame
that highlights a person or group’s shortcomings, faults and challenges,
particularly in relation to a dominant or homogeneous population.
Trabian Shorters, author, entrepreneur and a pioneer on asset
framing, writes,
One of the things that helped with marriage equality was to define
gay and lesbian couples by their desire to be together. They talked
about the things they had been through together – illness, kids, all
of it – and how all they wanted to be able to do was get married to
honor this commitment. This was a total pivot on the 50 years of
defining these couples as oppressed.4
It took three years for Curwen to report the Rodarte story. He explains
how stories that start at labels but then move toward inclusivity break
down the barriers between “Us” and “Others” and are well worth the
effort.
I think that one of the greatest services that a newspaper can

provide – along with its investigations and news reports – is a lesson
in empathy. This is why I was drawn to Ana’s story and why I believe
it is newsworthy. I hope that in reading Ana’s Story, readers will look
263
beyond neurofibromatosis and think about the differences that define

our lives (be it by DNA or culture) and understand that they are less
important than we think.
It’s something of a cliché, I know, that we are more united by what

we share than what we don’t share, but I believe that Ana’s story
provided a fresh perspective. Of course, the terms were extreme (the
tumors), but Ana was no different than anyone else her age: shy,
cranky, hopeful, afraid.
Journalists have been given a great gift by the nature of their jobs.
They are allowed to get into the world and bring stories like these back
to their readers. Without these stories, I believe our worlds could get
very small and polarized and contentious. This is why I think stories like
Ana’s are important. They make the unfamiliar familiar.5
When journalists “tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of

the human experience,”6 they do so through common emotions and
shared experience. For all the diversity in the world, there are things
that connect us with others.
pause & consider

What do you think Curwen means by the statement “with-
out these stories, I believe our worlds could get very small
and polarized and contentious”? Discuss this with a peer.
Then, watch Trabian Shorters, CEO of BMe Community,
explain asset framing: https://bit.ly/2KnNbQQ. Share a
recent story in the news that helped make the world less
“small and polarized and contentious” for you, or that
framed people’s lives in terms of assets, not deficits.
Circling Back
Sometimes, the best thing a reporter can do is go back to the scene of

the crime. Or the scene or the hurricane. Or house fire. Or the door
that shut in your face last time because a victim wasn’t ready to talk.
Maybe now, they will be.
264
“Sometimes a story deserves a new look,” says Julie K. Brown, inves-

tigative reporter for the Miami Herald who meticulously assembled
the sex abuse and trafficking case against financier Jeffrey Epstein.
“There were all of these puzzle pieces that were out there, and when
you put all of these puzzle pieces together, with the passage of time,
there was this really damning story.”7
Jacqui Banaszynski wrote about Brown for Nieman Storyboard
(2019) and summed up one of Brown’s lessons this way:
Tune out the newsroom chant that we’ve-already-done-that, or

everybody-knows-that. If a story from the past led to a dead end,
maybe you can find a new route. If sources or victims wouldn’t talk
before, maybe they’re ready now. If something made headlines in the
past, take some time to find out what’s happened since.8
The New York Times instituted a practice in 2017 in which its national
correspondents returned to the communities in which they’d spent
time reporting. It’s exactly what reflective practice calls for – circle
back to the sources and places reported on to assess the results of
one’s work and continue the discussion. It also adds an extra layer of
care when reporting. As Times journalist Farah Stockman said, “If you
parachute into a place, whether it’s a foreign place or your own coun-
try, and think you’ll never go back, you’re not accountable to people
in the same way.”9
Beat reporters often have the knowledge that they will face their
sources again, sometimes the day after publication, in city hall or the
court room. That connection adds a measure of accountability to
one’s work that may not be there when reporters travel to a location
for spot-news coverage or an enterprise story. There is great value in
meeting sources again, face-to-face, and having conversations about
the impacts of the coverage and the good and bad results from the
publicity. National editor Marc Lacey said, “We got a lot of positive
feedback from people who said they appreciated the Times more, or
even if they didn’t agree with us, they respected that we showed up
and listened to them.”10
COMBATTING BIASED THINKING

Throughout this book are ideas to help journalists better understand
how they think. As mentioned in Chapter 2, thinking about how you
265
think is called metacognition. How the mind intakes, processes and

categorizes information, how it reasons and how it focuses on certain
pieces of information to the exclusion of others are all important fac-
tors in producing a news account.
Debiasing is the term used to describe techniques to reduce or
eliminate distortions or errors in thinking and judgment, those habits
of thought introduced in Chapter 2. These strategies for combatting
cognitive errors and biases can be thought of as ways to cultivate a
more open mind as a journalist.
Debiasing techniques shift the mental processing of people and
events from automatic, rule-of-thumb thinking to conscious, con-
trolled thinking.11 A thoughtful journalist consciously considers
information in an analytic way. The debiasing techniques break down
into three general categories: Cognitive, motivational and technolog-
ical. We’ll look at each later in the chapter.
Changing Thinking
In this book, we have tried hard to understand how and why people
think the way they do. The good news is that it is possible to con-
trol and change some aspects of thinking. The evidence shows that
automatic (as in instant and unintentional) stereotypes and prej-
udice are controllable.12 Those who are genuinely motivated to be
non-prejudiced with respect to race and ethnicity are more likely to
succeed in achieving that goal.13 Research also indicates that, in gen-
eral, people motivated to be accurate can reduce judgmental biases.14
That’s great news for journalists, who strive to be neutral in their judg-
ments and assessments of others; the profession demands it.
Other factors beyond motivation that may encourage journalists’
unbiased thought and behavior include:
• Social norms, such as a newsroom culture that champions

inclusive reporting and a diverse staff, or a news
organization’s decidedly ethical approach to doing
journalism, may cultivate similar approaches in an individual
journalist’s practices.
• Situational pressures, such as a critical and vocal source on
the lookout for prejudicial coverage, may encourage more
thoughtful assessments of news events.
266
• Social context, such as how a journalist wants to be seen by

sources and the news audience – his or her reputation – may
also limit a journalist’s stereotyping or reporting bias.
Obstacles to Correcting Biased Thought
Debiasing is hardly a guaranteed, one-size-fits-all fix. Correcting

biased thought is difficult for many reasons, one of them being that
prejudices are responses that stem from mental processing that is
unconscious or uncontrollable. Simply put, people might not mean
to be prejudiced, but cultural and social influences have clearly
carved out patterns that dictate how their minds label and catego-
rize others.
A person must actively reroute those categorizations and labels.
And research tells us that a person really has to want to, because one’s
thinking is stingy when it comes to perceptions of others; the mind
likes to economize its efforts.15 Countering or correcting biases about
others takes concerted, high-effort thinking.
As evidenced in this book, people’s highly adaptive minds have
many ways of thinking that fall far short of the journalistic standards
of fair, balanced and critical. The result is that people may not know
when their thinking is biased. That makes it hard to correct. And
when a person does attempt to address what they think is a faulty
assessment of someone, they may overcorrect or adjust in the wrong
direction, making the assessment even more skewed.16
Preparing for Debiasing
But enough with the bad news and disclaimers! Journalists have some
built-in advantages when it comes to debiasing due to their profes-
sion. They aren’t average citizens in this context.
In order to counter unintentional bias, a person first needs to
be aware of it. The previous chapters in this book have focused on
general areas where internal biases can appear. However, there are
other ways to pick up on unintentional bias in your daily work. One
way is through online comments. Audience feedback is timely and
coverage-specific, and at the least, a journalist is exposed to the possi-
bility that his work might be imbalanced. A person can become aware
of his bias through introspection or by use of a corrective method.17
267
For example, a journalist might review a draft specifically for slanted

word choice or ask a source for feedback on the fairness of a published
story’s quotes.
A tool for journalists to seek and respond to feedback is crowd-
sourcing. Crowdsourcing uses the collaborative information-
gathering efforts of readers in reporting a news story. The journalist
issues an open call for assistance, drawing on the knowledge of a wide
range of people to find leads, information and sources. Crowdsourc-
ing allows journalists to gather ideas and represent perspectives that
they otherwise might not have been able to find.
Jan Schaffer is the executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for
Interactive Journalism, an incubator for news entrepreneurs and
innovators. Schaffer says that avoiding stereotypical treatment of a
storyline or story angle, which she calls a “narrative,” involves stepping
back for context and seeking community input.18 Other advice from
Shaffer follows in this “On Assignment.”
On Assignment
Avoid the pack journalism mentality and the pack mas-
ter narrative that so many journalists buy into without
really questioning whether that narrative is the real
narrative, or whether there is a narrative that is more
compelling to readers. In terms of strategies, a lot of it
is stepping back, and trying to figure what is going on:
Is it true? Are there other avenues I can report? And
then begin to really report it. You have to work at a
place where an editor will trust your reporting. Look
for more compelling stories so you can pitch a story and
say, “Everyone is reporting this, but my reporting says
this is happening.”
If you look to the same old sources, you’re proba-
bly going to get stuck in the same old master narrative
everyone else is. Trying to cultivate different sources
from different places from different points of view on a
story is a no brainer but not enough people do it.
268
We go to people who have high titles but might not have

high knowledge about the situation you’re reporting on.
I don’t think [online audience] comments alone on a story
quite do it, but if you begin to listen for threads in your com-
munity and common patterns, you begin to see reporting
opportunities. Through crowdsourcing . . . you can system-
atize how people can contribute to stories.
Journalists might have an advantage when it comes to using debi-

asing techniques discussed in the next section because they are apply-
ing them on the job, where their efforts are supported by professional
principles, training and education. Once you review the techniques,
you may find that you use the tips in Exhibit 11.1 to keep debiasing on
your mind while you work.
COGNITIVE DEBIASING STRATEGIES

Cognitive debiasing involves techniques aimed at changing the way
people think about a problem. For a journalist, that “problem” might
be the focus of the nut graph or the overall angle on the story. Cogni-
tive strategies help offset a handful of cognitive errors, but these few
errors are pervasive to how people think.
EXHIBIT 11.1 PROMOTING DEBIASING
Two Reminders to Keep Debiasing at the Forefront of Your Thinking

TIP 1: Remember Adopting a broad-minded, discovery-oriented ap-
the payoff. proach to the world leads to excellent journalism.
You’ll produce stories and images that are honest and
insightful – and that so often the competition doesn’t
have.
TIP 2: Make debias- This happens when we understand what debiasing
ing a habit. requires and are intrinsically motivated to do it.19 If
you don’t feel all that motivated, review the On As-
signment comments by successful working journalists
throughout this book. They tell us to trust the truth
of Tip 1.
269
Consider the Opposite
Pausing to think of the ways in which an initial judgment or decision

might be wrong can reduce the impact of flawed thinking.20 Overcon-
fidence in our decision-making abilities, for example, can be cured in
part by asking ourselves to consider the opposite of our initial judgment:
What if the mayor really didn’t make those racist comments? What if
it’s a smear campaign by his opponent? How can I document that?
Some past miscalculations by the news media would have benefit-
ted from the technique of considering the opposite. One memorable
instance is the public indictment of security guard Richard Jewell for
a deadly bomb attack during the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta,
Georgia. Initially portrayed as a hero for saving lives, Jewell became
a lead suspect in the case and endured harsh treatment in the media.
Another man was eventually found guilty of the crime. Said one
commentator:
Jewell was the security guard at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics who
alerted authorities to a suspicious knapsack, hurried people away
from it, probably saved a number of lives – and then, for 88 days,
found himself not only the prime suspect of the FBI investigation into
the bombing but the subject of withering media scrutiny that all but
tried and convicted him. . . .
Media coverage of Jewell took on a life of its own, all out of

proportion to the facts and evidence of the case. Playing the role of
judge, jury and psychologist, the press turned Jewell into a caricature
of a “lone bomber,” a pudgy guy who lived with his mom and,
according to unnamed sources, seemed zealous in performing his
security duties and overly eager for a law enforcement career. . . .
In Jewell’s case, the media strung together circumstantial scraps of

information and shaped them to fit a narrative story line about the
type of person the media presumed to be guilty. . . . As it turned out,
Jewell’s sole connection with the bombing was purely circumstantial:
he happened to be there doing his job.21
Asking how an initial decision might be wrong can counteract an

overly narrow sample of evidence. It forces journalists to explore
270
alternatives and evaluate new information. “Consider the opposite”

works because it forces journalists to take into account information
they might not otherwise use.22
I covered a story about homeless policy in San Francisco awhile

back and I came in with my own set of assumptions. I had an
anti-establishment view of it. But in my reporting, I grew to have
all sorts of questions about the ways that the homeless advocates
appeared to be contributing to the homeless problem themselves
because of their own polarizing rhetoric. It literally gave me writer’s
block. When I finally wrote the story, I heard from both sides after
it ran. I was told it was the most balanced story people had read on
the homeless issue in San Francisco. That was my most memorable
situation where I had to confront my own biases.17
Linda Jue
Founding director and executive editor
G.W. Williams Center for Independent Journalism
Consider Alternatives
In addition to considering the opposite, one of the most effective strat-

egies for reducing judgmental biases is to consider ANY alternative to
the judgment made.23 Simply thinking of alternative story angles or
leads can help reporters and editors counter biases in one direction
or another. This takes time and freedom, however. Research shows
that the quality of one’s decision-making is affected by stress.24 Not
surprisingly, the higher the pressure, the more frantic one’s thinking,
the less one is able to gather useful evidence. Particularly on complex
stories, it’s worth filing a bit later, or filing in segments, in order to
provide a news audience with a solid, insightful story.
On quick-hit or less complex stories, do the two-minute brain-
storm. Sit down someplace where you won’t get interrupted for 120
seconds. Have a piece of paper and pen, no keyboards or keypads.
Write every story angle you can think of, however wacky. Allow
your mind to unlock closed doors to peek inside at possibilities not
271
yet considered. Even if you come upon a better angle to pursue and
have to run the story you have in hand, you can at least remove any
words or phrases that imply you aren’t aware of broader themes. At
this point, you want to file a story that doesn’t do damage. Then come
back with a story following the better angle.
Training
Formal training in statistics, logic and basic economics helps peo-

ple develop better reasoning strategies.25 There is no shortage of
training available online, some of it free, through reputable orga-
nizations and institutions. Newsroom-based training is sometimes
available too. Seek out training in database reporting, probability,
newsroom math and how to read scientific studies with sample
size in mind; the larger the sample size, the more precise the esti-
mates are and the more credible the study. Such training can help
journalists integrate data in daily reporting more comfortably and
accurately.
Training in implicit bias and systemic racism in America is also
available through many civic organizations and libraries. If your news
outlet doesn’t provide training on multiculturalism and cross-cultural
communication, ask for it. This training is essential for newsrooms,
which are still predominately staffed by white journalists.
Perspective-Taking
Research indicates that the most effective way to avoid stereotyping

is to take a positive, outward approach to evaluating someone. That
means not thinking to oneself, “I will suppress that negative stereo-
type. I will not think about it.” This approach can backfire and lead to
the stereotype being more easily brought to mind.26 Try suppressing a
negative stereotype for a day, and you’ll see how hard it is.
Instead, entertain the perspective of someone else. Perspective-
taking means imagining yourself in the position of the person you
often stereotype. It does not mean guessing how the person might
feel in this position, but instead imagining how you would feel in a
similar situation. Focusing on circumstances and limitations or prob-
lems in a situation rather than the limitations or problems with a
272
person’s disposition might reduce the intrusion of stereotypes into

decisions as varied as courtroom verdicts or employee promotion,
studies show.27
Seeing oneself in the same situation capitalizes on our natural
egotism and allows us to think about how we would feel and think
if we were in that position, especially regarding people in a group to
which we do not belong or identify. For example, if we see more of
ourselves in people who are elderly, if we imagine our older selves and
attendant circumstances, we will be kinder to seniors and less likely to
stereotype them, research suggests. Our selfish concern for ourselves
can lead to positive social consequences. Perspective-taking has been
shown to reduce the expression of and even the accessibility in one’s
mind of stereotypes about others.28
Perspective-taking may help reporters understand the behaviors
and motivations of sources they interview. It may also encourage
them to consider circumstances and not just personality traits when
explaining people’s actions. But this technique must be used with care –
a journalist must also maintain distance and critical thinking about
sources. Taking someone’s perspective cannot mean slanting cover-
age in her favor. It is only a tool to better understand a person’s moti-
vations for acting, especially when that person is someone toward
whom a journalist does not easily relate. The ability to make another
person’s argument allows you to write more fully and authoritatively
about that person, whether or not you agree with the person’s posi-
tion. Remember, this isn’t about you. Perspective-taking is not an
excuse for one-sided or fawning coverage.
Slow Down. Find Meaning.
Reflective practice requires time. The contemporary news cycle is

hyper time-sensitive. Reporters know they need to publish content as
soon as they can put it in a coherent format for their medium. They
can then update their initial reporting throughout the day as they
uncover new information. The process continues on social media,
as journalists must push their stories to audiences and scan online
forums for new developments. In the digital reporting cycle, there is
rarely a moment that a journalist can lean back, exhale and close the
computer file and their mind on the story for the night.
273
A friend in a Washington, DC, news bureau told me of a staff meet-

ing in which the bureau chief ran through the many digital updates,
social media posts and blog posts necessary throughout each day on
political coverage. One senior reporter listened closely to the editor’s
litany of must-do daily digital engagement posts, and then asked, “Ah,
when do we have time to think?”
Exactly, sir. When will modern-day reporters have time to think if
they do not make time for it? Study after study indicates the necessity
of jumping off the content hamster wheel of the internet in order to
process information deeply. The human mind cannot engage in deep
thinking – the kind that yields rich outcomes – without quiet, pur-
poseful pause.
Finding Time to Reflect
If you are still doubtful you could make the time to process the tri-
umphs and challenges in your last filing, be it a video, text, photo or a
failed attempt at a filing, consider these suggestions.
Aim for higher levels of self-awareness and insight into how you
think (the phrase is actually “metacognitive awareness”). Having a
focus on how you learn puts you in control of your reporting pro-
cesses, instead of letting the reporting control you. It helps you to have
what educators call a “growth mindset” instead of a “fixed mindset”;
that’s the idea that you can and will continue to learn and improve
your thinking processes. When you understand how your mind func-
tions, it improves your sense of efficacy and self-regulation. Part of
reflective practice helps you to more quickly realize when you don’t
know what to do and when you are lost in the reporting and aren’t
sure what kind of story you have on your hands.
One thing you can stop doing all the time is doing ten things at
once. Multitasking can alter the way you learn things and remember
things.29 Ophir and colleagues30 found that people who jump around
the internet don’t filter out irrelevant information and distractions as
well as those who are light media multitaskers. A review of existing
studies on media multitasking shows that heavy media multitaskers
underperform compared to those who are light media multitaskers on
a number of cognitive issues.31
The ultimate example of slowing down journalism in our digital age
of media is Paul Salopek. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a
274
National Geographic fellow. He is walking – yes, that’s right – walking

the global migration of humans in a 21,000-mile trek that began in
January, 2013, in Ethiopia and will end at the tip of South America.
He’d estimated it would take him seven years, but he’s behind sched-
ule, so to speak, and he’s just fine with that. He’s in India as I write and
heading to China. See where Salopek is, who he is talking to and revel
in his on-the-ground reporting at https://www.nationalgeographic.
org/projects/out-of-eden-walk.
“By slowing down my storytelling, I’m hoping to slow readers down
as well, and hopefully cultivate a vanishing resource called attention
spans,” Salopek tells National Geographic in 2015.32 “The world is
growing complicated. To understand it, we don’t need more informa-
tion, we need more meaning.”
In a 2018 interview with Vice, Salopek further explains33 slow jour-
nalism and his project:
It’s another name for immersive journalism. This project was devised
as a way to subvert the conventions of the digital media industry. To
go diametrically in the opposite direction that we’re all headed: faster
and shallower. I believe there’s a space for longer, hopefully more
thoughtful storytelling in our lives, and walking accomplishes this. By
moving at 5 km an hour through the mains stories of our time, I think
I gather a better understanding – and make connections that others,
ping-ponging between stories in planes and cars – miss all the time.
It’s basically experiencing the news as a form of pilgrimage.
What you learn by this boot-level journalism is that world isn’t flat
(it only looks that way when you’re reporter on an expense account
working from the 20th floor of a five-star hotel) but that it is indeed
extraordinarily interconnected. What happens to each of us affects
others in faintly measurable or profoundly impactful ways.
Right, so the rest of the journalistic world is not walking; most reporters
are running from one story to another. But Salopek’s experience, however
rarified, provides an extreme example of something journalists can do on
their home turf on a regular basis: Slow down, consider the intention of
your story and consider the actual impact of it. Find the meaning.
What we intend to convey in a news account and what the audi-
ence perceives as important in that account are not always the same
275
thing. Pausing before diving into the next story is critical to allow any
one of us to reflect on what went well in the piece, what didn’t, what
sources had to say after publication and what those affected by the
coverage had to say, or not say. Take your internal temperature to
assess how you’re feeling about how well you understood the story
and, most importantly, the people at the heart of the story.
Not every story, or even every other story, can be cause for pause
when as a reporter, you are tasked by your editor to crank out a
minimum of three stories a day plus social media posts. But don’t let
many go by without hitting “sleep” on your screen and talking a mini
Salopek-trek to think about your work. You might not be walking
out of Eden, but you can walk out of your office. Clear your head and
reflect on choices you made and quotes you used and people you
sought and why.
Practice Humility
Ingrained bias and bigotry highlight the cognitive biases that plague
us all. These learned reactions about race and stereotypes are held
even by well-intentioned journalists who seek to help create anti-
racist workplaces and antidiscrimination policies in the industry.
But those good intentions don’t make journalists exempt from
prejudices.
“There is a very fine line between a racist and someone with an
unexamined prejudice,” says Shaminder Dulai, an award-winning
photo and video journalist with 20 years of experience producing sto-
ries in newsrooms across the United States.34
“Most newsrooms have some highly educated, experienced, socially-
motivated, self-proclaimed ‘allies’ who are not racist, but do have
some unchecked issues to address. The challenge, however, is that
these individuals do not think they have a problem,” he says.
Taking a moment to self-reflect is a big part of identifying trouble

areas and blind spots in order to improve. . . In the same way that
we have to keep building new portfolios each year, we also have to
reflect on our own biases.
When he was a picture editor, Dulai noticed a headline accompa-

nying a story about professional tennis star Serena Williams’ efforts
276
to regain the #1 spot in women’s tennis under the critical eye of her
coach, the sharp-tongued Frenchman Patrick Mouratoglou. The story
had a photo of Williams playing tennis with Mouratoglou in the back-
ground, watching her play. The proposed headline read: “Master and
Server.”
Dulai spoke up about the racist headline. “I do not want to leave
anything ambiguous here: you cannot have a story of a black athlete
and a white coach with a pun headline that invokes the cruel history
of slavery in the United States,” he says. The headline wasn’t used, but
not without some pushback about Dulai as oversensitive and others’
defensive posturing.
This sort of in-the-moment recognition of bias and prejudice
might be easy for us to see in the story’s retelling by Dulai. But in a
newsroom that champions creativity, keen word choice, a sharp wit
and esprit de corps, it is not as easy to spot blind spots. This is why
a career-long habit of assessing your work, including and especially
by others with different life experiences, is critical to excellent and
inclusive journalism.
“Your work is an extension of you,” states Dulai. He continues,
For it to grow, you also keep growing. If you accept that you are
always growing and improving, then you must also accept that you
have more to learn. And to learn, you must research and talk to
others to get perspective. Challenge your notions.
MOTIVATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL

DEBIASING TECHNIQUES
Motivational debiasing focuses on incentives or accountability.35 For
example, if a journalist has in the past received complaints from news
consumers about blatant stereotyping in his work, he may approach
future interactions differently, resulting in stories that depend less
on stereotypes and more on individual, personalized information. In
another example of motivational debiasing, if a journalist thinks that
they will have to explain their decision to others, they will put more
effort into making a sound one.
Another strategy is to avoid information that might bias judgment.
Some scholars call this exposure control.36 Judges do this when they
don’t allow juries to hear certain evidence. Wayne Drehs of ESPN.com
277
does this when he’s going to profile an athlete; he purposely reads little
about his subject before meeting him or her so as not to contaminate
his thinking with other people’s judgments of the athlete. He tries to
give the source the benefit of a mind that is “a clean slate.”37
But preventing so-called mental contamination is difficult because
often we don’t know what may bias us until we’ve been exposed to the
information. However, we can look for patterns; we can look at our
reactions over time about a specific person or issue, or at feedback
from a variety of sources that suggest the same bias. Or we can com-
pare our reactions to different groups of people to see whether there
is a pattern of judgment that suggests unwanted biases.38
Technological debiasing, such as online comments and crowd-
sourcing, improves reasoning through electronic tools. Another
related tool is group decision-making.39 Groups can serve as an
error-checking mechanism during discussion. People with comple-
mentary skills interact, and having more people in the conversation
dilutes the power of poor thinking. The more people, the more expe-
rience, the better the decision. The diversity of perspectives is larger
in a group.40
In a newsroom setting, a group can be a collection of editors mak-
ing decisions about what runs on the front page. It can be an inves-
tigative reporting team hashing out projects. Listservs and online
discussion groups can offer fresh input on possible story topics.
Groups can serve as error-checking systems, and, in more diverse
newsrooms, groups can increase the range of experiences available to
influence decisions about story coverage or story play, for instance.
Group decision-making works best if a news organization not only val-
ues and is open to diversity but also actually has a diverse news staff,
including diversity of ideology, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation,
religious affiliation, geography and socioeconomic status. A newsroom
filled with people from similar cultures may more readily deliver nar-
rowly focused news accounts, not inclusive, innovative storytelling.
THE REFLECTIVE JOURNALIST’S MENTAL

TOOLBOX
A theme throughout this book is growing awareness of one’s outward
practices and inward thought processes. Journalists start with a set of
278
skills and knowledge about how to do their jobs. In fact, much of jour-
nalism is predictable, involving actions and judgments that are com-
mon and routine, like what to include in an obituary or how to lead
an inverted-pyramid story on last night’s house fire. Scholar Donald
Schön wrote that:
Many practitioners, locked into a view of themselves as technical
experts, find nothing in the world of practice to occasion
reflection. They have become too skillful at techniques of selective
inattention, junk categories, and situational control, techniques
which they use to preserve the constancy of their knowledge-in-
practice. For them, uncertainty is a threat; its admission is a sign of
weakness.41
Schön is describing the technical prowess many professional jour-

nalists have learned by experience: How to “write around” a hole in
information, how to adeptly manage breaking news situations, how
to marginalize a difficult source and what to expect from common
scenarios. They never seem uncertain or unsure.
Similarly, students of the craft are taught to become technical
experts. A decent part of journalism education focuses on building
technical skills such as writing a solid lead, memorizing Associated
Press style, uploading video, editing audio clips and posting to social
media. All are essential skills.
But technical skills alone cannot capture and reflect to news audi-
ences the depth, breadth and nuance in our contemporary multicul-
tural society. Pure technical skills don’t acknowledge the thinking
power needed for excellent journalism. Excellent journalism goes
beyond the technical to acknowledge the workings of the mind, both
of the journalist and of the source. Excellent journalism comes from
knowing that human thinking is efficient and elegant, but also some-
times flawed. Awareness and education, empathy and evidence –
these elements are tools for an excellent career.
ProPublica’s Midwest editor, Louise Kiernan, offers this spot-on
advice when you are feeling overwhelmed and uncomfortable with
how difficult it can be to do honest, authentic reporting:
Listen not just to the answers to the questions you’ve asked but to
what people want to tell you that you haven’t asked, listen to what
279
they’re not saying. Question, not only your sources but yourself: your
assumptions, your biases, your blind spots. Embrace the grey. Stories
are complicated. People are complicated. That’s what makes them
interesting. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable; spend time
in places and with people who are unfamiliar, challenge yourself to
tackle a project, a job, a goal that seems impossible. And when you
do that and it’s hard and you’re frustrated and panicked, afraid that
you can’t do what you need to do? That’s when you’re learning the
most. Breathe. Persist.
Tools for a Career
What has to be present for debiasing to work? Awareness of what the

bias is, its magnitude, motivation to correct it and the mental control
to do so are all elements that help combat cognitive biases.42 It is not
enough to want to be fair and inclusive; the mind also needs specific
tools and techniques to reformat thinking. Exhibit 11.2 recaps many
such techniques discussed throughout the book, with a reference to
the chapter in which they are discussed in depth.
EXHIBIT 11.2 TWENTY-FIVE WAYS TO

CULTIVATE AN OPEN MIND
1. Nurture the curious attitude, self-awareness and cultural knowl-

edge necessary for effective multicultural reporting. (Chapter 1)
2. Be aware of the cultural borders you cross and how your own
culture affects your perspective on events. Look for differences
among subgroups in a culture. (Review the Maynard Institute’s
Fault Lines.) (Chapter 1)
3. Know your standpoint on the world, the position from which you
judge things. This standpoint is influenced by factors such as your
age, place of residence, religious beliefs, ethnicity or race, educa-
tion level, income level and sexual orientation. (Chapter 2)
4. Be a reflective practitioner. Find time on a regular basis to pause
and reflect on your work. (Chapters 2 and 11)
5. Use the power of stimulus-driven thinking. This high-effort, inten-
tional thinking helps you consider aspects of a person individually
and not as representative of an entire cultural group. (Chapter 3)
280
6. Counterargue your story hypothesis. Explain to someone why your

point of view on the story might be wrong in order to entertain
other ways of thinking about news happenings. (Chapter 3)
7. Look at news events from multiple perspectives to improve recall
of details, notice the overlooked and consider information in new
ways. (Chapter 3)
8. Know yourself. Are you a narrow categorizer or a broad one? Are
you uncertainty- or certainty-oriented? What is your orientation
toward social groups other than your own? Know your natural
tendencies so as to better prevent them from distorting news ac-
counts. (Chapters 4 and 9)
9. Replace your negative stereotypes about others with more neutral
attitudes. (Chapters 4 and 10)
10. Practice Big Umbrella journalism. Think inclusively, not exclusively,
so as to broaden your categorization of a news subject. Ask ques-
tions from an inclusive, not an exclusive, standpoint. (Chapter 5)
11. Understand sources’ cultural patterns and how they influence basic
aspects of life such as work, time and communication. These pat-
terns can help explain behaviors. (Chapter 5)
12. Sharpen your attention and fill gaps in observation by developing
an eye for what other outlets are ignoring. Look past status quo
sources for nontraditional news sources. Question formulaic cov-
erage. (Chapter 6)
13. Be accountable to your news audience and your sources. Expect
that you will be called upon to justify your work. Is your story
factual and fair? (Chapter 7)
14. Devote yourself to accuracy. You’ll expend more effort on reason-
ing through issues, pay more attention to relevant information and
process it more deeply. (Chapter 7)
15. Develop an ear for Blab-speak. Blabs include euphemisms, which
are code for offensive and sometimes prejudiced associations.
(Chapter 8)
16. Challenge sources to clarify their language involving controversial
subjects. (Chapter 8)
17. Seek the representative anecdote, not the exceptional one.
(Chapter 9)
18. Train your mind to look for population-based statistics that anchor
your story. (Chapter 9)
19. Appreciate the power of visuals to make connections; images can
invoke audience empathy and emotional connection, but it can
also lead to unfair associations. (Chapter 9)
281
20. Be suspicious of a single narrative for an entire cultural group.

(Chapter 9)
21. Defend your right as a journalist to be present in public places, cov-
ering public officials and accessing public documents. (Chapter 10)
22. Practice transparency, stating what you know and how you know
it, and always acknowledging what you don’t know yet and why.
(Chapter 10)
23. Consider the opposite and consider any alternative. This opens
your mind to new information or information previously discount-
ed. (Chapter 11)
24. Practice empathy. Make the unfamiliar familiar. (Chapter 11)
25. Recognize the ease with which false information can spread, and
beware of hoaxes and hype, especially those that appeal to your
ideological biases. (Chapter 11)
Taking time to reflect and consider how you approach sources, issues
and events will improve your journalism. Reflecting on your practice
of journalism will serve you throughout your career. Journalists have
the rare opportunity to ask strangers about their lives, and amazingly
often, the strangers allow us in. Tell the stories of others as you would
want your own told – with precision, context and an open mind.
1. In “Ana’s Story,” Thomas Curwen of the Los Angeles Times strove
to use straightforward language in describing Ana Rodarte’s appear-
ance. He explains below:
As with all stories, honesty – in the use of words and

descriptions – was critical. There were small details – identifying
neurofibromatosis as a disorder and not a disease – but most
critically, I wanted to make sure that I didn’t shy away from
describing Ana’s appearance. While I wanted to be sensitive to
her and to her parents, I had to make sure I addressed the read-
ers’ concerns and curiosities. If I were too sensitive, I wouldn’t be
doing my job, and in a way, I would be closeting the disorder.43
a. Access the audio slideshow, text and photo gallery of “Ana’s
Story” through your newsroom or university news database
or online at www.latimes.com/ana.
282
b. Look at the photos that accompany Curwen’s story.

Write your own description of Ana’s face. Also, write a
few lines about your thoughts when you first looked at the
photos.
c. Compare Curwen’s descriptions in the published stories with
your own descriptions. What different words are used? How
does the tone differ?
d. Decide whether Curwen struck the balance between
sensitivity and honesty in describing Ana’s appearance. Share
your comments in a one-page reaction paper with specific
examples from the article.
2. Put reflective practice to work for you. After a story you produced
is aired or published, spend time assessing the work. Mentally back-
track through the key decisions in the story process. Ask yourself
the following questions:
a. What do I particularly like about this story?
b. What skill did I most use on this piece? (This could be a
technical skill, such as a well-written phrase or outstanding
video clip. It could be a reporting skill, such as getting an
on-the-record quote from a reticent source or asking a
particularly insightful question. It might be a processing skill,
in that your mind saw a fresh angle or realized a deeper truth
at work in the story.)
c. What do I wish I’d done better? How can I improve in that
area? (Identify a strategy. It might be scheduling an interview
with a source for background research, enrolling in online
training or reading up on a particular culture.)
d. Make note of your conclusions. Put them to use on your next
story.
3. Read, watch or listen to a critical commentary on the U.S. news
media’s handling of a recent issue involving a cultural group. Brush
up on the issue itself. Write a blog posting that addresses these
issues:
• Define the issue and provide a link to a reliable news

account on the issue.
• Decide whether cognitive bias may be a factor in the
reporting of this issue. Identify the bias and show how
it applies.
• Summarize the criticism of the news media and link to
the source(s) of the criticism.
283
• Consider the source(s) of the criticism and the

viewpoint the source represents.
• Explain whether or not you agree with the criticism
and support your answer.
4. After reading Overcoming Bias, make your own list of ways to cul-
tivate an open mind. Include suggestions from throughout the book
that particularly resonated with you. Post the list in your work space
or on your smartphone home screen for reference and reflection.
FOR REVIEW
• Identify the elements necessary for debiasing to

occur.
• List some challenges to debiasing one’s thinking.
• Know at least five techniques for more open-minded
thinking.
NOTES

284
285
286
Index
ABC News 208 anchors 165

accountability 151, 166, 168–170, Andersen, Kurt 59, 60
265, 277; motivational debiasing anecdotes 135, 162, 207, 210, 213;
and 277 vs. data 210–212; hypothetical
acculturation 112 233; news stories and 210;
accuracy 4–5, 10–11, 17–20, 83, personal 135, 144
102–103, 105–106, 116, 159, angle 37, 79, 142, 152, 154, 157–159,
162–163, 166–168, 172, 195, 252; 164–165, 167, 170, 268–269,
accurate journalism 11, 104, 120; 271–272
accurate news story 167; accurate Asayesh, Gelareh 64
story 211, 223; devotion to 167; of Asian 7, 92, 111, 115, 116, 191–192,
perceptions 105, 116 198
Acosta, Jim 238 asset framing 261–264
Adichie, Chimamanda 219 assimilation 16–17, 112
affective empathy 90 Associated Press (AP) 104, 177–178,
Afghanistan 13 185–186, 189, 279; guidelines
AFP/Getty Images 189 178–179
African Americans 78, 80, 106, assumptions 4–5, 8, 12–13, 15, 29,
139–140, 164 31, 83, 86, 107, 170–171, 212,
aging 92–93 214–216, 261, 263; assumptive
AIDS 80, 139 approach 35; editing and
Alcindor, Yamiche 246, 247 212; perilous 47–51; see also
Alexander, Rachel 186–187 preconceptions
alien 185 The Atlantic.com 47, 48, 50
Alito, Justice Samuel 240 attention 26, 35, 39–40, 55, 62, 77,
Allen, Marshall 145 127–136, 140–142, 144–145,
America 47 166–167, 194–195, 218–219,
Americans 84–85 221, 228–229, 231, 242, 281;
American University 243 biological influences on 131–132;
amplification, avoiding 244 consequences of 134; cultural
anchoring heuristic 165 influences on 133; digital media and
287
INDEX
135–136; economy 135–136; ethics in question wording 113; traps

of 140–141; filling gaps in 141–142; 166; see also individual entries
to the inconsistent 55; news frames bien pensant journalist 60
and audience 136–140 Big Umbrella journalism 121, 281
attitudes 3, 9, 40, 76, 114, 169, 281 bin Laden, Osama 138–139
attributions 207–233; errors biology 132; biological relatives
216–217, 219–221; theory 30; influences on attention 131;
226, 233 influences thinking 132
audiences 18–19, 39–43, 71–72, 80, birth control 13
98, 105–106, 107, 135–140, blab test 177, 197, 202
168–172, 179–182, 195–196, Black 1, 26, 41, 49, 58, 59, 60, 66, 82,
200–202, 209–211, 224–226, 83, 98, 101, 102, 103, 106, 115,
228–229, 231, 242–244, 250–251, 116, 120, 133, 137, 140, 151, 180,
267; attention 136, 228–229, 189, 190, 195, 229, 242, 247, 252
231; emotions 228; empathy Blakley, Jonathan 198
282; engagement 250; feedback blind spots 1–4, 12, 98, 142–144,
40–41, 169, 267; interpretation 185; 276–277, 280
members 42, 250; preferences 169; Blitzer, Jonathan 110
reactions 138; resistance 139; taste blog entry 66
40; traffic 40 blog posts 274, 283
authenticity 127–128 borders, cultural 6, 122, 280
availability heuristic 164 brain 30–31, 50–51, 53, 63, 65,
130, 132, 134, 158, 163, 228; scan
Bailey, Issac J. 108 studies 228
balance 17–18, 21, 99, 226, brainstorm 20, 67, 202, 271
238–239, 283 Brainstorm, Two-Minute 271
balanced news diet 256 breaking news 18, 29, 35, 42, 57, 119,
banks 160–161 132, 163, 170, 231, 279
Barker, David 255 Brokaw, Tom 16
base-rate data 212–213 burqa 13
base-rate information 210 business story 200
Bates, Karen Grigbsy 239 Business Week 81
Bauer-Reese, Jillian 157 businesswoman 224
behaviors 8, 55, 56, 75–76, 113,
115, 117, 127, 130, 215, 217, 219, campaigns 80, 143, 244; crowds 143;
223–225; behavioral empathy 90; operation 143; speeches 143
and events 215, 217, 226 capitalistic society 217
beliefs 6, 8, 53, 55, 57, 66, 86, 88, 97, capitol riots 186
99–100, 103, 105, 191, 217, 245; captions 189–190, 197
system 245 caricatures 60, 227, 270
Benz, Kevin 243 categories 28, 31, 42, 51, 57, 82–83,
bias 5, 12–15, 31–34, 62, 76, 91, 110, 131, 155, 157
103–104, 113, 115–116, 157–158, categorization 57, 62, 76, 115, 121,
163–165, 170–171, 187, 266–267, 267, 281
276–278, 280; judgment 167, 277; categorizers 224–225
in professional journalism 32, 42; categorizing information 155, 266
288
INDEX
category width 224 competition 133, 159, 269

CBS 216 competitive journalists 40
celebrities 34, 39, 122, 137, 151, 153 complaints 86, 169, 277
censor offensive speech 243 concentric loyalty 121
certainty orientation 224–225 concrete language 190
changing perceptions 97 confirmation bias 151–155, 158,
characteristics, personality 224 161–162, 171–172; recognizing
The Charlotte Observer 80, 225 154; social media 154–155; story
Chase, Stuart 197 process and 155–161
Chen, Gina Massulo 251 conflict 32, 42, 121, 131, 187, 242;
Chicago Tribune 142, 170 bias 42
child/children 115, 121, 123, 142, conjunction fallacy 164–165
194, 196, 201, 208, 213, 220, connotation 181, 196
230–231 conscious awareness 77
Christian 101, 111, 128, 171, conservative 49, 128, 137, 186, 187,
198, 218 191, 247
Cincinnati Magazine 47 considering the alternative 271, 281
CityLab 47 considering the opposite 270–271
class 6–8, 20, 59, 66, 80, 99–100, consumerism 122, 227
107–109, 122, 156, 159, 161–162; contact 10, 62, 112
discrimination 80 contamination 278; mental 278
climate change 18, 110 context 3, 5, 11, 82–83, 106, 108,
climate migration 110 141, 143, 179–181, 188, 200–201,
CNN 19, 65, 109, 137, 170, 246 208, 242–243, 253–254, 267–268;
code of ethics 15, 103–104, 228, 230 data in 208–210; defined 11;
code words 177, 181, 190–195, 244 information 143; knowledge 19
cognitive/cognition 1; concept 142; coronavirus pandemic 25, 33, 190,
debiasing strategies 269; empathy 192
90; errors 28–29, 266, 269; correcting biased thought 267
framework 53; habit 82; load 78; Cosby, Bill 137
phenomenon 51; script 56 counterargue/counter-arguments
cognitive bias 25, 28–31, 212, 62, 168, 252, 281
276, 280, 283; and mental Cox, John Woodrow 207
frameworks 28 crime 63, 72, 164, 166, 185, 193, 213,
colorism 116 216, 264, 270; coverage 117; data
Columbia Journalism Review 79; statistics 80; trial 53
157, 192 criminality 80
Columbia Journalism School 193 crisis 26, 120, 213–214
commercialism 32 critical decisions 151–172
communities 3–4, 7–9, 15–17, 58, crowd-sourcing 33, 268–269, 278
90–91, 104, 112, 116–117, crown Heights 119
130–131, 145, 171–172, 181–183, cultural/culture 1, 6, 8–9, 11–13,
192, 213, 233, 240, 245–246, 16, 33–34, 74–75, 89, 97–101,
264–265; audience 43; guidelines 104–106, 112–113, 116–119,
256; input 268; members 91; radio 121–122, 132–133, 179–180,
station 145; reporters 91; sources 37 219–220, 280; beliefs 97; biases
289
INDEX
19; blind spots 12; borders 6, 122, descriptions 26, 195, 198, 282–283;
280; boundaries 116; competence information 211; language 178,
11; connotations 198; context 182, 194; relevant 200
170; continuums 118; credibility differences 9, 14, 20, 100–101, 105,
10; differences 9, 14, 100–101; 110, 170–171, 179, 256, 262, 264
divisions 7; education, context, digital age 135, 274
perspective 106–107; elitism digital compromise 159
87; exchange 121; explanation digital culture 89
133; groups 16, 74, 89, 93, 112, digitalization 210
117, 280, 282–283; history digital journalism 41, 144, 243
133; ideas 6; influences 12; digital media 41, 135–136
knowledge 9, 280; myths 51; digital news 5, 15, 33–34, 179, 223,
norms 100–101, 111, 116, 133; 243; media 33–34; outlet 223
patterns 117, 281; phenomenon disabilities 42, 71–73, 114, 196
75; shares 99; subgroups 105, discrimination 78, 80, 103, 191–192,
106; understanding 99–100; 245, 254
values 227 diversity 4, 14–15, 43, 89, 98,
cultural identity 110–111; conveying 101, 103–104, 111, 179–180,
110–111 264, 278; education 89; in U.S.
culturism 74, 93 Newsrooms 101
curiosities 130, 282 domestic terrorism 186
Curwen, Thomas 261, 263, 282–283 dominance, social 87
dominant culture 112
Dale, Daniel 19 Drehs, Wayne 217, 218, 277
data: anecdote vs. 210; collection 76; Drucker, Johanna 209
on teen pregnancies 213–214 Duke University 58–59
deadlines 29, 33, 35, 151–152, Durham 59, 66
162–163, 170–171, 210; pressure Durkin, Jessica 105
151, 158
debiasing 261, 266–267, 269, editing 11, 29, 139, 162, 178, 186,
277–278, 280, 284; cognitive 207, 212–213, 215, 222, 279; for
strategies 269–277; consider accurate attribution 215–219;
alternatives 271–272; defined 266; audio clips 279; budgets 253; for
motivational 277; perspective- complete explanations
taking 272–273; preparing for 222–226; copy 178, 186;
267–268; slow down and find editorial decisions 39; editorial
meaning 273; techniques 266, 269; work 40; eye for evidence
technological 277–278; training 272 212–213; process 213
decision-making 98, 166–167, 170, education 6, 16, 74–76, 89, 106,
253, 270–271, 278; group 278 108, 196, 255, 257, 269, 279–280;
decisions 29, 31, 37, 39, 41, 114–115, equity 196; level 16, 280
139, 142, 144, 162, 165, 168–169, Eisman, Amy 243
278; process 169 elderly 77, 273
defense 49, 182, 254 emotions 18, 50, 75, 90, 228, 262,
democracy 31, 155, 253, 255 264; connection 226, 282; content
Democrats 248–250 49; health 250; reaction 228, 262;
denotation 181, 196 responses 50, 228, 252
290
INDEX
empathy 89–91, 128, 256, 262–263, faith 111, 128–129, 171

279, 282 fake news 245
errors 28, 38, 144, 158, 163, 167, fallacy 164–165
169, 252, 266, 269; attributions false accusations 59
216–217, 219–221; cognitive 29 false balance 18, 238–239
ESPN.com 217, 277 false dichotomies 15
ethics 14–15, 59, 103, 140, false equivalency 238; see also false
144, 166, 228, 230, 242; approach balance
266; choices 14; policies 242; false information 252–255, 282; vs.
violations 59 honest journalism 252–254
ethnicity 4, 6–8, 74, 77, 107, 110, falsified hate crimes 152
183, 200, 202, 216, 221, 278, 280; family background 111
cultures 110–111, 117–118, 121; fault lines 6–8, 21, 106, 280; of race/
ethnic backgrounds 86, 111, ethnicity 6; system 6
183; identifier 202; identity 121; faults 6–8, 208, 220, 263
influences 8; insult 200 feedback 37, 39–43, 65, 169, 202,
euphemisms 178, 190, 197–198, 281 244, 265, 267–268, 278
euphemistic names 242 female journalists 250–252
events 5, 7–8, 11, 48, 50–52, 58, females, stereotype 59
62–66, 84, 97, 119–120, 123, Fields, James Alex Jr. 237
134–135, 138–142, 145, 164, The Filter Bubble: What the Internet
210, 212–213, 217, 225–226, Is Hiding from You 155
231–232; schemas 56 financial crisis 159
evidence 18–19, 52–53, 57, 62, 162, finding vs. looting 190
165, 215, 218, 219, 252, 254–255, Fiorina, Carly 81
270–271, 277, 279 Fiske, Susan T. 52, 55
exclusion 194, 210, 225, 266 Forbes 81
exclusive domain 116 fore-closures 160–162; stories 161
expectations 35–36, 40, 52, 56, 60, formulaic news coverage 144, 281
65, 75, 79, 84, 100 Fortune 81
experiential learning 36–39 frameworks 16, 240; mental 28, 30
explanations 207, 217, 218, framing/frames 82, 107, 136–139,
221–222, 225 179, 184, 216, 261, 263–264;
explicit attitude 77 analysis 138; news situations 179;
explicit consent 184 signals 138; of reference 107
explicit stereotypes 76–77 free speech 138, 240
exposure control 277 freezing out information 159
fundamental attribution
Facebook 42, 50, 226, 231, 252–253, error 219–221; journalists and
256–257 221–222
fact-checking 3–4
facts 3, 5, 11–12, 18, 31, 60, 62, gaps in observation 127, 281
105–106, 151, 153, 160, 162–163, gay men 7, 77–78, 99, 114, 151, 153,
165, 178–179, 252 180–181, 195, 263
fairness 4–5, 17–18, 20–21, 102, gender 4, 6–9, 16, 43, 59, 81, 98,
137, 163, 200, 226, 244, 268; and 122, 144, 182–184, 193; diversity
accuracy 102 98; expression 184; identity 8,
291
INDEX
183–184; injustices 59; marker heuristics 162–163; and biases 163;

184; presentation 183 see also individual entries
general assignment story 86 Hewlett-Packard 81
general attitudinal orientation 87 high school 114, 207–208
generalizations 76, 82, 115, 182, hindsight bias 165–166
198, 211 Hinton, Perry 75
generations 6–8, 86, 104, 111, 211 Hirsch, Rick 8, 91
genocide 239 Hispanic 9, 16, 23, 41, 105, 182
geography 4, 6–8, 37, 162, 179, 278 Holt, Ashley 102
George, Cherian 240, 243 homeless/homelessness 78, 112, 113,
Giffords, Gabrielle (U.S. 165, 271; issue 271; policy 271;
Representative) 163 population 113; problem 113, 271
Google 252, 254 hooks, bell 183
“Gotchya” journalism 188 hospital care 145
Graham, Ruth 127, 128 hostile situations, managing
Graythen, Chris 189 249–250
group decision-making 278 hostile sources: covering 245–246
Gunn, Steve 80, 225 Houck, Curtis 247
G.W. Williams Center for humility 276–277
Independent Journalism 271 Hurricane Katrina 189
hypothesis 79, 152, 154, 158–159;
habits of thought 20, 25, 28, 30, confirmation 154
33, 35, 170, 266; cognitive bias hypothetical anecdote 233
and 28–29; imagined audience
41–42; mental frameworks and Ichheiser, Gustav 222
30; mental processing and 28; identities 6, 104, 110, 194, 261
metacognition and 30; see also ideological biases 31, 282
individual entries ideologies 9, 31, 87, 102, 278
Haiti 7, 177 illegals 179, 185–186, 211
Halberstam, David 11 immigrants 7, 86, 163–164, 169, 177,
Hamilton, David L. 78 227–228
Hamm, Benjy 213, 233 immigration 86, 109, 164, 169, 179,
Handbook of Journalism 194, 198 251; policy 109
harassment 39, 250–252 Implicit Association Test 77
hate, covering 237–238 implicit stereotypes 76, 77
hateful comments 242–243 inclusion 14, 123, 182, 254; ethics of
hate groups 240–242, 243, 245; 14–15; journalism 1, 11, 14, 120,
investigative approach 243 256, 277; mindset 16
hate speech 237–257; defining 240; incongruent information 79
five-point test, journalists 242; incongruities 55
is protected speech 240–242; inconsistencies 20, 55
newsworthy 242; against religious incorrect information 118
groups 245; speaker, hosting 242 individual behaviors 217
hatred, ignoring 239–240 individual cognitive biases 32
heterosexuality 113–114 individualistic culture 220
Heterosexual Questionnaire 113 individualizing actions 76, 87, 190
292
INDEX
inferences 115, 195, 201, 217, 244 journalism 4–6, 10–11, 14–16, 28,
information 4–5, 19, 28–29, 51–58, 30–35, 39–42, 97–98, 102–105,
62–64, 76, 79, 131, 134–136, 119–120, 140–141, 143–144,
152–155, 169–171, 209–212, 187–188, 192–194, 225–226, 243,
214–215, 224–226, 252–255, 266, 251–257, 268–269, 274–275, 279,
270–271, 274–275, 277–279, 281–282; accurate 11, 104, 120;
281; benefits 209; chaos reigns Big Umbrella 121, 281; challenges
252; coverage 142; decisions 31; assumptions 15; coverage 81;
informed reporting digs 31; lodge education 6, 107, 279; and ethics
79; news audiences 240; working- of attention 140–141; with open
class white voters 107 mind 4–6; professional 32, 42;
information-gathering process 151 reflective practice 1–22, 25;
informative sentences 197 representative 187; of verification
in-group acceptance 116 254; see also individual entries
ingroups 97, 114–116, 121, 181 journalists 3–9, 18–20, 29–31, 33–37,
The Institute for Interactive 39–43, 80–85, 100–108, 116–119,
Journalism 268 130–138, 140–142, 151–156,
intellectual disabilities 71–73 165–168, 182–185, 187–190,
intentional thinking 280 192–197, 208–214, 221–225,
intentions 64, 188, 199, 239, 276 243–246, 248–252, 263–273;
intercultural competence 11 balance and 18; cognitive biases
intermarriage 112 29; as cultural beings 101–103;
intermediaries 118 experiential learning 36–38;
internal beliefs 217 fairness and 17; feedback 39–41;
internal biases 267 inclusive mindset, developing
International Luge Federation 232 16–17; mental toolbox 278–282;
interpretation 56, 64, 79, 185, multicultural reporting 11–13;
224, 255 objectivity 18–19; as reflective
intersectionality 12 practitioner 35–36; sources
interviews 2–3, 11, 33, 35, 37, 71, stereotype 83–84; standards,
91, 93, 113, 115–120, 123, 163, upholding 141; understanding
211–213, 250, 273 your mind 5; see also individual
invisible circumstances 222 entries
invisible factors 222 judgments 29, 31, 36, 52, 58, 63,
invisible social chains 222–223 65, 100, 151, 162–164, 167–168,
Iran 20, 64 187–188, 266, 270–271, 277–279;
Iraq 185 bias 162–163, 166, 168, 266, 277;
Islam 13, 121, 242 effect 29; subjective 163; words
177, 181, 187–190
Jamaica 7 Jue, Linda 271
Japanese Americans 115
JCPenney 201 Kabul 13–14
Jeung, Russell 191 Kelly, Shamshawan 119
Jewell, Richard 270 Kiernan, Louise 279
J-Lab 268 Kinney, Aaron 189
Jost, John T. 78 Klosterman, Chuck 33
293
INDEX
knee-jerk judgment 188 Marietta, Morgan 255

knowledge 6, 9, 12, 30, 37, 40–42, Martin, Andrew 159, 161–162
51, 56, 155, 159, 255, 265, 268; Maynard Institute for Journalism
acquisition 255; cultural 9, 280; Education 6, 107; Fault Lines 280
and skills 40 meanings, of words 181–195
knowledge-in-practice 279 media 25–26, 31–35, 37, 39, 41–42,
Kovach, Bill 31 47–51, 54, 58–59, 74, 80–81,
Ku Klux Klan 138 102–103, 107–109, 135–142,
Kumaritashvili 232–233; 153–155, 187–189, 191–192,
Nodar 232 246–248, 250–257, 270, 273–276;
Kurosawa, Akira 63 bias 25, 31, 35, 247, 256; box
98; coverage 81, 270; experts
labels 4, 37, 58, 71, 178, 184, 186, 74; framing 137; literacy 254;
190, 201, 263, 267 multitasking 274; programming 136
Lacey, Marc 41, 105, 182, 244, 265 mental: contamination 278;
lacrosse 59–60, 67 frameworks 28, 30; illness 80, 158,
Landmark Community 217; judgment 142; processing 28,
Newspapers 213 31, 52, 266–267; shortcuts 53, 78,
language 9–10, 79, 82, 111–112, 163; toolbox 278–282
156–157, 177–179, 182–183, metacognition 30, 266
186–187, 190–197, 200–201, 240, metacognitive awareness 274
244, 281–282; access 192; and Mexican Americans 115
audience 195–202; choices 194; Mexico 10, 105, 109, 169
and meaning 179–180; self-check Miami Herald 8, 38, 91, 193,
177, 200; skills 192 196, 265
Las Vegas Sun 145 mind 4–6, 16–17, 28, 51–54, 83, 88,
Latina Voices 86 131, 137, 139, 141, 155, 163–164,
Latinos 78, 88, 105, 164, 182, 200; in 266–267, 271–274, 278–283;
terms of subsets 88 open 4–5, 137, 261, 266, 280, 282
Lee, Robert E. 237 mindfulness 87
lesbians 77–78 mindset 13–14, 16, 158, 246, 274
Lester, Paul Martin 74, 78 misinformation 254–256
Levinson, Martin 185 mistakes 8, 29, 37–38, 115, 160,
LGBT community 116 162–163, 167, 184; sedentary 115
LGBTQ community 99, 115, mortgage crisis 135
180–181, 240 motivational debiasing 277
liberalism 87, 186 motivations 52, 90, 190, 223–224, 273
Limbaugh, Rush 51 multiculturalism 110, 272
Lippmann, Walter 73, 74, 88 multicultural reporting 1, 11–14, 21,
listservs 278 122, 280
looting vs. finding 190 multicultural society 105, 133, 279
Los Angeles Times 142, 261–262, 282 Muslims 111, 183, 186, 198, 242, 245
Lovato, Roberto 110
loyalty, concentric 121 National Association of Hispanic
live streaming 231 Journalists 102, 105, 182, 185
Lowery, Wesley 102–103 nationalism 87, 198
294
INDEX
National Press Photographers newspapers 98, 101, 135, 199,

Association 15, 228 214–215, 263
National Public Radio (NPR) 71, Newsweek 58, 66, 227
180, 239 newsworthiness 131, 232, 242
Native Americans 51, 78, 92, 200, 240 The New Yorker 58, 110
NBC News 17, 208 New York Magazine 59, 60, 137
NBC Nightly News 58 New York Post 229
negativity: addressing 237–257 The New York Times 11, 41, 58, 60,
neighborhoods 37, 41, 43, 79, 91, 103, 159, 177, 188, 193, 201, 212,
106, 119, 199, 211, 213 244, 265
neurofibromatosis 261, 263–264, Nifong, Mike 58
282 9/11, meaning of 181, 245
neutrality 103; attitudes 281; norms 8, 32, 97, 100–101, 105, 111,
categories 89; language 201, 244; 113, 116, 118, 122, 133; change
schemas 63 133; form 100
new information: interpreting and North Carolina Central
filing 53–54 University 58
New Republic 73 novelty 130–131
news 4–6, 14–20, 31–35, 37–39, numbers 26, 34, 202, 210–215, 223,
47–50, 57–59, 80–83, 101–110, 233, 254; see also data
116–122, 131–145, 163–170,
177–188, 193–202, 207–217, objectivity 17–21, 103, 252
226–233, 238–242, 246–248, observation 26, 28, 127, 212, 281
253–257, 263–268, 281–283; observers, reporters as 246
audiences 18–19, 37, 39, 41, offensive language 82
135–137, 140, 168, 172, 179, One Nation, Two Realities: Dueling
182, 267, 279, 281; biases 242; Facts in American Democracy 255
consumers 39, 83, 135, 138, 144, online audience 269
167, 226, 277; digital 5, 15, 33–34, online comments 169, 267, 278
179, 223, 243; entrepreneurs 268; online discussion groups 278
encountering 47–69; events 1, 6, online feedback 39
11, 35, 48, 80, 93, 107, 138–139, online harassment: chilling effect
155, 179; frame guides 136; 250–252
frames 136, 138; framing 137, 179; online information 237
judgment 198, 246; media 25, 34, online journalists 40
37, 80, 103, 108–109, 133, 136, online misinformation 252, 256
138, 140, 167, 246–248, 255; value Online News Association 17
of 187, 242, 248–250 open mind 4–5, 137, 261, 266, 280,
news coverage 12, 14, 85, 90, 93, 282
107, 109, 131, 138–139, 141, open-mindedness 284
163–164, 166, 169, 181–182, opinion blogs 31
194–195; journalists 141 opposite, considering 270–271
news organizations 34, 39–40, 85, organizational biases 34–35
91, 101, 135, 138, 163, 169, 207, orientation 4, 6–8, 16, 87, 99, 144,
212; coverage area 179; slant 152, 183–184, 224–225, 278,
coverage 169 280–281
295
INDEX
otherness words 177, 181 potential violence 138

outgroups 75, 87, 97, 114–116, 121, poverty 99, 101, 120, 138, 158, 217,
181, 183, 194–195, 229 222, 227
overweight 76, 121, 123 power 14, 109, 112–113, 134–135,
137, 141, 198, 201, 227, 240, 278,
Pacific Islander 116 280, 282; of words/tone 177–202
pack journalism 143, 268 Poynter Institute 11, 199
Pariser, Eli 155 practitioner, reflective 35–36, 280
Parsons, Christi 142, 170, 246 precision 197–198; practicing
patience 119–120 197–201
patterns: of bias 278; cultural 117, preconceptions 4–5, 12, 29, 60, 74,
281 130, 152, 263
Pearce, Jerry 128 predictability of stereotypes 75
perceptions 5–6, 28, 31, 55, 63, prejudices 5, 28–29, 31, 84, 89, 123,
65, 74, 105–107, 115, 121–122, 195, 266–267, 276–277
144–145; accuracy of 116; bias 6; press 15–17, 56, 58–59, 83–84, 90,
changing 97–99 177–178, 185–186, 189, 192,
perseverance effect 47, 57–58, 62 238–239, 242, 246–248
personal anecdotes 135, 144 press conference 56, 238–239
personal conscience 144 press coverage 58
personality 55, 87, 115, 123, 194, pressures 28, 34, 120, 169, 271;
196, 202, 216, 221, 224–225, 273; deadline 151–152; groups 185;
characteristics 224 reporters 74
person schema 55–56 prevalent biases 162
perspectives 7–8, 15–18, 30, 64, privilege 141; white 182
106–107, 113–114, 122, 159, 161, Project for Excellence in Journalism
200–201, 210, 212, 256, 272–273, 15, 105
277–278 project implicit 76–77
perspective-taking 108, 272–273 The Psychology of Stereotyping 82
pervasiveness of stereotypes 75 Public Opinion 74
Pew Research Center 85 Puente, Teresa 86
Phillips, Whitney 245
photographic excellence 232 queer 7, 180–181
photographs 53, 122, 189, 227, 262 questionnaires 167
photography 230 question sources 158
photojournalism 227 questions probe 140
photojournalists 190, 212, 223, 226 question wording 113–114
plagiarism 168 quoted comments 82
planned behavior 40
point of view 7, 30, 62, 90, 114, 145, race 4, 6–9, 41, 43, 57, 59, 107, 110,
170, 179, 250, 256, 281 178, 181, 183, 193, 195–196, 202,
policy story 163 216; discrimination 103, 164;
political agendas 83, 85, 185 equity 102; prejudice 195–196;
politicized words 177, 181, 184–187 stereotypes 80; see also ethnicity
popular culture 16, 122 racism 1, 87, 102, 116, 178, 180,
positive stereotypes 76, 195 191–193, 222, 227, 239, 243
296
INDEX
Radio Television Digital News Richards, Alex 145

Association 243 Robert C. Maynard Institute 6, 107
Raleigh News & Observer 58 Robinson, James G. 39
Rashomon effect 63, 65 Rodarte, Ana 261, 282
readers 39, 41–42, 103, 105, 108, role schemas 55–57, 62, 75;
145, 156, 161, 166–167, 171, 244, influence emotions 75
262–264, 268; see also audiences Rolling Stone 58
reflective approach 36 Rosenstiel, Tom 31
reflective practice 1, 25, 36–37, Ross, Janell 251
43, 63, 141, 261, 265, 273–274,
283; in journalism 1–22, 25; safeguards 163
model 43 Saffron Sky 64
reflective practitioner 35–36, 280 Safire, William 193
The Reflective Practitioner 36 Salon.com 189
relevant description 200 Salyer, Sharon 9
religion 4, 7, 57, 75, 99, 105, 107, Samuels, Christina 196
111, 128, 152, 198; affiliation 183, Sanburn, Josh 26
278; beliefs 16, 280; bias 171; Saturday Review 92
descriptions 198; groups 245; Schaffer, Jan 268
identity 183; practice 129 schema-consistent information 54
religious hate 245 schema-driven thinking 63
reporters 19–20, 37–39, 51, 53–54, schemas 47, 51–59, 61–62, 64, 66,
62–63, 78–79, 82–84, 97–99, 75, 115, 155; countering biasing
108–109, 112–113, 117–119, 134, power of 61; defining 51–52;
143, 153–158, 163–167, 192, event 56; functions of 52–53;
212–216, 221–223, 225–226, guide 52; impact 64; influence 53;
273–276; angle 79; badge perseverance effect 57–59; person
86; concept 83; conduct 167; 55–56; role 56–57; self-fulfilling
observations 19; questions 225; prophecy 60–61; as standard
schemas 52–53; sorting 162; scripts 59–60; work 47
source 65; see also journalists Schneider, David 82
reporting: across cultures 116–117; Schön, Donald 36, 279
bias 267; choices 20; for complete school 6, 10, 25, 54, 123, 142;
explanations 222–226; control shootings 207–208
274; decisions 168; empathetic self-awareness 88, 274, 280
techniques in 90; experience 13, self-censorship 251
42, 65, 127; news events 35; scene self-check, language 177, 200
29; situation 84; skills 10, 283 self-critical thought 168
reportorial opinions 103 self-fulfilling prophecy 47, 60–61,
representative heuristic 163–164 65, 84
Republicans 248–250 self-identification 111
reputation 75, 242, 267 self-regulation 226, 274
responsible journalists 105 sex abuse 72, 265
Reuters 105, 194, 198, 257 sex crimes 14, 252
Reuters’ Handbook of Journalism 198 sexism 81, 87, 92, 193–194
Rich, Steven 207 sexual assault 133, 137, 216
297
INDEX
sexual orientation 6, 8, 16, 99, 113, motivations 63, 90; stereotype

152, 183–184, 200, 278, 280 82–89; stereotype journalists 83;
Shadid, Anthony 134 thinking 214
shortcuts 29, 53, 163; mental 53, 78, Spartanburg Herald-Journal 213
163; mental, see also schemas speaker 177, 180–181, 242
Shreffler, Annie 119 specialization 35–36
Simon, Herbert A. 136 specialized language 196
situational factors 220 special-needs kids 196
situational forces 222 specificity 179, 197, 202
situational pressures 266 sports announcers 195
60 Minutes 58 Sports Illustrated 58
skills, technical 279 SportsShooter.com 189
social categories 6, 130 standpoint 16, 30, 97, 111–113, 117,
social change 140 280–281
social cognition 55, 114, 132 statistics 80, 208, 210–211, 215,
social connections 89 272, 281
social context 267 status quo 43, 78, 132–133,
social dominance 87 140–141, 144–145, 281
social dominance orientation stereotypes 12, 15–16, 29, 31, 55,
scale 87 59, 71, 73–83, 87–90, 92–93,
social fissures 7 217–218, 273, 276–277; expressions
social groups 109–110 92; influence 79; journalistic
social media 32–34, 39, 47–51, 54, consequences of 78–79; journalists
151, 154, 226, 228, 231, 244, 247, and sources 80–81; managing
250, 253–254; algorithms 172; 87; nature of 73–74; by omission
companies 154; connections 89; 194; and prejudice 266; replacing
feedback and story metrics 42; 88; representations 89; simplify
firestorm 50, 188; posts 135, 153, perception 74; story without 71–96;
207, 274, 276 thinking 88; unconscious 76–77;
social network 89, 224 visual images 78; working against
social norms 266 labels 71–73
Society of Professional stigmatization 191
Journalists 14, 166 stigmatizing language 190–191
socioeconomic biases 80 stimulus-driven thinking 63, 66, 280
Sontag, Susan 92 story 1–4, 9–11, 17–19, 32–34,
sources 33–37, 41–43, 61–64, 39–42, 50–51, 58–60, 71–73,
71–73, 80–84, 86, 90–91, 89–92, 97–99, 119–121, 127–129,
111, 113–114, 116–117, 154, 135–139, 152–154, 156–164,
156–158, 162–168, 179–182, 208–216, 224–231, 261–265,
196–198, 213–216, 222–224, 271–278, 280–283; angle 152,
249–250, 267–268, 278–281; 154, 157–159, 164–165, 167,
actions 224; behavior 60, 221, 170, 268, 271; assignments 35;
224; challenging 198; culture categorization 171; confirmation
11; disposition 221; emotions bias and 155–161; context 112;
90; ethnicity 111; everyday life coverage 224–225, 278; deadline
111; goals 64; interpretations 11; 159; finishing 158; frames 137;
298
INDEX
hypothesis 158, 281; ideas 29, 47; Tompkins, Al 11

images as 227–231; metrics 40, tone: setting 196
42; online 48; planning meetings toolbox 226, 278; mental 278–282
35; process 43, 155, 159, 171, 212, training 19, 82, 134, 141, 145, 170,
263, 283; references 110; retelling 200, 226, 232–233, 269, 272;
277; reporting 157–158; subject debiasing and 272
223 transgender 7, 99, 180, 183–184
storylines 59, 268 Trump, Donald J. 19–20, 107–109,
storytelling 254, 275 177, 188, 193, 195, 238, 246–249
straightforward language 282 truth/truthfulness 5, 11, 17, 60, 63,
subjective judgments 163 98, 102, 104–105, 162, 166–167,
Summer Olympics 270 172, 190
The Sunday Times 232 Twitter 19, 33, 40, 42, 48, 50, 191,
Sun-Sentinel 6 229, 246, 256
surveys 255 Two-Minute Brainstorm 271
Szalavitz, Maia 157 The Tyranny of Words 197
Taliban 13 uncomfortable facts 128

targets, focus 244–245 unconscious negative feelings 77
Taylor, Shelley E. 52, 55, 64 unconscious stereotyping 190
technical skills 279 underlying entrepreneurism 117
technological debiasing 277–278 UnderstandingPrejudice.org 92
technological tools 251 understanding sources 97
teen pregnancies, data on 213–214 undocumented immigrants 88, 185
terminology 37, 179, 183, 186, 191 unemployment 6, 158, 222
terror attack 245 unethical practices 167
terrorism 186 unplanned teen pregnancy 214
terrorist 185–186, 245 USA Today 58
thinking 4–5, 12–13, 28–30, 61–63, U.S. News & World Report 81, 227
64, 66, 78, 87–88, 100–101, 121,
142–143, 165, 224, 265–267, values 6, 8, 12, 14, 97, 100, 108, 128,
271–272, 280–281; of data 209; 131, 247, 250, 253, 255; of news
power 279; processes 4, 29, 74, media 248; patience 119
274; style 207, 224 Vanity Fair 26
thinking-based judgments 75 visual images 78
Thomson Reuters see Reuters visual journalism 226
time 18, 33–35, 66, 72, 78–79, vivid/vividness 73, 134–135, 142,
81–83, 85–88, 90–92, 108–109, 144, 210–211, 213
117–120, 158–159, 194–195, 208, vulgar language 177–178
217, 223–224, 229–231, 249,
264–265, 273–275, 280–283; Warner, Kurt 217–219
caring 92; frame 83; listening 91; The Washington Post 107, 134, 196,
pressures 29, 159, 161; thinking 72 207–208, 251
timeglider 122 white 3, 7, 48–49, 58–60, 82–83, 98,
timeline 122, 245 107–108, 115, 116, 120, 133, 155,
tolerance 138 156, 158, 182, 189–190, 195–196,
299
INDEX
237–239; white supremacy 18, 41, 193–198, 200–202, 209–210,

186, 237, 238, 239, 242, 244 228, 240–242, 282–283; change
Wilson, Cintra 201 180; code 177, 181, 190–195, 244;
Wiltz, Teresa 13 convey associations 195; illegals
Winter Olympic Games 232 185; journalists 194; judgment
WNYC 119 177, 181, 187–190; meanings
women 13–14, 58, 72, 77, 81, 92, of 181–195; otherness 177,
101, 117, 120–121, 130, 184, 181–184; politicized 177, 181,
194, 217, 222, 250–251; athletics 184–187; queer 181; stereotype
81; of color 250; journalists 251; 73; terrorist 186
sports 81 work habits 35
Woods, Keith 180, 200 working class 7, 109
Woodyard, Eric 97–99, 101 working journalists 36–37, 269
word choice 30, 58, 117, 177, 179, works, ethic 76
183, 188–190, 193, 196, 268, 277; writing 11, 13, 18, 20, 59, 60, 61,
support 197 78–79, 107–108, 183–184, 187,
wording, bias in question 113–114 194, 196–198, 200–202, 215, 218
words 26, 29–30, 54, 56, 72–73,
138–139, 177, 179–181, 183–190, Zimmerman, Julie Irwin 47–51
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Overcoming Bias

In this practical and engaging new edition, experienced reporter and

Sue Ellen Christian is a Professor of Communication at Western

Sue Ellen Christian

how to step outside herself to examine ways in which the preconcep-

In addition to scholarly research, this book draws on advice from

THE BOOK’S FORMAT AND FEATURES

are an opportunity to look inside the reporter’s notebook, so to speak,

• Learning Objectives preview the chapter’s content for

• Challenge yourself to truly tell the underlying narrative of

• Be prepared to be uncomfortable as you seek out the truth

Throughout, the second edition of Overcoming Bias grapples with

• To understand the elements and value of effective multicultural reporting.

CONFRONTING OUR BLIND SPOTS

The man was white. I am white. Everyone else in that restaurant in

Fact-checking the underlying narrative. Who we are as journalists

“I think a lot about the idea of fact checking: Fact checking is

JOURNALISM WITH AN OPEN MIND

give a fair account of a person or situation requires that journalists

What preconceptions do you bring to different situations?

it is that one-size-fits-all doesn’t fit at all with 21st-century stories,

EXHIBIT 1.1 THE FAULT LINES

1. RACE/ETHNICITY Black, Asian, Hispanic/Latino, Native American,

2. GENDER/SEXUAL Male, female, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender,

3. GENERATION Youth (0–19), 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s+

• Baby boomer (born 1946–1964)

4. CLASS Rich, upper middle class/wealthy, middle class,

5. Geography Urban, suburban, rural; plus regional.

Source: The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

Other cultural divisions, such as religion or political ideology,

These boundaries also apply to both journalists’ and sources’

EXHIBIT 1.2 THE FAULT LINES – YOUR AND YOUR

1. RACE/ETHNICITY Your race or your ethnicity influences your view

2. GENDER/SEXUAL Your gender, gender identity and/or sexual

3. GENERATION When you grew up affects your view of events.

4. CLASS Financial circumstances influence perspectives.

5. GEOGRAPHY Where you’re from can shape how you see

Source: The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education.

REPORTING WITH AN AWARENESS OF CULTURE

commonality is its effect on those in the group, because a culture

Among Us.” Salyer brought her years as a journalist, and

I have 17 years of experience as a health reporter, part of my

A family member has told me of the sink-or-swim reality of

As for Dominguez, during the time they were reporting

The story affected me because it was my story. Our main

My middle school was surrounded by different gangs. I never

Context is essential to accurate journalism. Context describes the

EFFECTIVE MULTICULTURAL REPORTING

EXHIBIT 1.3 ELEMENTS OF EFFECTIVE

AWARENESS Examine your own cultural influences. Consider closely

ATTITUDE Be open, aware and curious about others; tolerate ambi-

SKILLS Be able to self-analyze and identify your own culture and

EFFECTIVE MULTICULTURAL REPORTING

MULTICULTURAL REPORTING IN ACTION

Teresa Wiltz, a veteran reporter who is currently politics edi-

pause & consider

THE ETHICS OF INCLUSION

• Boldly tell the story of the diversity and magnitude of human

The National Press Photographers Association has a code of ethics

• The facts should get in the way of a good story. Journalism

In addition, the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) reminds

Journalism is a form of cartography: it creates a map for citizens to

pause & consider