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A Professor In The Newsroom

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Spano

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I write a weekly op-ed column for my campus newspaper. Earlier this week, I was informed of a mandatory staff meeting in which we would learn from an “expert” professor about how to "increase diversity" at the paper. Along with the announcement came some suggested prep reading, including essays blasting opponents of affirmative action as dishonest and a piece by a white female professor lamenting her "white privilege." Thus, I had good reason to suspect going into it that it would be at best mindless platitudes about respecting others and learning from other cultures etc. I decided to go anyway, since I had a morbid curiosity about what these "diversity seminars" are really like.

What I experienced was much more troubling than the warm-fuzzy group hug I expected. The speaker, who later informed us of her status as a "twofer" affirmative action hire because of her being both hispanic and female, came right out of the gate with the following question: "Let's go around the room and everyone tell me what they think is the most important ethical standard for a newspaper."

The first two students said "honesty". A few others said variations of "representing all viewpoints" and being "unbiased." When the student just before me was asked, she said she thought that reporting facts and being truthful was important.

"But what is the 'truth' and how does it relate to 'facts'?", asked our "expert" academic in a challenging tone. "Many facts contradict themselves, and there is no one truth - everyone sees the world in a different way." The student had no response.

Then it was my turn. Even given the response I had just heard, I went ahead with my planned answer: "I'd say the most important thing for a newspaper is to report the facts objectively." The "expert" looked dismayed that I was apparently too dense to understand what she had just explained.

“What is ‘objective?”, she asked rhetorically, smug in her knowledge that no answer could be given. Even so, I answered that “Objective means that knowledge corresponds to the facts of reality.”

“Expert”: “You’re using the term like we do with science. We’re talking about social issues here.”

Me: “I believe it applies to both.”

“Expert”: “But people all have different views and different truths.”

Me: “Reality is independent of people.”

“Expert”: “Don’t you understand how race, culture, and gender shape our reality?”

Before I could come up with a reply, she asked whether I had read some government report which apparently proved her assertion that reality is determined by consciousness. After I responded that I had not, she continued to rant for awhile, and eventually continued around the room. One girl prefaced her response with something to the effect of “Well I won’t say objective, because I don’t want to start another lecture…”

After the question/answer period, the meeting continued for over an hour, mostly consisting of the “expert” ranting about the media’s alleged sins against minorities. Some of the choice points I remember were:

- Every minority student she had spoken to at my university had been outraged about feeling “abused” and ignored by the newspaper.

- Newspapers ought to have policies which set racial quotas for people appearing in photos, regardless of the content of the story. (Some papers already do)

- International students “don’t count” when discussing minorities.

- The U.S. government committed a “war crime” when it killed between 3000 and 5000 innocent Panamanians while going after Noriega, buried them in a mass grave, and suppressed all media reports of the atrocity.

- The picture of our newly hired basketball coach on the front page represents a “positive portrayal of a successful white man” while the picture of the recently fired coach was a “negative depiction of a black man.” These and other cases proved our collective bigotry whether we knew it or not.

In the course of this, she was sufficiently arrogant and condescending in scolding us for our alleged latent racism/discrimination that several other people were offended enough to verbally dispute her assertions.

Towards the end, she was asked, “OK, what do we need to do to improve our diversity?” She answered that journalism and covering minorities requires a proper knowledge base. Without the proper knowledge, our ignorance would condemn us to continue in our latent discriminatory ways. “It’s like the old computer phrase”, she said. “Garbage in, garbage out.”

How should one go about acquiring the necessary knowledge base?

“The first thing you should do is go to your campus bookstore, and – if they even sell it – buy and read ‘A People’s History of the United States’, by Howard Zinn.”

Garbage in, garbage out, indeed.

Edited by Spano
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“What is ‘objective?”, she asked rhetorically, smug in her knowledge that no answer could be given. Even so, I answered that “Objective means that knowledge corresponds to the facts of reality.”

“Expert”: “You’re using the term like we do with science. We’re talking about social issues here.”

Me: “I believe it applies to both.”

“Expert”: “But people all have different views and different truths.”

Me: “Reality is independent of people.”

“Expert”: “Don’t you understand how race, culture, and gender shape our reality?”

Before I could come up with a reply, she asked whether I had read some government report which apparently proved her assertion that reality is determined by consciousness. After I responded that I had not, she continued to rant for awhile, and eventually continued around the room.

:lol: Brilliant! Well done! :P

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Ugh! The thought of that "expert" makes me nauseated! It sounds like she wants to use the media to "shape our reality." Great response though!

When you recalled the point of the expert that, "Newspapers ought to have policies which set racial quotas for people appearing in photos, regardless of the content of the story." This is already happening so much more than people realize. Even if it's not written down as a formal policy, many places make an in-formal conscious effort to do this. In my professional career, I have experienced this first-hand and it is absolutely horrible!!!

At one point, I was working for a publicly-funded higher-education institution, and was told to represent more minorities in my publication. Well, I used actual footage, from actual classrooms, so if it wasn't depicted in the photos I was provided, it wasn't real. But, the "experts" wanted me to find un-related stock-photography, or even stoop as low as to use my software to darken the skin color of some of the people in existing photographs, so the publication "looked" diverse, even if in reality it wasn't at all. (For some photos, they would find women or minorities and ask them to pose.) (I wonder what the "two-fer" expert would think about fabricating diversity to live up to a quota! I would think that would be a smudge degrading, especially using digital technology to magically diversify....Didn't that also become an issue when O.J.'s mugshot was darkened for Time magazine?)

I hope the other students were able to recognize the fallacy of this "experts" thinking. I now lament the bias that my college bestowed on me to overcome!

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