The idea that you must be a part of a demographic to write about it is contrary to the very nature of reporting: The job of the reporter is to listen to and relay other people’s stories, but it’s also to look for evidence, to dig into claims, to get at the truth. If you want all your stories to come directly from the source’s mouth, enjoy getting all of your news from social media. Besides, if people only wrote about populations they fit in, that would mean that I’m only allowed to write about 35-year-old lesbians from North Carolina and Jesse is only allowed to write about Boston Jews who love the Celtics and, sorry trans writers, but no more cis stories for you. Hope you don’t want to cover politics. According to this logic, the White House press corps would have to be made up of 70-year-old men with giant egos and tiny brains. Anyone writing about immigrant children separated from their families in Texas would have to be an immigrant child separated from their family in Texas. If that’s what people want, okay, but good luck effecting any sort of political change in a media ecosystem like that. You can’t argue for visibility and then claim that no one is allowed to write your stories but you.
Katie Herzog, “Twitter, Trans Kids, Call-Out Culture, and a $10,000 Blunt”, The Stranger, 2018-06-19.
July 14, 2018
QotD: Ridiculous criteria for reporters
Filed under: Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: Absurd, Magazines, Newspapers, PoliticalCorrectness, SocialJustice, SocialMedia, Writing — Nicholas @ 01:00
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