Katiera Sordjan | The 'dying' profession

The Melting Pot | Journalism has its pitfalls, but we must learn to take advantage of its platforms to improve societal discussion

By Katiera Sordjan 03/30/15 10:22pm

Ask many people, and they will tell you that journalism has an identity crisis.

Whether it’s the increasing number of comments on The Daily Pennsylvanian website lamenting the loss of journalistic integrity, or the fall of once highly trusted national personalities like Brian Williams, it is clear that we are suffering from a persistent problem. Put simply, the American public doesn’t trust, or understand, what journalists do.

It’s easy for even those of us who aspire to be a part of the profession to harbor a sort of disdain for the current media climate. Much of it is due to the same old frameworks that tirelessly haunt our public dialogues.

In the aftermath of airline tragedies like Malaysian Airlines Flights 17 and 370, information about the Germanwings Flight 9525 crash came out very quickly. Once it had been discovered that an individual co-pilot was responsible for the “deliberate” crash, the same trite questions of mental health came into play: How do we stop the mentally ill from harming others? Rather, the questions we should be asking, are if our view — and coverage — of mental illness is so stigmatized that it would lead someone to hide their condition from their employers.

Our racial debates are also no exception to this problematic framing. At first, it was almost disturbing to see the change in journalistic tone post-Ferguson. Everything suddenly became a black-versus-white issue, with many left caught in the middle. I was angered at what seemed like countless clickbait articles, hoping to simply get audience attention by latching on to the surging racial unrest in the country. “Black man found hanging from Mississippi tree,” “Bloody arrest of black student at UVA,” “Are white students learning hate on campus?” are snippets of some of the most recent story titles in such a vein. The issues are by no means new, and unfortunately, happen all the time. Do reporters really care about stories like these all of a sudden, or is it just about readership numbers?

Here is where suspicion of the journalist comes in. Some argue that we shouldn’t even be covering these stories in the first place. With race for example, many white Americans feel that racism towards them is more of a problem than racism towards blacks, according to an op-ed piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. My hesitance on the other hand, was how disingenuous I perceived these conversations to really be. I didn’t trust that the polished and primped reporters on channels like CNN really cared that men who looked like my brother or cousin were being mistreated in their own hometowns and schools.

We should be critical of media reporting rather than simply be passive consumers. We must also move past idle criticism of these conversations. Instead of dismissing them entirely we need to take advantage of their place at the forefront of discussion. Now that they are in the open, it is up to us as citizens and consumers to reform this dialogue.

We need to be constantly reminded of the pervasiveness of mental health stigma in our culture. We need to be aware that racism in America is far from a thing of the past, relegated to historical legacies of slavery and Jim Crow. Our social media platforms and increasing connectedness have not destroyed journalism as we know it, but have allowed us to be part of a two-way street when it comes to circulating, and correcting, information. And as any journalist knows, sources are everything.

At Penn, we are no strangers to being amidst a vocal student body. Our concerns about mental health, for example, are not just limited to our campus media environment, but have expanded to local and even national dialogues. By and large, the news depends on a body of active and engaged citizens. It is easy to tune out the frenzy of noise around us. But so long as we remain silent about the true issues that affect us, we cannot hope to change the course of the discussion. The upcoming generation of journalists will have the challenge of re-earning the trust of the people. But all of us have the responsibility to be critically invested in reshaping a public sphere that reflects our true values and concerns.

KATIERA SORDJAN is a College junior from New York studying communication. Her email address is skati@sas.upenn.edu. “The Melting Pot” appears every other Tuesday.

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