MED*1 COMMENTARY
All Things
Politicized
CHRISTINE ROSEX
~~ATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO recently an-
nounced that it had revised its ethics policy
to allow its reporters to "participate in ac-
tivities that advocate for 'the freedom and dignity of
human beings' on both social media and in real life."
The policy also lifted a previous prohibition on NPR
employees participating in "marches, rallies, and
public events."
Now NPR employees are free to "express support
for democratic, civic values that are core to NPR's
work, such as, but not limited to: the freedom and dig-
nity of human beings, the rights of a free and indepen-
dent press, the right to thrive in society without facing
discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender,
sexual identity, disability, or religion."
At a time when public trust in mainstream-media
institutions is at all all-time low, it's perhaps not the
worst thing for a news outlet to call for greater trans-
parency among its journalists. The policy might sue-
ceed if NPR journalists are honest in their disclosures
of their activism. And who could be against promoting
the "freedom and dignity of human beings"?
But the policy itself will never face a true test of its
ethical durability. NPR journalists and their editors
are already a self-selected bunch. No one honestly
believes public-radio bosses will be parsing the ethical
CHRISTINE ROSEN is COMMENTARY'S senior writer.
Commentary
nuances of whether a pro-life NPR reporter should be
allowed to picket outside a Planned Parenthood abor-
tion facility, because that would never happen. Rather,
they are likely to rubber-stamp staffers' requests to
attend a Black Lives Matter rally or whatever is the
left-liberal protest cause dujour.
More challenging will be enforcing the social-
media component of the new policy. Because what
forced the hand of NPR to loosen its restrictions on
journalists advocating for causes wasn't a new sense
of civic duty or ethical responsibility. It was pressure
from a new generation of reporters who can't imagine
a world where they merely hold personal beliefs. They
must be allowed-nay, encouraged!-to promote and
perform them on social media.
As NPR itself noted in its description of the com-
mittee convened to draft the new ethics rules, "in the
wake of George Floyd's murder, a younger generation
of journalists pushed NPR to modify its traditional
prohibitions." NPR's "chief diversity officer;' Keith
Woods, was named the co-chair of the committee that
wrote the new policy. An NPR reporter quotes Woods
as sayingthat at one end ofthe committee were"people
who would go so far as to use the word 'objectivity;"
while at the other end of the spectrum were the "burn-
it-all-down kinds of folks." It tells you a great deal about
mainstream journalism today that even invoking the
word"objectivity" was viewed as possibly going too far.
11
 This has become even more pronounced in the
era of woke politics and the required public postur-
ing such politics demand. It is no longer sufficient to
keep your personal opinions private or try to remain
neutral; everyone must choose a side (because silence
is violence). As a result, everything is now an act of
resistance-from the kinds of books you buy (if you
haven't read Antiracist Baby, by Ibram X. Kendi, then
you're probably a racist and so is your child), to the
politicians you choose to retweet on 'IWitter. Every
choice signals an allegiance, and that signalis the only
noise that matters.
The politics of personal expression enabled by so-
cial media merges well with journalism's embrace of
this woke revolution. As NPR notes, "Black, Hispanic,
Asian, and Native American journalists have argued
that they have been disproportionately confined by-
even disciplined over-policies that limit personal
expression." Our nation's post-George Floyd "racial
reckoning" is now frequently used by journalists to
justify"mytruth"(as opposed to impartiality) as an ac-
tive and improved posture for reporters, particularly
reporters keen to view events through the lens of iden-
tity politics. And they promote "their truth" as akin
to universal values about human dignity. As former
Washington Post reporter (now at CBS) Wesley Lowery
tweeted about the new NPR policy, "it says something
that a news organization would need to *update* their
policies to allow employees to express'support' for'the
freedom and dignity of human beings, the rights of a
free and independent press.'"
This new contempt for objectivity, professional
detachment, and impartiality doesn't signal a new
attention to ethics in journalism. It heralds the new
era of"post-journalism," as Andrey Mir has described
it. A younger generation of journalists views tradi-
tional journalistic values as antediluvian, as well as a
hindrance to the expression of their own ideological
beliefs. The aging producers and editors and journal-
ists who went into journalism assuming these were
important values have either left the profession (will-
ingly or by force) or feel obliged to offer caveats to even
the mildest defense of impartiality.
The results of this post-journalistic approach have
been decidedly mixed. We have been given some trans-
parency about the partisan bias of some reporters
(Yamiche Alcindor, call your office). But the already
unhealthy solipsism of the profession has increased
exponentially. Reporters now cover the professional
movements of other reporters (or their woke missteps)
like TigerBeat magazine used to cover pop stars. How
is the public served by multiple, detailed reports by
the New York Times about the Machiavellian career
12
maneuverings involved in reporter Nikole Hannah-
Jones's pursuit of tenure at a J-school?
In some sense we should care, because the logical
products of this new form of journalism are question-
able ideas bearing the imprimatur of professional
institutions. For example, in its journalism predic-
tions for 2021, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism
at Harvard University devoted space to an argument
for "reparative journalism." As outlined by journal-
ism professor Meredith Clark-who likened today's
newsrooms to Jim Crow and often puts the word ob-
jectivity in scare quotes-reparative journalism does
"the work of racial justice, and by extension-without
apology-social justice." She wants to see the "core
value" of initiatives like the Times' controversial 1619
Project "normalized," which is odd considering how
much money the Times has made in 1619 merchandis-
ing, and she claims she is opposed to "racial capitalism
that values and reifies white dominance."
In fact, like many woke initiatives, reparative jour-
nalism is about power and who gets the plum jobs.
As Clark argues, "reparative journalism requires the
redistribution of power-a phrase that often causes
white folks-who, not coincidentally, make up more
than 70 percent of the US. news industry's work-
force-to blanch when it's uttered in the service of
racial justice and liberation."
No wonder values such as impartiality and neutral-
ity appear quaint. As Martin Gurri has argued: "Post-
journalism, in truth, is a business model concealed be-
hind an ideological stance. It sells a creed, an agenda,
to like-minded believers. It identifies the existential
fears of a specific audience, then manufactures what
that audience will buy."
For now, NPR's new ethics policy will likely still
prevent a reporter who marches with BLM to report
on it as if his or her views are objective. But it marks a
further slide into journalism as "my truth" and away
from the ideal of objective reporting.
And it contributes to a dangerous hubris. Today's
elite journalists often speak of themselves and their
work as if describing the vaunted duties of high
clerics or angels, forgetting their profession's baser
origins; journalists were for centuries viewed as the
guttersnipes of the literary world, often rightly so. In
Lost 1*usions, Balzac's main character goes to Paris to
become a poet. But he ends up a hack journalist, and
the moral compromises he makes in service to his am-
bition do not lead to a happy ending. Were Balzac alive
today, he would find that those hack journalists have
now become a profession as fickle, vain, and dishonest
as the French beau monde he so vividly skewered in
his work.»
September 2021
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