There are a few difficulties in analyzing the events that transpired during the RadioLab interview with the Yangs, and most of them could be (or could have been) eliminated by proper communication. 

There were two stories being presented during the podcast: the massacre of the Hmong people and the events that the led the US to manufacture chemical weaponry. The two are linked through the mysterious Yellow Rain, but the Rain’s relevance is actually negligible to the truth-value of either story. Whether or not chemical weapons were used by the Viet Cong or Laotian Communist militias (supplied by the Russians or not) is unimportant in the broader sense as it relates to the people of Laos and Cambodia, given the undeniable slaughtering of towns and villages across Southeast Asia. And whether or not chemical weapons were used by the Viet Cong or Laotian Communist militias (supplied by the Russians or not) is unimportant in the broader sense as it relates to the US developing chemical arsenal, given that the US was already synthesizing (and using) chemical weapons during the Cold War. Those are two parallel stories (both valid, both important) that were simultaneously conflated and compared during the podcast. The Yangs wanted the producers of the show to concede that one story was more important than the other, and the producers wanted the reverse. A simple conversation before the podcast would have revealed the inconsistency and probably would have changed the trajectory of the discussion.

But given that such a conversation did not occur, how could the producers have remedied the situation and still extracted the story they wanted to reach? The answer is that it would have been tricky, but not impossible. In journalism, language is so extremely important, and the way a journalist frames his or her questions can make the difference in a given story. If a linguistic psychologist or analytic philosopher or conceptual neurologist were on staff at RadioLab, they would have perhaps been better able to craft questions that would have subtly and stealthily evaded the emotional barriers that were blocking the truth. I do believe that had the producers been more deliberate and calculated (not necessarily more sensitive) in handling the Yangs, they would have been able to reveal the Yang’s position without offending or belittling them. In that sense, I think that the producers were not out of line, per se, in their journalistic pursuit when they left the Yangs bitter and in tears, but they were not tasteful, graceful, or clever enough to avoid such offense in the first place.

Though it wasn’t bad journalism, it certainly wasn’t good journalism either.

Written by Aaron Mayer

The articles assigned this week attempt to address the popular and heated discussion of sensitivity and political correctness. But there are two strains of offensive material that are too often conflated, and they deserve to be parsed separately. The first is offense born of ignorance or prejudice (and even those could be teased apart), and the second is offense born of humor. I shall use the Serena and the Taye article (and their respective criticisms) to illustrate this point in order.

SERENA WILLIAMS AND BODY IMAGE.

In this article, Ben Rothenberg addresses the balance that a female athlete must strike between fitness and physique. His intentions were noble, as he was calling attention to an issue that needs attention and more public discussion. But despite good intentions, he botched the execution by ignorantly upholding (and thus, perpetuating) social norms as if they were immutable facts. Margaret Sullivan duly pounced on him for his error and changed the trajectory of the issue toward a healthier direction: one that would incite civil discussion devoid of bias and hurtful stereotypes. However, she may have gone a step too far in decrying Rothenberg’s article as offensive and unproductive. After all, Rothenberg meant no harm in his attempt to “start a conversation,” and thus his offense was born of ignorance. When such offense is encountered (say, when a friend uses he/him pronouns to a person who prefers she/her pronouns, or when a child says, “Look, Mommy! A fat man!”), the proper and healthy mode of response is gentle correction and patience. If the offense is actually born of prejudice or hate, then firmer responses are warranted, but the patience is indispensable.

This brings us to the second strain of offense: offense born of humor.

TAYE DIGGS AND BLACK MEN WITH JOBS

In the article extolling Taye Diggs as a brave and capable black man who had the social clout to challenge stereotypes and bring charisma to his role in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” James Hannaham wrote, “If you start to salivate when you hear the phrase ‘black men with jobs,’ then Diggs is your guy.”

Here, the very deliberate attempt at humor deserves some careful consideration. Is Hannaham’s phrase offensive? Some people may be offended, others not, but again Margaret Sullivan has her two cents to add, and this time with a little more restraint and patience. Sullivan rightly addressed that Hannaham himself is a black man, and that his previous writings are rife with tongue-in-cheek humor about the difficulty in confronting stereotypes of being black. She wrote, “If Andrew Ross Sorkin had written this sentence in a DealBook column, or if it had cropped up in fashion coverage by Vanessa Friedman (highly unlikely, of course, in both cases), all hell would break loose, and rightly so.” Sullivan is essentially contending that ethnic groups can make fun of their own ethnicity, that homosexuals can make fun of gays and lesbians, that Jews can make fun of Jews, etc. And if she’s not outrightly endorsing the practice, she’s at least correctly pointing out that making fun of other ethnicities, races, religions, etc. will likely land you in more hot water than if you belonged to the group being mocked. But humor deserves more protection than that.

Copyrights can be infringed if the infringement fits certain criteria, namely educational purposes or things of that sort. So too, political correctness and sensitivity can be infringed if the infringement fits certain criteria, namely humor and artistry (though artistic offense deserves an examination in its own right). Now, just because you can make offensive jokes, doesn’t mean you ought to. Some jokes are funny even though they aren’t tasteful, but humor’s goal is laughter, not tastefulness. That said, it is the opinion of this author that the best humor is both tasteful and funny.

But don’t worry, I still laugh at Holocaust jokes.

Written by Aaron Mayer

“Covering Syria means facing a multifaceted set of problems, from bombardments to snipers to kidnappings by the government, Islamic extremists, or criminals. It is a place where journalists and Syrian activists must operate in a free-for-all conflict of staggering destruction and desperation and where no side believes in the benefit of truth-telling any longer.”

If that’s not a disincentive for becoming a journalist, I don’t know what is.

In the recent years, so many journalists have been captured, beheaded, raped, tortured, and crucified to the point where reporters are (rightly) too afraid to enter the battleground of Syria. Indeed, sending reporters from the USA or Britain or anywhere else to conflict zones has become too dangerous to continue, and the practice is frankly on its way to obsolescence anyway. The cost of training, equipping, transporting, and housing (not to mention salaries) a foreign reporter is thousands of times greater than the alternative: encouraging local Syrians to report for themselves. A photo on Facebook of one’s son pulverized with shrapnel along with a caption in one’s native language of the horror and emotional tribulations will have far greater an impact on the international community than an Englishman trying to remain unbiased.

War is a terrible scourge of our humanity, and it is the product of defective logic, xenophobia, and miscommunication. As the CPJ wrote, “In war, there is no other work.” And no other work there ought to be until that war has ceased. But old-school journalism of boots on the ground is outdated and ineffective against new-school forms of conflict (terror, guerrilla tactics, etc.). It’s time to approach the battleground with new methods and play the smart game rather than winning by sheer numbers and force. Conscript the locals and have them use the weapon they all possess: their smartphones. Let each photo be bloodier than the last so that the world may know of the blight that plagues the nation of Syria, and that their collective consciousness be altered in the direction of justice, empathy, and charity. It’s time for foreign journalists to leave Syria and for a new wave of journalists to take their place. Fortunately, they’re already there — they just need the bravery to go out and document as much as they can.

With their help, maybe we can see an end to this atrocity.

Written by Aaron Mayer

What I found most striking, yet largely unsurprising, about our guest speaker’s explanations of NY1 and the journalism industry was how politicians would call him up and try to curry his favor so that he would publicize them positively. His example of governor Cuomo asking to speak to him directly while he was working for the New York Post painted an empathetic picture: “What? The Governor wants to speak to me? Little old unimportant me? Well how could I refuse the Governor?!” Being swept up in the grandeur of it all, it seems easy to let the influence creep up on an unassuming journalist, and I can totally understand why politicians would try to win over press people on a one-to-one basis in certain outlets.

As for the Republican debate last Wednesday, I thought it was great! I (like most New Yorkers) find most of the current Republican candidates absolutely insufferable, and so watching them mud-wrestle one another is a comedic spectacle. Nevertheless, I felt that CNBC somewhat undermined the intended purpose of the debate by asking hostile questions. Whether or not debate moderators ought to be making the candidates look good or bad is a valid question, and I think both options have merit, but many of the questions were caricatured or exaggerated and the candidates have since called for debate reform. ( http://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2015/11/01/exp-gop-wants-debate-reform.cnn)

Fair and unbiased reporting may be impossible in practice, but that doesn’t mean we ought give up on trying.

Written by Aaron Mayer

What is the function of an expository journalist?

Is it to provide absolute data sets and statistics that are held to peer-reviewed standards of excellence and warrant scholarly publication?

No.

Is it to make acute and narrow assessments about specific instances and report nothing more than those observations?

No.

Is it to weave graceful and flowery prose in an attempt to enchant us with the majesty of everyday life?

Absolutely not.

The function is straightforward and direct: to hit us – and hit us hard.

Such was the case with Sarah Maslin Nir’s “Nice Nails” exposé in the New York Times during the summer of 2015.  She slapped us in the face with unkempt palms and kicked us in the groin with unbuffed feet. Every time I pass a nail salon, I think of her article and the sickening stench that wafts through the neon-lit doors.

Her article was effective, that’s for sure. She inspired Governor Cuomo to assign a special task force in the pursuit of fully investigating and remedying the salons. She sparked a massive public debate over the virtues of aesthetics vs. ethics (sisters in the philosophical realm who have a lot in common, but had a falling out and don’t speak to each other much, except on Christmas and at family weddings). And, perhaps most importantly, she altered and improved the trajectory of tens of thousands of manicurists all over the country, potentially saving them from enduring the indignities of an industry rife with exploitation, corruption, and unlawfully deplorable working conditions.

It should come as no surprise that her article engendered such critical reactions; some people will always try to block a slap in the face, and they’ll kick back when they feel threatened or targeted. Such was the case with Richard Bernstein’s reaction to Mir’s piece. Of course, Bernstein was just being an arrogant pedant in his response, and since the purpose of Mir’s article was to alert public consciousness, she is exempted in making errors of minutiae and decorum. Why quibble over $70/day or $10/day, Dick? It’s still well below minimum wage! And 10 hour shifts vs. 12 hour shifts is really just a matter of degree after the threshold of an inexcusable workday length is crossed.

Such critics don’t deserve the attention of the public eye while there is real and present evil in our manicured midst.

Written by Aaron Mayer

Upton Sinclair’s depictions of the meatpacking industry changed the world. He is singlehandedly attributed with stirring public consciousness and alerting them to the inhumane and altogether disgusting practices of the slaughterhouses. The difference between his book, “The Jungle,” and Eric Schlosser’s depiction of the modern meatpacking industry, however, lies in the celerity and severity of the rhetorical jabs and swings. The excerpt from “The Jungle” describes in quick sequence one shocking revelation after another, resulting in the reader feeling queasy and repulsed by the scene Sinclair so vividly paints in the imagination. Schlosser, by contrast, was more methodical and slow in his descriptions, walking the reader through the factory as he did, making observations as we walk. Though this may be “truer” reporting, journalistically speaking, it deprives the story of the oomph that it needs to propel widespread institutional reform. If you want to wake up your readers, you sometimes need to punch them in the guts (or, in this case, slice them open with a buzz-saw).

On a personal note, I believe that this style of reporting is absolutely crucial to the development of sustainable environmental practices and ethical lifestyle choices. I recently (six weeks ago) became a vegetarian for moral reasons, and it’s because most people are aware of the horrid conditions in which their meat is processed that it becomes morally inauthentic to NOT be a vegetarian (though some quibble about meat that is grown humanely and treated well). Sinclair and Schlosser, along with movie like Food, inc., are so important for making the public confront that inauthenticity. It is, of course, ultimately up to them to make the right decision.

Written by Aaron Mayer

Foregoing an image this week because it was bound to be grotesque.

Poor Hillary. She just can’t seem to shake this thing, can she?

Three things went wrong in the Times’ coverage of the Hillary email scandal:

1. The Times relied on an anonymous source.
2. The Times used the inaccurate and besmirching word “criminal.”
3. The Times failed to print a timely redaction.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I love the Times as much as the next guy. But seriously, NYT, get your act together! Everyone trusts the Times so much, they’ll surely come back to read the definitive report. It should takes its time and publish a reliable and well-written article when the story is certain and straightened out. There’s no need for such a big name in journalism to make such a rookie mistake. Rushing out to gather hasty facts and throwing together a story just to ride (and perpetuate) the buzz is unbecoming of the outlet, and I expected better of it.

Written by Aaron Mayer

“So if these allegations are so old, why are we just finding out about it now?”

That’s the big question as we delve into the dynamic of investigative journalism, and how it takes shape when tackling America’s biggest names about our most socially taboo topics.

Sometimes an important story can be dwarfed by larger events of global geopolitics or Beyoncé’s surprise album release, but sometimes, they simply  get lost amidst the noise and fade into obscurity. Such was the case in 2004 when the allegations first surfaced of Bill Cosby’s intentional drugging and molestation of several women he encountered over his decades in the entertainment industry. At first, it could be thought that such a national celebrity may be immune from such wrongdoing, and the allegations were mostly hot air, so nothing developed. Cosby continued his career for another 11 years. After crippling silence, the allegations rose to journalistic prominence once again after the concern over the omission of Cosby’s sexual past in a 500+ page biography was compounded by a viral video on social media of a stand up comic calling Cosby a rapist. Soon, several women who had never spoken out began to do so, emboldened by the collective societal shock of conscience.

Only after the silence was punctured did the media follow suit, but it’s supposed to be the other around. Journalists of all sorts must never let unanswered questions lie fallow, lest major stories like this one slip through the cracks.

Written by Aaron Mayer

This post was delayed due to a  drafting error in Blogs@Baruch. The author apologizes for the seeming irrelevance in relation to the neighboring articles.