By Signal Editorial Board
The White House announced last month that it plans to hand-pick which journalists are allowed entrance to its press conferences for coverage, with the selections being based on preferences for the media outlets they represent.
This comes following many other turns toward questioning the established media outlets we have, even at the expense of smaller yet dedicated journalistic institutions — like our own newspaper.
In times like these, we find it important to highlight what journalism means to us, and what we feel our role is as reporters in this regard.
The initial accusation that often surrounds our profession is that of journalistic integrity. While there is admittedly a push toward more opinionated-style takes in some forms of media, as opposed to more researched offerings, we maintain that such a practice is largely antithetical to what we do as journalists.
We put so much effort into stripping ourselves of our biases for the sake of being neutral vessels of the truth. It would be so much easier for us to be as reactionary and resentful as the White House seems to think we are.
This insinuation, that our stories are crafted and designed to make one feel a certain way, is simply not reality. Anytime a writer’s opinion is being purposely communicated, it is clearly communicated as such — either being labeled an opinion or editorial article.
By the same token, neutrality is not apathy. While it may be interpreted as such, a lack of a biting tone in articles about heavy hitting subjects is not born out of lack of care or empathy — but rather our continued commitment to being messengers for information, regardless of our personal feelings on events.
The fact such content is interpreted in that way, where any story void of strong emotion is simply deemed as hollow, is a concerning example of how journalism has been misrepresented on a wide-scale, recently furthered due to the polarized nature of our current political climate.
Our job is not to provide hot takes, or even searing indictments. Even our most pointed stories are only an optical illusion based on your — the reader — preconceived notions while reading.
Journalism is about relaying and reporting information. Whatever narrative drawn or sentiment inspired by that information is meant to be something left to the reader. All we aim to do is uncover and platform information for outside judgments to be informed from.
While the larger forces within our culture continue to war, The Signal will continue to stand firm in striving toward our mission of nurturing an informed public, as well as upholding our code of ethics as we have done in the past.
In this era, support for journalism — especially local and student journalism — could not be more important. In doing so, you help keep yourself informed about the topics and issues that are most important to you and your daily life.
