brinconvenient:

rikla-kliakil:

wetwareproblem:

geekandmisandry:

jamiemortara:

reaaaaall. so much respect bb.

Wow, this is long but well worth the read.

This desperately needs transcription, and I’m terrible for it. It’s important; I want to see it hit as wide an audience as possible. Is anyone up to the task?

[[November 2013: I am hired by the press of atlantic city as a
copy editor and told by the copy desk chief that the desk has a “hands-off”
culture. “we pretty much just fix spelling and grammar errors and design the
pages.” I don’t want to totake the job but I want to move away and to do that I
need money.

December 2013: I change the label over a photo of people
placing poinsettias onto church pews from ‘preparing for the coming of the
lord’ to ‘preparing for Christmas services’ and my coworker ignores my edit and
says she doesn’t see the difference.

Spring 2014: disciplined for changing a headline about kara
walker’s sphinx from ‘purely sweet homage to black labor.’ Disciplined for
calling out the fact the press ran ‘real mother’ in a headline about adoptive
kids meeting up with their birth mothers.

August 2014: lay out a nation and world page day after
ferguson protests; take a lot of time making sure the page includes historical
and social context; (middle-class, white, suburban) copy desk chief pulls article
on police militarization and writes on the proof “that dead horse has already
been beaten,” then goes on to redo the entire page. Throughout that month I
continually reword “riot” as “protest” or “demonstration” and change “was shot
by police” to “police officers shot x” substituting the name of the officer
whenever I had it.

Spring 2015: An article comes to the copy desk about a man
named Philip White who died in police custody in vineland. The story is vague,
its only source is the police department’s press release (white, ~30, died in
police custody after being arrested for disorderly conduct. No further
information is available.) The next few paragraphs were Philip White’s arrest
record (he was arrested last year for stealing baby formula from walmart) that
was the entire thing. Outraged, I google him to at least get a quote from his
friends or family or more information about him for the photo caption. The
google search for his name are 12 pages long. It turns out the vineland cops
set their dogs on Philip White and they ripped out his throat in front of
witnesses, and there’s cell phone footage. He was unarmed, in his early 30s, a
dad. Hot fury engulfs me. I call every editor I need to and tell them

we’re changing this
story. I’m rewriting the headline and the lede and the first five paragraphs
and I’m taking his arrest record out and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.
I’m sorry, I will actually walk out right now over this if I have to. All the
editors say ok, yes, and the next day I hear that the reported complained I
shouldn’t have messed with his story, that he had reasons for not talking to
witnesses. Yeah?

Have you ever read an article on an arrest and thought, this
is actually just a rewritten press release from a police department? How about
an article on a “clash between protestors and police” (note that language) that
relies only on police department sources, not acknowledging that the officers
are active agents in the clash? Have you ever thought, the only reason police
officers release people’s criminal records after they kill them is to try to
demonize and blame the victim, to absolve themselves of responsibility, to say,
he was dangerous, he had it coming? Have you thought about how disproportionate
the policing of black and white communities is? How “disorderly conduct” is a
charge that could mean anything (same with “resisting arrest” and a literal
suitcase of other charges)? Have you ever thought about how fucked up
depictions of women and minority groups in the mainstream media are, how all of
this serves to uphold and maintain a toxic and destructive white supremacist
heteronormative patriarchal status quo? How trauma is collectivized? How last
night my boss told me to “bump up the drama” on a label over a photo of two
people who were shot and killed at work yesterday? “try ‘slain on camera’
instead of ‘virginia shooting’” how, also last night, we had to get “his side
of the story”  after a boxer punched his
child’s mother six times in the face, getting her airlifted to the hospital? And
then we quoted him- saying “it’s not that serious”- before her? Oh, but we
always have to “consider both sides”! Have you thought about the precedent that
sets?

I’ve thought about this – all of this – every day for two
years

I can’t decide if I’ll remember copy editing at a newspaper
as the worst thing I’ve ever done to myself or the best. I will never stop
believing that these changes need to be made. Copy editing is political. It’s
the most political thing there is, as a copy editor, as a journalist, every day
you make an active decision to either uphold or subvert the status quo. Don’t
tell me it’s not a decision. Don’t tell me you’re being led around by the
newspaper voice and your editors and you just have to quotes that press release,
don’t you? The police are the official source, you have to listen to them,
yeah?

You don’t. ask yourself: why? Why? Why? You aren’t a
mouthpiece for power you’re a fucking human animal and you need to care about
what other people are going through. Broad brush depictions of groups of people
as they come through the newspaper affect people’s perceptions and as a result
they fuck with people’s daily lives and well-being. Even if it is in the most
miniscule way, as a copy editor you have the power to change this. Don’t act
like it’s just spelling and grammar.

Becky and I got into an argument once about I don’t even
remember what but in it she said, “it’s not the words that matter, it’s the
attitude behind the words. Changing that word doesn’t matter.” She’s right and
wrong. It is the attitude behind words that matters – that is exactly why we
change the words.

I’m leaving my job September 4 to move to los angeles. I don’t
know if I’ll ever work at a newspaper again but I am proud of myself for
showing up every day. I’m proud of myself for the changes I ws able to make. I will
never stop believing this is important.

At the journalism program at my college we were taught ‘objective’
we were taught ‘stay out of it.’ If you are reading this and you haven’t figure
it out, I want you to know: there is no ‘objective’. There’s only the shit
history has given you. You’re either upholding the status quo or disrupting it,
but the status quo is not and has never been neutral.]]

“At the journalism program at my college we were taught ‘objective’ we were taught ‘stay out of it.’ If you are reading this and you haven’t figure it out, I want you to know: there is no ‘objective’. There’s only the shit history has given you. You’re either upholding the status quo or disrupting it, but the status quo is not and has never been neutral.”

My journalism school also taught objectivity and neutrality and get both sides… as if both sides are always equivalent.

They aren’t.
One side almost always has power, and institutional power at that, over the other side, and ignoring that in the effort to be objective is not neutral. It’s support of that power.