A while back, at a Chinese restaurant near Syracuse University, I bumped into a couple from Wuhan. They had all the typical characteristics of middle-aged Chinese people - they were not used to Western food, ordered hot water, cooked eggs, and didn't speak much English. They wanted to take advantage of the January Chinese New Year holiday to "briefly visit" their kid studying in Syracuse University. Unexpectedly, they have to stay for more than half a year.
The couple quietly eats a localized Chinese-American mix style dish, sitting under a few blue lanterns. The scene looked a little out of place. The restaurant was supposed to hang red lanterns to add some festivity to the Chinese New Year, but then the epidemic came. The blue lanterns stayed up for half a year longer than expected.
The owner of the restaurant was a political junkie, and upon hearing that the couple were from Wuhan, he immediately asked a series of questions - "All the government officials' in Wuhan have to hand in their personal passports, have you heard about this?" "You guys know there were problems with the death figures during the Wuhan epidemic, right?" "What do you guys think of Fang Fang's diary?"
When the couple first left Wuhan, almost no one in the world had yet heard of the coronavirus. However, half a month later, Wuhan became the epic-center of the world and was completely shut down. That was a time when everyone was scared to death to contact someone from the city. After the couple came to Syracuse, the epic- center shifted to New York State, and the couple was once again, deep in the center of the epidemic. International flights were soon all canceled, and they were unable to go back.
"We don't even watch the news," the couple, who continue to be in the news vortex, replied, "Both the news in China and the United States are all nonsense."
In 2020, not only this couple, but all of us have been somehow involved in the news. Author Arundhati Roy says the pandemic is a portal. We have watched our societies disintegrate by an invisible but powerful force - no one would have expected the seemingly impregnable state apparatus to be so fragile, with the world's most advanced medical system collapsing one by one; staying at home - the order sounds almost antithetical to freedom has been gradually accepted in democratic countries; the rise of extreme right-wing populist forces and anti-intellectualism deepened divisions among citizens, and violent social movements become normalized in some regions; the epidemic solidifies mobility, and the seemingly ubiquitous chain of globalization breaks in an instant; and political quarrels from the president sounds like child's play...
The epidemic has also unmasked the problems existing in journalism. Just turn on the television and you will be shocked at how many different perspectives are presented on the same story, and how deeply conflicting they are. There is a well-known Chinese saying that "there is only one truth," but in the world of journalism, institutions that adhere to a code of truthfulness present conflicting sides of the same truth. For viewers with limited news literacy, they are doomed to miss the whole picture, and the parts that conflict with their own values become the so-called "fake news".
In just a few months, people have gone through the process of frantically following the news, then losing control of their emotions, and now, gradually calming down, but not quite watching the news anymore. Does that mean the news has lost its credibility? Is there a promising future for news? If credible news is eventually lost, can the human community afford to lose it?
For each of the journalist, they are actually facing more specific struggles. In a time when stories seem to be everywhere, the delivery processes are full of hurdles. The epidemic sets up the first barrier, policy the second, and people’s stereotypes are the third one.
The quarantine has made reporting more difficult. Due to the constraints of social distance, a large number of interviews are now done online. But it must be admitted that the picture quality of zoom interviews on the TV screen is awful. The limited b-roll is used over and over again, and the viewer can actually get visually fatigued with the same topic. Personally, I think this is a good time to do some in-depth investigative reporting. There is so much "authoritative information", and every station has its own "experts", from Fauci to Phil, and the quality varies. Also, the so-called "authoritative opinion" has changed several times in the past six months, on the questions simple as whether should people wear a mask or not. Reporters may help to set up a broader vision, so people can understand the bigger picture of what’s actually going on. If a consensus could be reached on the overall situation, people from different communities might also be able to communicate more smoothly.
This wish of mine became even more urgent as the U.S.-China relationship fell to a freezing point. Unfortunately, instead of sharing experiences in the fight against the epidemic, it was a mutual expulsion of journalists from both countries. Jude is a free-lance journalist I have worked with in Voice of America. She used to be a journalist based in New York City for four years, originally working for the China Daily and telling first-hand stories from the U.S. Her career was forced to a pause simply due to some political battles. Journalists should have been the connection between communities and push forward dialogues to understand each other, and now they almost all forced to leave. Whenever I see the misunderstandings between the two countries have about each other on social media, I just feel heartbroken, but extraordinarily powerless.
Journalists on the front line are even under tremendous pressure to deal with the outrage over racial issues besides the dangers of the virus. It was hard for me to imagine that a group of people could be shackled for life from the moment they were born simply because of the color of their skin - a meaningless difference in appearance. It was while covering the Black Live Matters march in Syracuse that I first experienced the power of unity in a democracy. One little girl left me with an extraordinarily powerful message - "If you're a minority, you should be a voice for other minorities, too." Unfortunately, there are many adults who are far less aware than this girl.
This is probably the most loaded period of time for journalists to perform their social duties. Even I myself, an extremely ordinary journalist about to start a career, had experienced a psychological crisis at one point due to the excessive empathy that comes with consuming news. But even so, I think it's important for everyone to reflect on the role of journalism as a whole in the 2020 public crisis.
One of those questions is how we should avoid the ubiquitous narrative traps. Behind every narrative, it’s the discourse, and behind that language, there must be the speaker's own values and stands. Perhaps because of my upbringing life journey, I am very aware of the power of languages constructed by higher power. As the number of casualties caused by the epidemic increased, concrete lives seemed to be drowned in strange and abstract numbers. At one point, Chinese reports of the epidemic were heavily militarized - "win this health war", "do whatever it takes to beat the virus"...Behind these words, however, there are implications of power. The perception of a "state of war" implies a greater surrender of individual rights and freedoms. The sacrifice of individual lives, in this narrative, is unavoidable in the service of a greater purpose. The news praised the health care workers who insist on staying at their testing positions under 100-degree. Stressing the actions of "eliminating" "dangerous elements" who violate the quarantine ban regardless of the reasons behind it... But the fight against the epidemic never is a war, and human decision making is very often not binary. Concrete lives may not be taken by the enemy, but rather as a result of the inept public health system. The media's use of language that glorifies sacrifice and rationalizes "wartime behavior" is likely to blind people to systemic issues that should be addressed, and more lives may be lost if we never pay attention to and fix those problems.
Media professionals must be extremely cautious when using political-related languages. One of the most controversial expressions was the "China virus". In late March, Trump deleted the “corona” from his speech at the press conference and replaced it with Chinese virus. And he repeatedly stated on various occasions that there was no problem with naming the virus with its place of origin. "The purpose of Trump's reference to the virus is to be inflammatory," Roy Gutman, professor of journalism at Syracuse University and president of the Tully Center for Freedom of the Press, said. Eren Orbey also argued that Trump has used this language to serve his nationalist agenda, and that his fixation on the virus's origin in Wuhan, China has fueled anti-Asian bigotry in the United States. It's bad enough that news outlets can't avoid reporting on the president's discriminatory remarks - having to present the “Chinese Virus” repeatedly on TV. But even so, covering bias discourse in the political sphere should affect where the news outlets should stand. The media need not, and should not, be held responsible for political bias; telling the truth is the only important task.
But the impact on journalistic impartiality could also come from media companies behind journalists. On the one hand, people in the industry have condemned content such as Sinclair's must-run packages and FOX's biased political commentary show as contrary to journalistic ethics, while on the other hand, what’s behind such blames are another kind of arrogance- after all, it’s hard for the reporters to maintain objective when we are personally involved in the news. Many guest speakers have mentioned this issue. They all talked about the importance of balancing reports. However, Isaac Lee, founder of Exile, shared a special opinion. He argued that journalists shouldn't hide their opinions and should be honest and upfront about their backgrounds. "Sometimes journalism has to choose which side of history they want to be." Lee said that in today's unique situation, it is better to start off with an opinion rather than hide it, and then try to do as balanced a story in the following part. Talk shows, such as John Oliver's Last Week Tonight, that have excellent investigative journalism teams while have a strong point of view. They are also presenting news events from many angles in an attractive way. There may be something to learn from for traditional journalism.
It is also important for journalists to know how to grasp the direction and scale of the emerging media. At the Information's Summer News School, I met for the first time with a variety of technology media journalists, many of whom were from well-known traditional media like New York Times and Wall Street Journals. They were all emphasizing the importance of specialization in a niche – that’s the exact logic of the "beautiful new world" built by algorithms. As the style of technology companies produced news is more permeable, more personalized and more entertaining, journalists are facing both opportunities and challenges. Podcasting, TikTok, live streaming, social media... to what extent have these new forms of media transformed traditional news narratives? What are the constant qualities and standards of competence of journalists in the face of the technology wave?
I have always believed that no matter how the external environment changes, the diverse and lively world needs sincere reporters. One of the missions of the media is to be an "anachronism" - to focus on the voiceless people in the midst of dazzling GDP growth, to mark the precarious boundaries of privacy in the midst of technological leapfrogging, and to showcase connected pluralism in the midst of decoupling," says Wu Qian, Editor-in-Chief of Duan Media. Contemporary journalists still face "old" issues such as the wealth divide, gender equality, racial equality, the ecological crisis, and the invasion of public power, while audiences' attention is becoming scarcer with tastes more inclined to entertainment. In response, Lee believes that journalism is not only a profession about the present, but also about having a historical perspective, often recalling memories of disasters and always reflecting on the packages we did.
The year 2020 is like a long night for human society, but it will come to an end at some time. In a world torn apart by crisis, I took some inspiration from Camus's 1940s speech on how journalists should seize the opportunity to thrive again:
1) We should be outspoken, and we should be aware of the fact that every time we endorse certain ideas, we may be tantamount to killing millions of people.
2) We should save the world from the horrors of prevent people from thinking freely.
3) Politics should, as far as possible, be placed in a secondary category, where the role of politics is to maintain order, not to regulate our thoughts.
4) It is important to find and create positive values from negativity that can reconcile negative thoughts and can inspire optimistic behavior.
5) We must talk to people from different societies, and the conversation must be frank. No one has the right, now or later, to determine that his truth is most correct and can be imposed on others.
6) We should always refuse to worship any current event, fact, wealth, power or history.
Ultimately, we should be humble in our thinking and in our behaviors, and that we should do our jobs and do them well. As journalists, we are supposed to propose communities and ideas beyond parties and governments to promote understandings that transcends national boundaries.
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