Transcript
From Dusk to Dawn is a podcast and produced to be heard. The way we speak and the way we write are often very different, so this transcript has been edited for clarity. There may be slight differences between it and the audio version. If you notice any misspellings or errors with names, people or places, please shoot us an email at [email protected].
Josie Grace
Welcome to today’s episode of From Dusk to Dawn, where we shine a light on what we do at The Sunrise News. I’m Josie Shaw, the digital media and marketing specialists at Sunrise News.
Harrison Neville
And I’m Harrison Neville, the editor in chief for The Sunrise News. Today we are talking about empathy and its applications and modern day journalism. We hope you enjoy listening.
Josie Grace
Hey, Harrison, before we talked today and had our conversation, I just wanted to keep you on your toes about reading the news. I don’t know if you’ve checked the news this morning. Did you?
Harrison Neville
I did a little bit. Yeah.
Josie Grace
Well, we’re gonna test and see how well you did. I know we cover state wide stuff, but nationally, you know, there was a heavy fog…in California this morning. And, once the fog kind of lifted, the morning fog, the morning pollution, once it kind of [went] away, you know what everybody said?
Harrison Neville
I can’t guess .
Josie Grace
UCLA
Harrison Neville
Oh, oh, okay. Okay.
Josie Grace
You [know] like the school?
Harrison Neville
You know, I got it. I understood the joke. It took me a second. I had to think about it. And then then it clicked. UCLA. Oh, yep.
Josie Grace
Before we recorded, you said you hope that every joke gets a bigger laugh out of you. But I think we might have diminishing returns.
Harrison Neville
I’m not sure we’re gonna. Not sure that chart, there’s going to be an upward one.
Josie Grace
Well that’s my favorite thing to do every week is to disappoint Harrison. Quota fulfilled. Well, what are we talking about today, Harrison?
Harrison Neville
So today we’re talking about empathetic journalism. And what that means really.
Josie Grace
Yeah. Why are we talking about it?
Harrison Neville
Sure. So, Josie, we’re kind of in the world of journalism. We’re kind of at a crossroads where journalists are really figuring out what it means to be a modern journalist and redefining and redeveloping that concept. And, empathetic journalism is…a big part of the overall conversation of what it means to be a journalist, like the role it should play [and] how that will affect all of us. And of course, as journalists, I think it’s important that we talk about that.
Josie Grace
No, I think that’s really well put. So kind of throwing it back at you. What you said is, we’ve gotten to this point where…journalism isn’t, I’ll just say the trust in journalism isn’t as strong, right? It’s probably one of the weakest points it’s been in recent history right now.
Harrison Neville
Yeah.
Josie Grace
And there’s many reasons as to why that’s a problem. But you believe that one of the issues to bridging journalism to people is empathy?
Harrison Neville
Yes, I personally do believe that. I think we can talk it out some more. And I agree, I believe in that. I think that empathy is a big part of how we’re going to establish trust with the audience, with our audience.
Josie Grace
Yeah. Well, can you tell me a little bit about what…empathetic journalism [is]?
Harrison Neville
Sure. I was reading this article on the Nieman storyboard, an article by Lauren Kessler, and she had this quote that I really liked. So I’m going to recite that here.
“Empathy is the ability or I would say, the ongoing challenge to try to understand another person’s point of view.”
I think that really kind of captures it, because that’s what empathetic journalism is. It’s working to understand the people your subject that you’re interviewing, and to kind of humanize them. And to understand the perspective, they’re coming from whether or not that perspective matches your own.
Josie Grace
Yeah. And well, this might seem like kind of a stupid question. But why would that benefit journalism? And we’ll kind of come back around at the end of our interview today to kind of reestablish that, but you know, why would we want empathy for the people we’re interviewing?
Harrison Neville
Sure. There’s a few reasons.
Josie Grace
What’s at the core of that? What do you think is the core necessity for empathy and journalism?
Harrison Neville
Core necessity. I believe that there should be heart to journalism. I know, right. Now,…I’ve talked to a lot of people [who] have said what they really want from their news sources, is just the facts. Don’t tell me how to feel. Don’t tell me what to feel. I just want the facts.
But we aren’t machines. We as journalists can’t devoid ourselves from feeling and having beliefs and opinions about the facts. So empathetic journalism helps us remember to think about the people we’re interviewing, take their viewpoints into account and as we’re presenting the facts, make sure we’re presenting all the facts. I think that is the best way to put it. Make sure we’re thinking about the people we’re talking to as people and not dismissing them in any way, form or fashion. Does that kind of fit the question? That makes sense?
Josie Grace
Yeah, I think that’s perfect. I think also, it sounds like not only does empathetic journalism take in the people and the story that you’re covering, but you’re also in return being empathetic to your readers by considering the factors of what it’s like to be a reader. To read this information and how you present it.
Harrison Neville
Yeah, for sure.
Josie Grace
So with these practical uses of empathetic journalism, what are the differences between sympathy and empathy?
Harrison Neville
Sure that’s a great question. So Josie, if you’ve ever heard the expression, to walk a mile in another person’s shoes, right? So this is, I think, a really good way to understand this because empathy and sympathy are really nuanced. So if you take that expression, and you’re looking at it from an empathetic viewpoint, when you walk a mile in someone else’s shoes, you gain understanding of them. That’s what it’s getting at, right? You understand them [and] you can connect with them. So empathy is being able to walk that mile with them or have a similar mile that you yourself have walked that gives you understanding of them, right?
Sympathy is a little bit more kind of [a] distanced viewpoint. You don’t have the connection, you can’t understand what it’s like to be them. But you can still pity them or feel sorry for their struggle. And that’s kind of the main difference as I see it.
Josie Grace
And you know, how that connects to empathetic journalism, I wonder, is empathetic journalism, like, trying to think of times we’ve been through a similar spot or even just really try to understand what kind of spot there and as a person in meeting them on that level, instead of being, like you said, at that disconnected point?
Harrison Neville
Yes…it’s nuanced, because as a journalist, we don’t want to let an understanding of a person get in the way of doing our jobs. Our job is to look for the truth, and then provide that truth to other people, like give them the truth as best we can, and let them make their own decisions. But what empathy does is it allows us to have a more nuanced viewpoint of other people.
We don’t have to agree with them. We don’t have to like their viewpoints. But empathy — being an empathetic journalist means that we look to understand…we ask questions with the goal of finding an understanding, and then being able to use that understanding to tell a more complete story for our readers.
Josie Grace
I think as a whole, like in culture, we often think of empathy as like a trait that someone has. Like, oh, that’s an empathetic, compassionate person. But I think what we’re talking about today is like, you can still be a compassionate person, but in journalism, we maybe treat empathetic journalism, almost like a hat that we wear.
Like it’s a mentality that we take on when we’re doing a story. It’s just one of our many tools in our arsenal of skills as journalists that we choose to wear and to use. And with using that, empathy hat or whatever analogy you want to use, how does that affect your decisions and what you write in an article and what you put into an article and share in an article?
Harrison Neville
Sure, you mind if I give an example to kind of help frame this?
Josie Grace
Absolutely.
Harrison Neville
Okay. A while back, I’m sure many people remember when Kobe Bryant, the basketball player, died in a plane crash, right? I remember I was in school when it happened. And when it happened, the first one of the first groups to kind of send it out into the world, the first news organization was TMZ. And later, TMZ, was criticized by the Los Angeles Police Department, because they published their story so quickly that according to the LAPD, they didn’t really have the chance to fully notify the family. And that’s an example I feel like of kind of where empathy should have a role. Remember, these are people and you want to keep in mind their personal struggle, right? And you want to be aware of that. So that’s a big example of the importance there.
Josie Grace
So I want to follow up with your example with an example that I have. It’s about the unite the right, unite the right rallies that happened in Charlottesville, North Carolina, about four or five, maybe a little older than that now, years ago. And to me, what’s interesting to that is that there’s so much coverage that happened for those rallies, and one that in particular, that stuck out to me was by Vice News, which if you look at any kind of media bias chart, they’re very far on the left. They’re kind of notoriously known for that, I guess that progressive news coverage.
So for them to cover something like this was initially already interesting and shocking, but the way that they covered it is by sending Elle Reeve. And she was basically going with the leaders of the…Unite the Right rally and being close with the white supremacist. I’m not sure if I clarified that’s what the rally was. Getting close with the white supremacist. And, you know, I kind of before watching, it just kind of judged it and I was like this is going to be nasty and the interviewer is not going to really get anything interesting out of this, it’s going to be kind of one-sided.
But she spent the whole time in their cars and their hotel rooms, getting to know them as people and finding that connections between them as people and their ideology. And I think that’s already deeper than a lot of coverage goes about this sort of topic. So I found that really interesting. But then she was also able to use her understanding and her empathy, to form deeper analysis. She didn’t just walk away and paint a beautiful picture of everybody there when she covered her story. She was able to empathize and understand these people, but didn’t shy away from giving some sort of objective analysis of the situation. So I find that really interesting and powerful. And how can we practice being empathetic journalists while we work with people and interview people we might disagree with?
Harrison Neville
Sure. Well, Josie, you hit it on the head. Practice. Like that’s the secret. Just like anything, if you want to get good at empathetic journalism, you have to practice being empathetic. So here’s an example, looking at our regular lives. Do you have family conversations about politics at all?
Josie Grace
Yes, all the time, unfortunately.
Harrison Neville
Yeah.
Josie Grace
The good old Thanksgiving dinner, you know?
Harrison Neville
Right, exactly. And sometimes those can get heated. Now, in my family, we also have those, right? And for us, I know that when we’re having those conversations, or at least I know, when I’m having those conversations, I usually am trying to seek an understanding.
Because the people I’m talking to are my family, I’m going to interact with them numerous times throughout the year, it’s not like a one and done all right, I argue, then we walk away and we don’t see each other again. I will see them again; I will talk to them again. And, I am…really fond of my family. So I don’t want to get into a fight that will cause permanent damage or whatever, right?
So even when I strongly disagree with them, I search for understanding. So that’s an example of really practicing the habit of empathy in conversation, right? Because with your family, or at least with my family, when I talk to them, I’m searching for empathy because I love them, right. But as journalists, when we’re searching for empathy, we do it because our goal is to understand people so that we can pass that understanding on to our readers.
Josie Grace
And then at their discretion, they are the people to choose how to react to that information.
Harrison Neville
Exactly. Yeah.
Josie Grace
Well, I think you’ve made so many good points here about the difference of empathy and sympathy. And I think something that hit on like, what you were getting at, at least what I was hearing is that it’s not a tool for narrative. We don’t want to use empathy to give an opinion. We want to use empathy to paint a larger focus, a larger story for our audience to choose and what their opinion is.
Harrison Neville
You summed it up really well. That’s the goal. We’re not trying — we shouldn’t be trying, at least if we’re talking about news articles, and such — we shouldn’t be trying to convince people…[or] trying to win converts over to an ideology…we’re trying to build from our own place of understanding so that we can tell a more complete story. And we’re trying to show people that — I’ve said it so many times during this podcast — we’re trying to show people as people. So we don’t want to just give people objects to hate or idealize. We want to give them human beings.
Josie Grace
So Harrison, with this empathy we’re building towards other people, how can we use this empathy while also holding people accountable? And keeping to our journalistic integrity?
Harrison Neville
Yeah, that’s a really good question. Right, quite frankly. Because I think it’s easy to start to wonder if, as journalists, as we’re talking about being empathetic, connecting with people, I think it’s natural for people to ask the second question of, “Well, how do we know we can still trust you?” “If you’re trying so hard to relate to people how we know it, you’re not kind of emotionally compromising yourselves, right?”
And I think that goes back to kind of the reason for the empathy. Our goal is to use empathy to understand people. As I’ve said before, the goal is to use empathy to provide a more complete narrative. That’s our goal.
Josie Grace
And how does that empathy help paint a larger narrative.
Harrison Neville
When you’re trying to understand a problem or a situation. Doesn’t have to be a problem. Let’s take, for example, let’s take the issue of homelessness, right? So if you’re trying to understand homelessness, say for example, if you’re someone working to aid homeless people or long term goal of ending homelessness in an area or at least reducing it, you can’t properly do that without a proper understanding of that. And that’s kind of where the importance of that understanding comes in.
Josie Grace
Well, I think that’s extremely well put, and well, my last question is empathetic current journalism good for our readers? I think we’ve kind of answered that. But [are] there any other points you want to hit on?
Harrison Neville
I’ll just say yes. Empathetic journalism is, I think, really good for our readers. I think…what we need in the world of modern journalism is more empathy in our work.
Josie Grace
I really liked the point you made of just because we’re empathetic or sympathetic…it’s up to the readers to decide how they’re going to look at the subject. So yeah, I appreciate you sharing your thoughts on this topic.
Harrison Neville
Yeah, no, I really enjoyed talking about it with you Josie.
Josie Grace
We hope you enjoyed today’s episode.
Harrison Neville
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Josie Grace
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Harrison Neville
Thanks for listening. We’ll see you soon.
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