What Do Journalists Owe Our Communities
Bowler Hat Science from Matthew R Francis
I know, it has been some time since my last newsletter. Life and health problems have intervened. However, I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon writing instead of cleaning the house (which I should be doing), because I have a lot on my mind, so you all get the dubious benefit from that.
What Do Journalists Owe Our Communities?
Like many of us, I have spent the last several days in a state of suspended mourning for someone I've never met. Nex Benedict, a nonbinary Indigenous teenager from Oklahoma, was murdered by their classmates in a school bathroom. Their face has been everywhere on my newsfeeds and social media, and I cannot help but see others' faces in theirs: family members, children of friends and colleagues, teenagers in my neighborhood.
I don't have anything profound to say about Nex. However, a related event this weekend first angered me greatly, then spurred reflection on that anger and others' responses. Prominent journalist Taylor Lorenz interviewed Chaya Raichik, a far-right internet provocateur and stochastic terrorist whose main activity for several years now has been to incite violence against trans people, especially trans children. (Previously, she focused on attacking Black people, so she is also a white supremacist as well as being an anti-trans bigot.) Raichik, who is widely known under her screen-name LibsOfTikTok, was recently appointed to the Oklahoma Library Media Advisory Committee, despite having no credentials for either library science or education. In other words, her connection to Nex's murder was one of provocation, as someone who is outspoken about targeting all gender-nonconforming people and anyone who supports them.
To be clear, I have not watched Lorenz's interview or read the associated article, and I don't plan to. Many who have say Lorenz did a good job of exposing Raichik as a cruel and vapid individual. My problem is that I didn't need an interview to know that. Raichik has attacked people I know personally, and over the past few years multiple places—including hospitals—she has singled out have faced bomb threats from her followers. I didn't need a face-to-face interview to learn these things, and the trans/gender-nonconforming folks in my community largely agree with that assessment (not to speak for everyone, of course!). However, I've seen a lot of people claim Lorenz was doing a major service with this interview, and that those who disagree are missing the point.
Again, my problem isn't with the content of the interview, one way or the other. I keep thinking of whether I could justify interviewing such an outspoken bigot immediately after a murder her work enabled. Could I face my trans friends and colleagues, my gender-nonconforming relatives? What would I say to the genderqueer teenager in my family, or their parents? What justification could I bring? Could I expect to elicit any responses from a stochastic terrorist that would make up for the harm I would be doing to those I care about?
I'm personally cisgender and traditionally masculine-looking, who wears stereotypically masculine clothing. In other words, I'm safe in public; I can find a bathroom to use everywhere I go without anyone challenging my right to take a dump in peace. (I'm mostly vegetarian, this is not a minor concern.) But I care about more than myself, and people who look like me. I have to care about more than myself. Even if I didn't have trans/gender-nonconforming family, friends, and colleagues, I have to care.
This is where I think Lorenz made a misstep. I don't know enough about her to know if she was seeking attention by interviewing Raichik or if she genuinely had good intentions, but intentions only go so far. The question is one of balance: when you center a bigot who gleefully causes harm after a literal murder of someone that person doesn't think should exist, is there any way to make up for that? Can you balance the harm to the trans/gender-nonconforming community with the possibility of reaching others who aren't in the know about Raichik?
Trans folks are a minority within a minority, a group whose civil rights are threatened across the nation, whose very existence the ex-President and current Republican frontrunner has declared invalid. My social media feeds are full of pleas for financial and other sorts of help from trans folks experiencing homelessness, abuse, job loss, and health crises. Friends and family are seriously discussing where they can relocate in the face of anti-trans laws. As one of the most vulnerable populations in the US, right-wingers have targeted them smug in the knowledge that they don't have powerful defenders.
And that's why I can't take Lorenz's side in this. Cis journalists like me have to stand with trans folk, because it's the right thing to do and because our job cannot include making life harder for oppressed people. We have to consider who is harmed, who benefits, and what we owe to the communities we inhabit. How we do our jobs matters, not just in the typical journalistic sense of getting the facts out, but in terms of who we might be helping or harming by pretending to be above the fray.
Bowlerhattishly thine,
Matthew
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