fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2449 ]

[ SECRET POST #2449 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2449 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I work at a newspaper in the middle of the US, so while the DC Navy Yard shooting isn't exactly in our backyard, obviously it's the lead story in the paper, and I'm designing the front page.

Now, I don't feel like I've personally experienced racism in my life. I'm reasonably young and I don't think it's racist when the telemarketers break out the hispanic accents, and if anything my minority status has opened far more doors for me than it's closed (which, far as I know, are none).

So when it comes dealing with everyday racism and casual racism, most of my experience comes from hearing all the talk about it places like here and elsewhere. And I've absorbed that and tried to make use of it. It's why I've become known around the office as that person who's all "Are you *sure* gypped is the word you want to use? You know 'uppity' has a history and probably doesn't mean what you think it means, so maybe you shouldn't use it to describe Michelle Obama..."

But when I was designing this page, I realized I had set it up so that there was the mug of the suspect, who is black, and then a photo of three white officers leaving the scene. I immediately started to question whether I was perpetuating stereotypes and went looking for photos of some POC officers (but didn't really find any in general, let alone ones that were compelling enough for Page One). And then I literally spent 10 minutes at my desk agonizing over what I should.

Which is when I came to the determination that I was letting not just activism but INTERNET activism get in the way of my job. Because it's not my job to make sure the front page makes everybody feel good about themselves. It's my job to show in pictures and words what happened -- and what happened is this guy (allegedly) killed 12 people and these three other people were some of the first to respond.

But I'm still sitting here on my dinner break questioning whether I made the right choice or if I should change it when I go back in.

Report the truth. That's your job. It's not always pretty. It's not always the story that people want to hear. But it's what needs to be said.

As someone who works in the news you can't have your feelings get in the way of facts.

While it's nice that you want to stop and think about what you're doing, and I understand why you may hesitate, the last high profile shootings I remember in the past, what, year all had white dudes as the culprit, and no doubt their mugs were on display in each paper. It's the news, it's what happened.

Yes, there will probably be some people who look at your design and think "Damn thugs with their guns (od forbid they take away my rifles!!!", but you can't help that, and it really isn't your fault.

Organize it however it puts you at ease (but you know, gets the story across)

Edited (aaa clarification) 2013-09-16 23:28 (UTC)

As a journalist you MUST report what happened. You made the right choice. If you change it when you go back in, you should find a new career.

Can't really speak on what you should do, but thanks for working to make other people aware of casual racism re: words like gypped and uppity.

You're questioning whether you should edit the truth in case reality makes someone feel bad? That is completely stupid. Reality is reality. You can't change peoples' ACTUAL, REAL LIFE races just in case someone who happens to be the same race as the shooter somehow feels that showing a photo of a shooter who happens to share their race somehow implies that all people of that race are bad. Anyone who feels that way is being ridiculous.

If a criminal is black, you can't edit him to be some other race, because that's lying about reality. If he was white, you wouldn't be thinking about changing it, would you? And it would be just as stupid to change it if he was white. The problem here isn't that the shooter happened to be black and the first responders happened to be white. The problem lies with the kind of people who see a shooter and first responders of certain races and make unfounded assumptions based solely on those races, whether the assumptions are "Black people bad and white people good!!1" or "Black people only bad because unfairness, white people bad all the time!!1" When what they should be thinking is "Murderers bad, people who stop murderers good." Race has fuck-all to do with that.

Actions are how people should be defined, and anyone who allows race to color their perception of reality has problems they need to work on, no matter how those perceptions are colored. Also, get any ideas about editing reality to be more "correct" out of your head. That is NOT what journalism should be about. You report the facts as they are, not as you think they should be.

Yeah...I'm not really sure where you get "editing the truth" out of all that. I'm talking the difference between running one of the photos inside with the jump instead of on the front. Not "changing races" or whatever the hell.

Reading the first post it sounds like you were looking for some black people responders or something, then wanting to change what you had. You didn't specify what the change was at all. Maybe that's cause you are stressed out right now, but if you look back, you'll see you really didn't clarify.

Re: When good intentions get in the way....

(Anonymous) - 2013-09-17 07:04 (UTC) - Expand

Your first post says that you were looking for a picture of first responders who were POC. I'm going to guess that's where so many people are getting hung up on race issues. Since your post is about, y'know, race issues.

very well said

Oh I definitely know what you mean. I fielded a classmate's questions about his tagline for a presentation for a Congressperson today about a school achievement program. He kept on coming up with vaguely inappropriate taglines that implied parents who weren't in the program were irresponsible, which I kept shooing him away from. He didn't mean to make it sound like that, but there it was.

Even though some things should remain apolitical (like kids and tragedies), they end up getting inadvertently politicized just through social conventions. Dealing with social issues will just do that.

The fact of the matter is that it's unlikely that anybody is going to go "!!! There's a bunch of white cops against that black guy! Whoever made that cover page is probably racist!" They're going to see the same couple of officers, and the same perpetrator, over and over again on other news sources, especially the national news.

So a.) you won't be the only one who will be doing it, and b.) the enormity of the tragedy is going to overwhelm people to the point where they most likely won't be thinking of the thing in terms of skin color.

Thank you for twigging to what I was trying to say (and apparently saying badly).

ayrt

Hey, no worries. It's what I was trained in, so I hope I should be able to present it fairly understandably. These type of issues crop up so damn much, and people's responses to it are fairly predictable.

You almost began to compromise your integrity there. But you realized the shit you are doing, even if you still feel the imposed sjw guilt. Don't you change a thing unless you discover an actual inaccuracy.

Though for the record, it's totally fucking racist when they break out the accents.

As a counterpoint to what everyone else is saying, let me ask you this: Given that (white) people are still built to mentally visualize the perpetrators of a violent crime as black and the victims as white, and given that the vast majority of people are stupid and will take anything that even vaguely supports their own prejudices and run with it, do you really want to be responsible for a white moron seeing the front page of your publication, thinking "Fucking niggers always doing this" and then taking it upon himself and his ignorant friends to go out there and "even the score"

Like it or not, if you give these people any reason to act they will take it, and that will be on you as much as them.

There are no words to express how stupid this comment is.

Lol at you perpetuating stereotypes in the name of not perpetuating stereotypes.

Citation needed. For fuck's sake.

Wow. I think the 1950's called, and they want their stereotypes back.

Jesus fucking christ

Being aware of and willing to work on these issues is great, but as others have said, you can't change reality. The picture is as it is, just as the events it shows are. If you had the choice between two equally usable photos, where the other sendt a different message but conveyed the same information about the story? Sure, choosing the less "offensive would be good. But that's not the choice you face. You looked for another picture you could use, didn't find one that conveyed what it nedded to, and there's nothing more you can do.

there's nothing more you can do.

Inaccurate. I also had the option of ditching either the mugshot or the police photo, thereby freeing up more room to do different or bigger things with my centerpiece package or my skybox. But that's a decision that needed to be made earlier in the night.

And it ended up being a moot point anyway, because space was so tight, I ended up having to kill to the big picture anyway just so we could get the whole story in.

DA

So basically "Wah! I wanna feel bad!"?

Look, you did it in a way that showed the facts. That's your job, even if you don't like the image it shows.

Re: When good intentions get in the way....

(Anonymous) - 2013-09-17 22:31 (UTC) - Expand

I just saw this post on tumblr and was wondering if your page was up here;
http://newseum.tumblr.com/post/61501478916/todays-top-10-front-pages-navy-yard-shooting

Forgive me if this is a little inappropriate to share, I just remembered this thread on a whim.

It's not. I'm a little surprised that my paper didn't go bigger with it than we did -- I had been planning a centerpiece treatment about an hour and a half before I even went in to work only to have it dashed in the budget meeting -- but I guess given that it looks more like a disgruntled guy and less like terrorism maybe big play in flyover states was a little less warranted.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #2449 ]

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