The View from Somewhere Critical Frequency

Reporter Tina Vasquez has always practiced movement journalism, or journalism in service to liberation—but it wasn’t until recently that she realized she had a community and an identity as a movement journalist. On this episode, we unpack this idea of “movement journalism”—what it is, why it matters for marginalized communities, and how it’s different from so-called advocacy journalism.
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Extractive journalism—reporting on communities without input or accountability—is the model for a lot of journalism in the U.S., especially journalism about low-income people and communities of color. But lots of people are and have been actively resisting this model. We hear from Sarah Alvarez of Outlier Media in Detroit and Bettina Chang of City Bureau in Chicago about building journalism organizations based on power-sharing rather than extraction, how information can save lives in pandemic times, and how the COVID-19 crisis has changed their work.
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Journalist and professor Steven Thrasher draws out the connections between coverage of HIV/AIDS and coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Thrasher joined us for Episode 8 about queer media history and AIDS. Also: How handwashing is a symbol for trust and the ability to be changed by new information. 
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Host Lewis Raven Wallace talks about the need to seize a sense of possibility and imagination during the coronavirus pandemic, reads from The View from Somewhere book about reporting on the end of the world (standing in the rising water), and previews special programming coming soon.
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Is it racist? Are they lying? Some journalists are afraid to weigh in on facts even when they have good evidence. Why? Turns out there’s a whole history behind accusations of “liberal media bias” and the twisting of truth by Right Wing pundits. With expert commentary from historian Nicole Hemmer, journalism critic Jay Rosen, and poet and author Kevin Young, this episode explores the history of right wing media, “liberal media bias,” and how we can become truth swimmers, seeking multiple truths without giving up on truth altogether. It features the story of filmmaker Marlon Riggs and a brief dive into the origins of “Birtherism,” the conspiratorial accusation that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States. James Baldwin once wrote, “expose the question the answer hides.” He’s our guide for this episode. 
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Former public radio reporter Brenda Salinas and former public television producer Cecilia Garcia reflect on how far public media hasn’t come on “diversity” in the last forty years—and why. Also: how producers of color can protect their magic. Lewis and Ramona share their experiences in public media, and suggest a different framework for thinking about “diversity.” Salinas, an NPR Kroc Fellow and a producer at KUT Austin, describes how she was pushed out of public media by racism and sexism; Garcia, creator of the bilingual Latino newsmagazine Para mi Pueblo, sat on a task force in 1977 calling for the kind of diversity public media still struggles with. 
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