I’m struggling with how to navigate not being trusted by community members, especially vulnerable ones. I don’t want to seem like I am tokenizing their voices, but I want to make public the voices of people who are normally marginalized.
Particularly with the most recent story I was working on, on the ICE out of Flag rally Sept. 18, I also struggled with having to remain neutral, because the rally was important for me. I want to be a public activist and organizer but I feel like I have to hide that part of who I am especially if I want to be a professional journalist. I can write my stories as unbiased as possible but I sometimes would rather not just be there to report.
Another thing I am struggling with is what if I misrepresent the people in my own community and am then isolated from them? Additionally, how do I balance the relationships that come out of my work as a journalist? How can I manage feeling like I am just taking from them and not giving anything back? What can I do to give back to people who spend valuable resources like time, energy and gas money to talk to me, especially if they don’t have much resources to spend, without creating a conflict of interest? What do journalists give back, especially if the resulting story doesn’t bring any benefit to the people who shared their perspectives or lives with us?
These are a lot more questions than reflections, but sometimes I only have questions and no answers.
Writings on Journalism 