Journalists rely on the public to help them expose injustices large and small. But blowing the whistle takes more courage than most of us like to admit we have.
I found out that I got a PMJA award for Collaborative Effort for my public-radio series Left Without Care while on vacation last month, and I thanked my professional collaborators.
But I should’ve thanked, first and foremost, those whose collaboration was even more vital: the children, families and former employees who shared their experiences at Kingston Academy, one of many youth psychiatric centers run by Sequel Youth & Family Services that shut down in 2019, under decrepit or violent conditions.
The people you hear in those stories (and many more I spoke with over the course of a year, who couldn’t be included in the 18-minute series) trusted me with their trauma and guilt, for having been part of a system that caused more harm than good.
Most importantly, they trusted me with their names and/or voices, which requires a courage that’s rarer than most of us like to admit.
In the workplace, that kind of courage is so rare, we have a special name for those who do it — whistleblowers — and special laws to protect them. Everyone else is … an employee. Maybe even a team player.
“The media” gets called out often for what it doesn’t expose, as if a newsroom of a few — or a few dozen — people could possibly cover every story that needs covering, in a given town or city.
Meanwhile, I’m hardly ever asked what it’s like to work in a newsroom, but am constantly being “informed,” by non-journalists, that reporters are controlled and/or bought and sold by the corporations that fund newsrooms (because individual subscribers aren’t enough to keep the lights on).
That’s an extremely serious accusation of corruption that, if it were to be published as a news report, would require equally serious and painstaking corroboration.
But just for the sake of argument, let’s examine that claim. In the U.S., journalists earn a median salary of $23.70 per hour, rarely get paid overtime, and regularly work 12-hour days and weekends. That would make us really, really bad at corruption.
Not to mention that reporters often work against incredible odds to expose abuses of power, and ask whistleblowers, accusers, and other brave souls to take huge risks in coming forward. In essence, journalists and their sources are collaborating as intelligence operatives and informants/assets, only without the vast resources of a government behind them. And with revenue plummeting in local newsrooms nationwide, local journalists are forced to do much more with ever less.
That’s the power imbalance you should be worried about.
But I get it.
It’s very easy, and tempting, to point fingers. Social media is full of them — and they let everyone off the hook. Yet if reporters are in cahoots with anyone, it is with you, dear readers, listeners and viewers of our work. We literally can’t do our jobs without you.
If reporters are in cahoots with anyone, it is with you, dear readers, listeners and viewers of our work. We literally can’t do our jobs without you.
For Left Without Care, I requested interviews with roughly 50 former Kingston Academy employees. I even relocated to East Tennessee to meet them face to face. Fewer than a dozen obliged, and that’s because the place was shut down. Of those who still work(ed) for Sequel, not a single one answered my emails or calls.
In my experience, few people think of themselves as the backbone of the public service that is journalism. Even fewer of us openly admit to being passive bystanders while coworkers, friends or neighbors are mistreated, bullied or worse.
And how many public mea culpas have any of us published or posted, about our own crappy, or sexist, or racist, or bullying, or exploitative behavior?
Groups, like individuals, can cause untold harm if allowed to go unchecked and unquestioned. When the damage becomes so great, we call it systemic. But we are all part of the system, of many systems really — in our professional and personal lives, in our communities, as global citizens. As such, we’re all accountable to each other in some way.
Now, I know that we all need to be the heroes of our own stories, and that we’re all far more courageous on paper than in real life. And many of us genuinely want to see injustices exposed. I receive tips all the time … by people who almost always want others to do the exposing.
I get that, too.
Some put their lives on the line when they talk to journalists. For others, it may be impossible to speak out if their livelihood is at stake. Others face bullying or intimidation by hired henchmen. For most, though, just sticking out from the crowd, even when there’s little to lose, is terrifying.
This isn’t to say that any and all problems with journalism are the public’s fault. They are not.
Or that I think a handful of billionaires should own most of the media. I adamantly do not.
And I genuinely long for more discussions with colleagues about how we too are products of systems we don’t always recognize or question enough.
But unless every human subscribes to every single news platform on Earth — especially local outlets — we cannot easily change how journalism is funded.
So worry less about the trickle-down effects of corporate influence on newsrooms — the healthy ones have very strong firewalls between them and sales departments — and more about the “trickle-up” ways that we can all affect influence and change.
If everyone’s a critic, as the saying goes, and hardly any of us are whistleblowers, the next time you’re angry that a problem that directly affects you isn’t getting the kind of media sunlight it deserves, ask yourself: What’s stopping me from coming forward?
Think it doesn’t matter or won’t make a difference? The reporters and whistleblowers who exposed Harvey Weinstein, Theranos, Black Cube, the Sackler family, and Jeffrey Epstein would hasten to disagree.
About the author:
Natasha Senjanovic is an award-winning freelance journalist, radio producer and former news anchor who spent 15 years in Rome, Italy, covering international cinema, running a film festival and working for a geopolitical rag, among other things. She’s currently based in Nashville, where as former host/reporter for the local NPR station she won a Regional Edward R. Murrow Award (for a feature about a ragtag moutain biking team), thanks entirely to behind-the-scenes editing from Kim Green. Natasha’s most recent projects include the investigative mini-series Left Without Care and the Pulitzer Center-backed project Surging in Silence.