The first rule taught in a journalism school is to state facts and be objective. A good news report offers insight from every stakeholder and is free of bias. However, this format of reporting can prove to be inadequate when different stakeholders of a story are at a structural disadvantage.
For instance, stories on race, caste, class, or gender, which aim to uncover historical injustices in our societies. In such cases, journalists may choose to be subjective in their reporting and advocate the cause of a historically marginalised group. This is recognised in the media as “advocacy journalism”.
“Broadly defined, advocacy journalism is a label applied to any journalistic genre or output that advocates; that is, journalism that explicitly takes a point of view,” writes media studies scholar Ryan Thomas. “This is in contrast to journalism that is studiously neutral. Advocacy journalism thus derives its meaning and its potency from this contrast.”
In recent years, coverage of protests following the murder of George Flyod in the US on 26 May 2020 and the #MeToo movement often took the form of advocacy journalism. Reporters dropped traditional objectivity in favour of reporting that prioritised the voices of people from the Black community or survivors of sexual harassment. Journalism covering environmental issues have also often taken the form of advocacy.
Writing for the New York Times, Wesley Lowery, a two-time Pulitzer winner, argued: “Black journalists are publicly airing years of accumulated grievances, demanding an overdue reckoning for a profession whose mainstream repeatedly brushes off their concerns; in many newsrooms, writers and editors are now also openly pushing for a paradigm shift in how our outlets define their operations and ideals.”
“All writing is subjective, and journalism is a part of that,” says journalist and filmmaker Revati Laul.
“The point of being a journalist is letting the readers know that you are in danger of losing your democracy,” adds Laul. “When something is tilted in one direction, you have to show people that tilt. In order to do that you need to have a perspective — the perspective is to be able to see the tilt.”
A rigid adherence to an assumed objectivity might result in journalists missing this “tilt”.
Several publications in India, such as Maktoob Media and The Caravan, have experimented with advocacy journalism in recent years. Both have been scrutinised for being critical of the government.
“We have often been targeted by people in the Hindutva ecosystem,” says Aslah Kayyalakkath, the editor of Maktoob Media. “Our accounts, staff accounts, and inboxes have been flooded with hate threats and spam. Much of it is Islamophobic.”
“Objectivity is not only the goal of journalism,” says Vivek Gopal, associate editor at The Caravan. “We need to present a context that our privilege allows us to do.”
Khabar Lahariya, a newspaper based in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, can also be cited an example of advocacy journalism in India. It defines itself as a feminist publication, and is run by woman journalists, who report on rural issues.
Women from marginalised communities — Scheduled Castes and Tribes, Muslim and Dalit — report on issues concerning their communities. Khabar Lahariya caters to a local audience. Therefore, they focus on local villages and communities.
In 2022, a documentary film, Writing with Fire, directed by Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas, narrating the story of the journalists at Khabar Lahariya, was nominated in the Best Documentary Feature category at the Academy Awards.
At first, the journalists at Khabar Lahariya, including the collective’s co-founder Kavita Devi, expressed their happiness at being appreciated by “a global audience”. However, after watching the whole film, the journalists issued a statement in which they said that Writing with Fire told only a part of their story, which was “a more complex story than the one going to the Oscars.”
They also said that the film focussed mostly on Khabar Lahariya’s coverage of the Bharatiya Janata Party. Srishti Mehra, outreach manager at Chambal Media, which manages Khabar Lahariya, told NPR that this was “not an accurate representation of our unbiased-feminist reporting.”
In their statement, Khabar Lahariya’s reporters claimed that they had questioned politicians of all parties.
The debate over advocacy and objectivity, it seems, will take some time to be resolved.
The writers are final-year students at JSJC