Episode 1: Jerry Van Gasse

Jerry is the hero of our story. 

He’s originally from Ann Arbor, Michigan and has lived in Arizona for over 50 years. Jerry loves the outdoors and considers himself a “public watchdog.” He is heavily involved in the legislative process of the Phoenix Municipal Park system and gives the occasional batch of bananas to some of the park rangers on our famous mountains. When he isn’t busy saving the mountains, he is also an assistant cross country and track coach at Chaparral High School.

Jerry and I first talked when I was writing a story about Cholla Trail reopening at Camelback Mountain. I got Jerry’s contact from another reporter and called him up asking if I could go deeper on this story — if he knew anyone that had advocated for the mountain — and sure enough, Jerry knew someone. What stood out to me the most from that conversation wasn’t the fact that Jerry immediately had a source. It was him telling me how he felt about the news. He told me he was delighted to hear I wanted to cover more perspectives for my story. Jerry shared how he felt frustrated with news coverage today, because not a lot of people are trying to go deeper or find the follow-up story. 
When he told me that, my ears perked up. I wanted to hear more. I wanted to learn all about Jerry’s frustrations because I knew a lot of people felt the same way.
So I called up Jerry again. We met at Steele Indian School Park in Downtown Phoenix. I wanted to learn more about Jerry’s life and how he views journalists. I wanted to know what the concept of journalistic objectivity means to him. Jerry and I talked for an hour straight. I learned all about his life in Michigan and how he has loved living in Arizona. We chatted about journalism and how Jerry is always looking for the follow-up story. Plus, I even got a pastry out of it. 
This is Jerry’s story. Although there’s only so much I can squeeze into an episode, you should get a good sense of the type of person that Jerry is. He’s a cool dude. And I hope you’ll enjoy hearing from him throughout the podcast. ​

Episode 2: History of Objectivity

Episode Guests:

• Dr. Matthew Pressman, Associate Professor of Journalism, Seton Hall University
• Dr. David Mindich, Journalism Department Chair, Temple University 

JMC 110: Principles and History of Journalism was my first introduction to journalism history. I really enjoyed the class. It was the first, legit college class that I got to experience and one that taught me a lot. My professors were pretty cool too. The class is actually really unique because we have revolving professors. So, we have one main professor who goes through most of the lectures with us and then some of the deans and other professors teach us specific lectures. It’s pretty fun. 

I learned all about journalism history and how journalism even started. Don’t quiz me though because I probably only remember the bare minimum. But, what I do remember learning about was the concept of journalistic objectivity. We spent at least four days on this lesson and I learned all about how it's the “gold standard” in journalism. We talked about how as journalists we have a duty to stay unbiased, impartial and cover both sides of every story. We were told to leave our cultural and personal biases aside when covering sensitive topics. We were even told to practice objectivity on our social media — posting too much personal stuff and having an opinion on politics was a big no no. ​​
But I soon learned that many journalists weren’t staying unbiased on social media or in their reporting. It was honestly shocking. What I was being taught wasn’t practiced by journalists in the industry. I learned this concept of objectivity comes with a lot of flaws.
Before we dive into these flaws though, I wanted to learn more about the history of journalistic objectivity. Like I said, it’s been a few years since the last time I learned about this topic. So I talked to Dr. Matthew Pressman and Dr. David Mindich. They’ve both done extensive research on journalism history, specifically objectivity. They were both wonderful interviews. In fact, Dr. Pressman was my first interview for this project! 
I learned from talking to them that journalistic objectivity emerged around the late 19th century as a practical method for reporting. Newspapers thought that an unbiased approach to news would help them reach a wider audience and generate more revenue. Then the 1950s came around and journalists were practically robotic in their reporting. They were only reporting on what official sources were saying and this impacted them negatively during the McCarthy era. But since the 1960s, the idea of objectivity has started to evolve as more than just unbiased reporting. 
​So this episode takes a trip down history lane (see what I did there? I am so funny) and our two guests explain where journalistic objectivity comes from and what era of objectivity we’re in today. ​

Episode 3: BLM and Objectivity

Episode Guests:

• Wesley Lowery, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
• ​Matt Galka, Capitol Hill Correspondent for CBS News, former FOX 10 Phoenix reporter
• Kat Williams, PhD student and researcher, UT Austin Moody College of Communication

This episode was a hard one. For starters, I didn’t know how to quite approach this episode, but I knew that I wanted it to be part of the podcast. I remember sitting in my room, scrolling on my phone and feeling very confused during the summer of 2020. It was already a terribly confusing time as we were dealing with this new thing called COVID. On of top it, protests were breaking out across the country after the death of George Floyd. On social media, I was seeing posts that said “staying silent means you don’t care” and I didn’t know what to do. 

I’ve been told as a journalist that I can’t portray my views on social media, take sides or show bias for something, so I had no idea what to post or what to say. I was talking to a couple of my friends and they felt the same way. So the purpose of this episode was to break down what I was feeling three summers ago. 
Matt Galka ended up being one of my favorite interviews that I did for this podcast. We talked for almost two hours. He got to cover the protests in Phoenix when he was working for FOX 10. He told me about his experience in the field, but he also shared some incredible personal stories that have helped shape him into the reporter that he is today. Matt taught me that personal experiences are some of the best things that we can bring into our reporting. It’s not fair to the people we are covering for us to act like robots. Matt learned that the best way for him to cover these protests was to connect with his sources on a deeper level. He taught me to not be afraid to connect with my sources too. 
I hope you all enjoy this episode. It’s one of the more personal ones on this podcast. When I first wrote the script it was almost 19 pages. We brought it down 12, but I know for a fact that I could’ve written more. 

Episode 4: The Scholarly Perspective

Episode Guests:

• Joseph Russomanno, Professor, Cronkite School
• Tim Gleason, Professor Emeritus, University of Oregon
• ​Kristy Roschke, Managing Director of News Collab, Cronkite School

One of my favorite classes that I took at Cronkite was Mass Communication Law. It’s kind of funny because everyone at Cronkite makes such a big deal about this class being the hardest one you’ll ever take, but I absolutely loved it. Now, I absolutely hated the time the class was held at –– 6 to 8:45 p.m. Who in their right mind thought that was the perfect time to have a heavy lecture class? The class only happened once a week, which made up for the timing. 

I soon realized that I wish I had this class twice a week! I really loved the class. My professor, Dr. Russomanno, made the class material interesting. I mean…we’re learning about law here which is a pretty heavy topic with not a lot of excitement (sorry lawyers), but Dr. Russomanno was able to break down the topics so well and make our lectures entertaining. 
One of my favorite lessons from this class was learning about the Marketplace of ideas. This theory states that all ideas in a society can freely compete with each other. After a while, the falsehoods and inaccuracies will filter out and the truth will prevail. However, when we add objectivity into the mix, the Marketplace is stifled. Objectivity forces some of these ideas to be silenced and that’s just not great. 
In this episode, I also learned that objectivity and neutrality are not the same thing. A neutral journalist wouldn’t want to take a side in their story, but an objective journalist would actually take a side and provide some context. As I was writing my script, I realized that objectivity was taught to me from the perspective of neutrality. 
This episode is where I got really nerdy. I really enjoyed talking to these scholars about what they think objectivity should look like in the 21st century.

Episode 5: An Epistemic Conclusion 

Episode Guests:

• Ángel Pinillos, Philosophy Professor, ASU
• Celeste Sepessy, Program Manager News Collab + Assistant Teaching Professor, Cronkite School
• Anita Varma, Assistant Professor + Solidarity Journalism Initiative Lead, UT Austin Moody College of Communication 

We start this episode with a philosophical question: What is truth? Reporting the truth is a journalist’s number one obligation. Dr. Pinillos tells us that philosophers think of the truth as a declarative sentence or belief that corresponds to something in the universe. Seems simple enough, but not quite. As journalists, we usually don’t run fancy science experiments or use math to reach the truth. So, the way we reach the truth depends on the people we talk to. Now, a lot of journalists might read that and think that’s done through official sources. Official sources are easy to get a hold of, sure, but they aren’t always the best source to go to especially when reporting on sensitive topics that affect a certain group of the population who don’t get covered much.

I learned this very quickly in my community engagement reporting class, which is one of the reporting methods that I talk about in this episode. The other one is called solidarity reporting. These two reporting methods are fairly similar, and they don’t follow the typical standard of objectivity that journalists learn to use when starting out in J-school. 
This class was taught by my lovely professor, Celeste Sepessy. She was one of the first people to snap me out of this formulaic journalism method that I was stuck on for so many years. She told me I could use first-person in my final story, I could get personal with my sources and I could convey my emotions to my audience. I thought she was joking with me. 
​For this class, we had a beat, which meant we were focusing our reporting on one particular topic. Our beat was homelessness and housing insecurity. As a part of our reporting method, we held listening sessions with members of the community that are experiencing housing insecurity. My session was at Paz de Cristo, a resource center in Mesa, Arizona. This was the first time that I wasn’t controlling the interview or going into it with a certain idea in my head. My sources talked to me and I just listened. I got my story ideas from my sources, not the other way around. 
Solidarity reporting is focused on a journalist's commitment to social justice, which brings with it some action. It’s actually a much more rigorous method of journalism compared to “objective” journalism because journalists are bringing together perspectives of everyone affected by an issue, starting with people who are directly affected. Anita told me that it’s a lot different than just repackaging a press conference or doing a “he said, she said” story. 
I went back to Paz de Cristo for a second time during that semester to talk to more people. I was incredibly nervous and felt very out of my element. But, I decided to put solidarity reporting and community engagement reporting to the test. It was community breakfast time and I didn’t know what to really do. So, I decided to just sit at one of the tables, grab some breakfast of my own, place my recording device to the side, and tell my sources: “Let’s just talk.” It was a very fulfilling experience and one that taught me a lot. I didn’t need to come prepared with questions. I didn’t need to talk to official sources. I wasn’t there to get a juicy soundbite. I was just listening. And yet, even with my use of first-person and lack of official comment, I still reported the truth! 
This taught me that objectivity isn’t the only way for us journalists to report the truth. In fact, like we learned from the previous episode, it could even stifle the truth. 
I want more journalists to understand that objectivity isn’t the end-all-be-all. Of course, there is a place for official sources in a story, and sometimes, they are the only ones available to comment. But, we shouldn’t always stop there and call it good. We can always try to find different angles to a story, do a follow-up story here and there because it would make our hero, Jerry Van Gasse, extremely happy. 
For me, objectivity still applies in terms of fact-checking, minimizing harm and telling the truth, but we can also bring fairness and transparency into the mix. Fairness means covering all perspectives of affected people, which also includes a journalists’ editorial judgment in terms of which voices to include in the final story. Transparency means showing our audience how we covered a story, explaining our reporting process, where we got our data or who we actually reached out to. After all, we are in this profession to help people make important decisions that can allow a society to thrive. We aren’t here for fame, the next breaking news story or the Emmy nomination. If we can remember that, and apply a little bit of fairness and transparency to our reporting, we will be incredibly successful journalists and regain the public’s trust.