Life has been a constant whirlwind of growth, travel and reporting since I began studying for my graduate degree at UT-Austin's School of Journalism. A few days ago – amidst reporting on a few articles for the Texas Observer, filming for my Master's report and trying to remember this week is Spring Break – I received notice that I was accepted to the Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics (FASPE).
At the end of May I'll be traveling to New York, Germany and Poland to immerse myself in the history of Holocaust. I and 13 other accepted applicants will study the ethics of journalism during World War II and the importance of reporting and bearing witness. Posted below is the essay I submitted to them, detailing my motivations for applying to the program.
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Tommi Urbanski was a small, wrinkly brown woman with a short, white mop of hair and glasses. In sixth grade she sat down in my Unitarian Universalist Sunday religious education class and spoke about her time served in a Japanese internment camp. Her story would have been heartbreaking and anger-inducing for any adult, let alone any Texan sixth grader. For a few enraged pre-teen months afterward, I immersed myself in historical fiction and non-fiction accounts of the Holocaust. I was outraged that I had not been taught about the camps in school and needed to find out what else I didn’t know about such a stain on history. I read Maus I and II, Number the Stars, The Diary of Anne Frank and others. I was hooked; fascinated with the ethical choices protagonists and antagonists addressed during wartime. The intense, and sometimes morbid, stories of hope and strength embodied my growing obsession with the importance of telling stories.
The deeper understanding for my love of storytelling began in sixth grade and I continue today as a professional journalist working on my Master of Arts degree at the University of Texas in Austin. I grew up in Austin to two doctor parents who pushed me to think critically, be ethically discerning and respect dignity in all human conditions. I want to tell the stories of under-reported communities and report on social services, education and health. My ultimate life goal is to be an editor of a radio news program, magazine or the section editor of a newspaper. I want to organize citizen journalism workshops for marginalized communities that focus on the importance of – and the ethics behind – storytelling from the primary source.
This past summer I had a taste of leading such a workshop with eight local CTC International staff members in Maai Mahiu, Kenya. I gave a one-hour interactive lecture on the how-to and importance of blogging the small successes and setbacks of their community.
Before I traveled to Kenya, I traveled to Germany in June with my family. Standing amidst the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin was haunting. The echoing laughter of children running through the large concrete rectangles, and the murmur of nearby adults drifting through the open spaces, gave me chills. I walked through the streets of Berlin, seeing too many small square brass “cobblestones” memorializing where a Jewish family or person had been forced to leave their home during the war. My family and I visited the Museum of Medical History at the Charité Hospital in Berlin and read about the unethical practices of the SS German physicians. Being among these reminders of hurt gave me the inspiration for how to tackle the workshop in Kenya: We tell our stories because no one else can tell them for us. We tell our stories to discontinue for future generations the wrongdoing in our own lives.
As a journalist I face ethical decisions in almost every story I report. I have reported/am in the process of reporting stories on complimentary therapeutic massage for the terminally ill, local water rights policy, voting access for people with disabilities, and young adults aging out of foster care communities, to name a few. While reporting these stories I dealt with confidentiality issues, source protection, personal privacy and appropriate wording for communities who deal often with discrimination. But I never put the story and the deadline before the facts. Unlike much of mainstream media today, I retain the news ideal of publishing solid reporting without a loss of integrity or empathy for the source and subject.
The most important ethical decision, I believe, is choosing what to report on; the devious and the disenfranchised so often go ignored.
I truly believe that the more we – as journalists and as individuals – study the “why” behind transgressions, the less the future will repeat the past. I want to continue the dialogue of ethical issues in how we treat traumatic events and how we enable them to occur. How we practice and portray ourselves as journalists is just as important as how we portray our subjects and sources.
Recently, I blogged my disappointment in how U.S. media approached the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut. The news came across as sensationalist and careless. Major respected news corporations were once again putting the story before the facts and putting the people after the story. So I continue to seek out opportunities that will allow me to further investigate the “why” behind journalism today.
I can think of no better way to continue my education in the ethics of journalism, than acceptance into the Journalism FASPE program. Through this fellowship I will reach a better understanding of my own professional ethics and how I can use my ideals and beliefs to better the profession as a whole.