News Over Noise Episode 108: A Pro-democracy Case Against Objectivity
“My experience is that audiences want us to be truthful and fair, but they don’t want us to be robots.” That’s a quote from a blog post by journalist Lewis Raven Wallace—a post that led to him being fired from Marketplace. Wallace has become an outspoken critique of the notion that “objectivity” is a catchall for accurate journalism. In this episode of News Over Noise, hosts Leah Dajches and Matt Jordan talk with Wallace about the concept of journalistic neutrality and about what can be done to restore some lost public trust in journalism.
Special thanks to guest:
Lewis Raven Wallace (he/they/ze) is an award-winning independent journalist based in Durham, North Carolina, the author and creator of The View from Somewhere book and podcast, and a current Ford Global Fellow and Abolition Journalism Fellow with Interrupting Criminalization. He previously worked in public radio, and is a long-time activist engaged in prison abolition, racial justice, and queer and trans liberation. He is white and transgender, and was born and raised in the Midwest with deep roots in the South.
News Over Noise is a co-production of WPSU and Penn State’s Bellisario College of Communications.