Start Here: Truth Will Out—Or Will It?

Although the current relationship between news, truth, power, profit, politics, and “the people” may feel more strained than ever, the role of journalism in a democratic society has always been complicated. That role, at least in part, has been to broker trust with the public—and to be seen as purveyors of pure, unbiased information. But where our information has come from, who has shaped it, and how and to whom and in what forms it has spread may not always be so clear—and may often be at the very epicenter of power itself.

Journalist Anabel Hernández has committed her life—and indeed risked her life—to investigate and root out corruption in many forms, including drug-cartel violence, human trafficking, and abuses of governmental power. In doing so, she points a finger not only at individual perpetrators, but also at the information-manipulation and unbalanced systems of power that create and enable those abuses in the first place. What’s the antidote? According to Hernández, journalism. “Journalists can help people to have the correct, and accurate, and in-the-right-moment information to be able to make their own decisions,” she says. That is “the only way to have the people become more powerful.”

It’s no surprise that the words “legendary,” “iconic,” and “historically influential” have been summoned to describe the impact of the Chicago Defender, a Chicago newspaper that even the encyclopedia minces no words in labeling “the most influential African American newspaper during the early and mid-20th century.” Among the paper’s undertakings? Fair housing, the integration of the Armed Forces, the Great Migration, equal education and employment opportunities for Black Americans, and the diversification of the press room. Not to mention managing to stay in print—literally—for more than 114 years, before finally converting to an online format this summer. Fifth-generation Defender publisher (and direct descendant of its founder, Robert S. Abbott) Myiti Sengstacke-Rice joins us to reflect on the vital role the newspaper played for so many generations of Chicagoans, and what comes next.

The Guardian’s review of former New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson’s Merchants of Truth begins like this: “This book about the commercial takeover of the news business is sure to make a lot of powerful people very angry.” Indeed it has. Described as “an unsparing look at U.S. journalism’s moral decline” and a “passionate defense of old-school journalism,” the book suggests that the integrity of a once-trusted industry has been corroded—and points at the pressures of solvency and the lure of advertising dollars, an insatiable news cycle, and the influx of new media as the culprits.

Header Image: Matt Popovich | Unsplash