[Editor’s Note: Please see this letter from the editor for an explanation for why this piece was published without a contact.]
“We [the Record editorial board] are considering how, in striving for ‘objective’ journalism, we have failed to fully acknowledge the inherent positionalities and biases that every editor and reporter brings to the table,” the Record board wrote in an editorial dated Aug. 25, 2020, in which its members reflected on the ways the Record has benefited from and perpetuated white supremacy, and failed Black and Brown students.
Three years later, the Record’s recent publication of an opinion piece is ridden with hateful rhetoric and propagandistic language — selectively-presented facts that frame Israeli violence in Palestine as a necessary tool to counter Hamas without addressing Israel’s decades-long apartheid against Palestinians. It also included the factual error that attacks on Israeli civilians preceded the creation not just of Hamas but also the state of Israel — which is impossible given that there were no Israelis before 1948, a correction the Record only made on Oct. 24, nearly a week after the op-ed had been published and been processed by its readers. This was all done under the guise of “journalistic objectivity” and supposed endorsement of freedom of speech.
The Record’s commitment to “objectivity” and “freedom of speech” in the face of mass ethnic cleansing of Palestinians by Israeli authorities shaping into a genocide is not a display of journalistic integrity to be proud of when, as your board noted in 2020, the Record’s blind reliance on “misguided and oversimplified journalistic ideals has left broad swaths of the campus community feeling underrepresented and unheard.” Your platforming of a piece with factual inaccuracy and hateful speech not only conveys the Record’s dangerous failure in doing due diligence on its content but, more importantly, directly devalues and dehumanizes Palestinian and historically marginalized lives and perpetuates the damaging narrative that there is room for debate in the midst of human rights violations.
Given your commitment to “produce more equitable, representative and comprehensive coverage,” now is the chance to use the Record’s platform to question the shameful silence of tenured faculty on genocide and the failure of senior staff to demand a ceasefire from their complicit government. This is the chance to underscore the institutional violence that continues to silence Black and Brown faculty, staff, and students. To highlight the grief and rage of members of the student body who feel unsupported, invisible, and fearful of retaliation and doxxing for simply protesting the bombing and massacre of an indigenous people.
In another Record editorial, where you asked the College to be proactive in the wake of bias incidents in 2022, you wrote, “We should all be conscious of the spaces we occupy and the communities of which we are a part. Consider who is included and excluded in those environments. Then, take action to rectify those asymmetries.” Your chosen recourse at this moment not only leaves asymmetries of power intact but also actively worsens them by increasing the labor marginalized students already have to carry out on this campus every day — the labor of pointing out fallacies in the content you publish and the labor of countering harmful rhetoric, demanding our right to life and safety, and carrying the weight of dehumanization and injustice in our bodies. The editorial from August 2020 states, “If a paper is meant to serve its community, we have failed in faithfully living up to that responsibility and instead have created a sense of distrust between the Record and minoritized groups.” Even three years later, this remains resoundingly true.
That an opinion piece is not your direct reporting does not absolve you of your responsibility and accountability toward content that goes under your editorial review and is disseminated via your platform and, subsequently, the harm that content causes. While your editorial policy states that the publication of an op-ed “does not indicate an endorsement of the views therein,” the scale of what an opinion can do with your platform — especially in our small Williams community, which can often be a news desert — is widely different from its reach without your platform. And what happens to those who have been harmed by an opinion that you published? To the ones who may be bolstered by this publication in their retaliation against everyone speaking for, at the very least, the rights of the Palestinian people not to be slaughtered in their own homes? To the ones who may feel justified in their hatred because of hateful speech mirrored at them on a communal platform? To the ones who have been made to feel immeasurably unsafe in and fearful of their community?
To your credit, you did “balance” the publication of this piece with the publication of a pro-Palestinian opinion piece, and this would be a perfectly fine strategy… were the situation balanced. You cannot commit to not picking sides or presenting “both” sides when the idea of the two sides existing on a level playing field is a farce. This is a humanitarian crisis of a staggering magnitude, with one “side” wielding disproportionate strength with the support of the world’s most powerful governments and economies and the other “side” facing displacement, violence, death, and the questioning of their right to exist on a daily basis.
In a country where freedom of speech has been selectively granted to elite white voices, journalistic ethics do not translate to an irresponsible pursuit of “neutrality” and a mindless commitment to spotlighting all voices as they come. Journalistic ethics are to acknowledge that the media is a facilitator of marginality. Journalistic ethics are doing everything in your power — which you have much of — to prevent additional harm to marginalized lives. To align as an organization with those who have been systematically devalued. To accept that the history of journalism in this country, and the history of the Record, is a history of white supremacy and that you, as journalists, have a responsibility to attempt to begin repair of centuries of devaluation of Black and Brown lives.
On a campus with a legacy of settler colonialism, disastrous foreign missions, and marginalization of people of color, view your platform for what it is: a privilege and a responsibility. Responsibility first not to abstract ideas of journalistic ethics but to real, tangible people and communities. In your journalism, you have forgotten, time and again, that it is as much your responsibility not to let the most vulnerable members of this community feel more unsafe, unwelcome, and unheard than they already do, as it is your responsibility to report and publish fairly. The least you owe us is no more harm.
Journalistic integrity would be to stand with the occupied people who have every power in the world, especially Western media, turned against them as they continue to lose lives and homes on a horrific scale, even as you read this piece. Journalistic integrity would be to own up to the responsibility towards community repair on a campus with a devastating history of harm and brutality towards BIPOC students. Journalistic integrity would be to push the Record to continually, honestly, and proactively reflect on its role in this disastrous history and work to break down hierarchies of power that allow this organization to perpetuate harm to BIPOC students.
Recommit to the diverse, fair, and just reporting that so many of your editorial boards have claimed commitment to. Here is an immediate, tangible way: Break with the policy that prevents you from retracting the piece, a policy that is also wholly incompatible with your proclaimed commitment to reporting fairly by this community. Apologize. Repair.
Again, allow us to borrow words from your 2022 editorial: Your opinion on journalistic ethics should not overshadow others in this conversation. Palestinian students, BIPOC students, and international students are sharing their demands publicly and making their voices heard — the Record must listen.
