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Welcome to The Future of Journalism, a podcast from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism.

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I'm Rosmus Nelson, director of the Institute. In this episode, we're looking at the role of opinion writing within journalism,

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including the plays of opinion journalism, specifically in the news media,

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in a world where many of us have many different ways of expressing our opinions and reading other's opinions, including in social media.

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To discuss this and more, I'm joined today by Karen Axia.

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Karen is a Washington Post columnist writing on international affairs, culture and human rights issues.

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She previously worked for the Associated Press and joined the Post in 2014, first as a digital producer in the opinion section,

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later as Global Opinions editor, where amongst other things, she added that Jamal Khashoggi,

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before he was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, she's won numerous awards for her work and has written recently about many issues,

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including missing white girl syndrome, a formative social justice, white backlash and much more.

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As I wrote to her when inviting her to come on the podcast.

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To be honest, I'm personally kind of fatigued with opinion journalism and our research from the Reuters Institute suggests much of the public is,

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too, and feels there is far too much opinion in the news. But I would like to have a renewed appreciation of the genre and its values,

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and I can't think of a better way to do that and to learn more from Karen about how she sees the value of the genre.

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Karen, welcome and thank you for being with us today. Thanks for having me.

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Erasmus, this will be this will be fun and interesting conversation. Great.

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Let's make it interesting, let's maybe start from the top.

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I mean, if you if a reader asked you to explain the difference between opinion journalism and news reporting, how would you respond to that question?

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Yeah, it's a good question. And I think one that we within our industry need to remind ourselves of.

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So from a I think a very basic standpoint, news journalism often is supposed to be unbiased.

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It's supposed to take in all of the different sides of a particular issue.

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And the reporter or writer isn't supposed to clearly have a bias or an opinion or

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make value judgements on the information that they're that they're reporting.

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Often their job is to collect the opinions and the viewpoints in the analysis of others and

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then and then put that together for a basically a the basic answering the questions of the who,

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what, when, where, why, and all of that.

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It's others jobs to perhaps interpret what that news story or negative information or that new development means in a broader context,

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but at a very nuts and bolts basic level. I think that's what that's what news reporting is.

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So when it comes to opinion journalism, I think opinion journalism, we are in in that sphere,

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we are building upon what the news gathering is and we see the news gathering and then we have more freedom to put that into a broader context.

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Right. So a reporter reports man bites dog.

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And that is that is just the facts. There's no value judgement about it.

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On the opinion journalism side, we might say man bites dog again.

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But here's why this matters or here's why this doesn't matter.

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Or here's why the increased rates of man or man men biting dogs is is why our society is about to collapse in the apocalypse.

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And you know what I mean. So that's that's way beyond the bounds of what a news reporter is supposed to do.

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So I think at a very basic level, like reporters gather the news curated and they do frame it in a way.

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But again, the the personal judgements, the value judgements, the moral judgements by the author,

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by the reporter are left out and opinion journalists are able to, again,

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build off of that news gathering and then add judgements, framing, context, illumination,

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and perhaps push it forward and give the space to even ask more questions, perhaps to build on that.

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But I believe that solid opinion journalism. Is built on solid news gathering,

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I think the to feed off of each other and we as opinion journalists couldn't do what we do if it wasn't for great news reporting.

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Would it be fair to say that what you describe is.

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In part, opinion writers doing the things that news reporters might turn to sources for, provide analysis that interprets the events of the day,

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provide moral judgement of the events of the day that in a sense,

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these are journalism taking on a role that news reporters primarily would ask sources to play.

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Yeah, I think that's that's in some case true and you know, news reporters are often turning to experts,

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to academics, to to doctors, to to specialists to get there, to get their interpretation.

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Now, I think what is interesting about opinion journalism today is that there is more space for even those experts

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or academics or analysts to be able to more broadly explain their views rather than just being reduced to,

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you know, a line or two in a quote in a piece. Right.

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So and also and I think this is one thing that people tend to not appreciate or understand very often.

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Opinion journalists particularly I mean, The Washington Post, very often we were reporters.

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We do know how to gather information as well.

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And often we come to journalism.

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You know, we've we've had our beats. We've had our news reporting beats. And often that's how over time we've built up the sources in the networks.

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And, you know, we're not claiming expertise. At the end of the day, we are writers,

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but we do over time build up a certain wealth of of knowledge in our particular areas of interest that we do draw upon.

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So this idea, that opinion journal is good opinion journalism. I'll say good people in journalism also has an element of reporting.

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I do reporting for from my columns, my my colleagues, Catherine Rampell, a great reporter for The New York Times.

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And often, you know, you see in her columns writing on the economy that she, too, is reporting and going out and seeking facts as well.

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It's just that we are given the space to be able to organise the information differently, reframe and add voice style and frankly,

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a bit of personality perhaps, and sometimes to make things a bit more human and relatable so that people can digest digest the news a little easier.

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Other really interesting to hear a bit more from you on one of the things you just highlighted, which is that, you know, with social media,

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with blogs and personal websites, with a bewildering array of newsletters,

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including from people who aren't themselves journalists but experts or or other individuals,

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it sounds like a lot of what you describe opinion journalists offering is being offered in abundance by many other actors,

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including actors that journalists would often turn to as sources,

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whether because they're experts, whether because there are authoritative institutions,

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whether they are people who have lived experience and who are narrating that and sharing the public.

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If there is such an abundance of opinion and so many different ways to sort of share opinions and analysis with white audiences.

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What is the value of opinion from news publishers specifically? Why would organisations that I think often are committed to the idea of seeking truth

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and reporting it as a sort of core of their identity and their purpose in the world?

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Why it's important that they specifically invest also in opinion journalism?

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Yeah, look, one thing one thing people have to realise in general is that we are we are selling a product.

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We are a business. And opinion journalism is part of the journalism information products that an institution like the Post of the Times is offering.

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I think that I mean, two things.

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I think that opinion journalism, again, going back to the fact that I think great opinion journalism is often based on reporting,

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based on still talking to people, still based on getting as close to the story as possible.

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That there is an element of what institutions provide is that, you know, I can say, well, my story,

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my institution, first of all, gets me the the, you know, financial runway to be able to do the reporting,

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to be able to I have a editors copy editors lines of basically quality control

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that that perhaps a lone blogger on a platform who's who's also having to,

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you know, churn out a whole bunch of pieces,

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doesn't have two or three or four or five different pairs of eyes on a particular piece just doesn't have.

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So I think part of what we're offering is saying that, like, look, you see this one opinion piece and yes,

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maybe as my by-line on it, but really in reality, maybe six people's labour has gone into that.

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So you can expect that there's a certain level of quality in that.

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And I think that's also true for for news reporting as well. And so that is that is the advantage to being with a large institution.

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Now, that said, I mean, I think it's also just a part of being part of a larger team helps you to sharpen your arguments.

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I see a lot of lazy, mediocre.

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Writing and thoughts and plenty of scandals, honestly, where people just say, you know what?

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Did anybody else look at that? Who did who did they think would think that that was a good idea before hitting click and publish?

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And and you see a lot of that. I think a lot of that is probably why a lot of people start to lump us all in with that group.

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But honestly, I mean, I think for me, one huge, huge, huge, huge advantage and benefit and frankly,

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privilege that I recognise I have is that there is there is so much that goes behind the scenes of making an opinion piece.

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I'm constantly checked on my facts, checked on my sources, checked on my even like,

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am I being a is this a fair characterisation or is this fair language to use and and being able to debate those ideas around?

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So I again, would say I think maybe private institutions,

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maybe I've talked about this with other colleagues who are kind of in the opinion journalism industry,

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perhaps we can do a better job of explaining to people just like what the literal value of the product that they're getting.

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Like. I think some news organisations have started adding not just the author's by-line and the reporter's by-line,

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but edited by credits some I've seen some places that even put a price tag to how much it costs to produce X, Y, Z piece of investigative journalism.

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I think perhaps you could do a little more to signal just how much work goes into into producing journalism, whether it's opinion or news.

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That being said, I agree. I mean, it does.

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There is a lot of just lazy, uninformed takes out there.

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And I think readers, I think there could be so much more to be done with trying to educate on what makes a valuable op ed,

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what makes it valuable pieces of journalism, what makes a persuasive essay.

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But but again,

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I will say that just because something is labelled an opinion journalism doesn't mean don't forget that like journalism is actually happening.

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There is fact checking. There is there should be fact checking. There should be a clear sense that that writer,

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that author has at least acknowledged or or engaged with the other side to the argument, even if they don't agree.

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And but, yeah, a strong a strong point of view and and a certain voice, I think, to it.

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And it's it's not easy to do. It's it's it's not a it's not an easy thing to do it consistently and do.

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But it's interesting, I mean, I think one perhaps prejudiced a criticism of some opinion journalism could be that it cynically could

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be interpreted as a cheap and predictable alternative to expensive and unpredictable original reporting.

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And that, in particular, if some of the opinion writers in a title, you know,

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hold very predictable points of view that may be aligned with the views of many of the core readers,

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that it's an sort of easy way to keep hardcore,

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loyal readers happy by sort of giving them just more of the same and very few surprises and very little that the readers the wrong way.

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But what I hear you telling me is that really what you see is the value here is that unlike a sort of a,

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you know, a situation in which a private citizen,

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Nelson, expresses his views online, which is entirely of his own account, and no one sort of stands by him or invested in him.

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When Karen Attiya writes for The Washington Post, you know,

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it's a job and you're a professional and you have the backing of an institution that invests in your work and stands by your

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work and has skin in the game in the sense that you have skin in the game and that your professional reputation is on the line.

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But the Post has skin in the game as well, in the sense that the Post is putting its name on on what you publish is out.

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Is that a fair interpretation of what you're saying? Yeah, absolutely.

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So then, you know, then that that leads to the bigger questions of, you know, who news institutions decide to invest in and stand by.

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And and I'm sure, you know, I have I have, you know, colleagues throughout the energy who might not always agree with with what?

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With what I say. But but I think I think the task is to is, you know, I'm I'm on the younger side.

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I'm a daughter of West African immigrants.

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I sometimes I get people who react to me who say, oh, I didn't expect you to be at The Washington Post like that.

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I don't quote unquote look the part which is very often an older, older white male.

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Right. So I think to one big advantage,

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I think in the opinion sphere now is that we are seeing so many more voices that traditionally were left out and not just left out,

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but actively excluded from these institutions and from these pages whose opinions were not sought after.

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His opinions were, and viewpoints and expertise and knowledge were disregarded.

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So I think that I think in many ways, especially as the U.S., we've seen so much over the last several years with with black lives matters,

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with with more push for social justice, climate justice, I think there's a realisation that,

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hey, maybe we've been listening to the wrong people for a very long time.

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And, you know, as we have here in the States, you know, people who are who are looking at what's happening with, say,

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access to access to reproductive health and back to the climate and, you know, kind of jokingly saying,

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well, maybe we should have been listening to women of colour this whole time. And many of us are like, you think, all right, great.

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Let us have the mic. I don't know if there's something to be said for multiple systems falling apart.

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And only now, you know, indigenous people, black people, people of colour are being given the mic because things seem like they're falling apart.

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But, you know, that's a topic for another day. But again, I think that there is there is value to the fact that we have, frankly,

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frankly, a bit more democracy in the sense that there's room for more voices.

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Does it mean the discourse is as neat and organised as perhaps it used to be when the same gatekeepers were in charge?

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No, but I don't particularly see that as a horribly bad thing.

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I again, see that the gates are are opening up ever so slightly.

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But I think that's better than than basically having one or two groups, the same voices perhaps dominating our discourse.

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I mean, I think it's pretty clear for anyone who takes the sort of historical record seriously and has ever

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bothered to do content analysis that many news media historically have been produced by affluent,

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privileged white men like myself about affluent,

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privileged white middle men like myself, and for affluent, privileged white men like myself in much of the world,

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and in case one didn't have enough white men in all the news,

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then you could also turn to the opinion pages and get another serving of the same types of voices speaking up.

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And I mean, I think you offer at a very hopeful, but perhaps also quite charitable interpretation of how much that has changed.

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I mean, you've spoken publicly often about the sort of pushback against what I think you've called the interpretive cloth's,

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the sort of foreign correspondents and think tankers were tasked with explaining foreign events to white Americans.

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Essentially, how much progress do you feel that the American news industry in this case has made in giving the mic to other

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voices on the opinion pages and the ones that are already so prominently featured in the Daily News reporting?

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Yeah, sure, it was is a good way to put it, like we have a there's a lot of work to be done, a lot it's there's still so much more to be done.

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And look, I. I think and have said and we'll keep saying, just having representation, it's a step,

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but it's not enough, I would absolutely like to see numbers of writers,

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of editors of colour that represent more accurately what are national or global demographic really is,

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you know, speaking to somebody who's from the sort of more kind of international diaspora community.

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When, you know, I'm called a minority, I'm like, well, actually, when it comes to the scope of the world, the minority on this call.

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Yeah. You know, but but it's about power, right? It's not about it's not about, you know, lack of of of intelligence or expertise.

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It's about, frankly, white men holding the power and the keys to the keys to the kingdom of this discourse.

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So frankly, there's evidence that actually in newsrooms that diversity has actually gotten worse over the last 10 to 20 years.

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And so now, you know, we've seen since since the George Floyd protests and and all that,

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there have been a lot of promises and a lot of rhetoric, a lot of restructuring and and hiring and which is great.

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At the same time. What needs to be seen and what needs to happen is that the power needs to be shared,

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frankly, that there needs to be white men who are willing to step back,

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give up power, take up a little less space so that those of us who also have knowledge and also have skills and expertise can help.

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And frankly, you know, can can help us do our jobs better.

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I don't look at it as some sort of luxury. I don't look at it as some sort of, like, nice thing to put on the brochure.

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I look at it. It's a direct impact on the quality of our work, frankly, news that's produced only for by like white rich men.

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I don't think that's a quality product because it doesn't accurately serve it doesn't adequately serve the readership.

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And to a certain extent, maybe some people are turning off their ears because they don't see themselves represented in these pages.

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They don't see people who've come from backgrounds or they didn't go to Ivy League schools or where they are first generation immigrants.

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They don't see that. So they're perhaps tired of the pages for different reasons than you are for the

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fact that they feel like these institutions aren't even trying to cater to them.

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And so I think to an extent, that's that's a part of the huge problem is and which, you know,

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those of us who are in position, I think for me, for even for my writing in my reporting,

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I hope that people can feel seeing those who who come from the communities that I come from and

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even some of the communities that I don't come from but that I know have been not served well,

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that I hope not. I hope it's my job. Again, it's not a luxury.

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It's my job to serve them as well.

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So so I think that that gets to a different sort of levels of failures when it comes to journalism and opinion journalism.

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Who haven't we serve, who have we refuse to serve all this time.

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And now that people are more aware and demanding to be served, it's our job to do it.

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I mean, I would just say that there are reams of research, you know, that document, the problems you describe,

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that there are many parts of the public who don't feel represented in the news media,

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who don't feel that the news media understand their lived experience,

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who don't feel that the news media respects and reflects, you know, people like them and like their communities.

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And I don't think we can say that opinion journalism is entirely innocent of all of that.

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I mean, I know that about half a century ago, John Oakes, who created the first op ed page of The New York Times,

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wrote that he felt the newspaper most effectively fulfils its social and civic responsibilities by challenging authority,

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acting independently and inviting dissent.

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I mean, as vote, a cynic might say that in practise, opinion journalism sometimes end up amplifying authority,

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giving a platform for those who already have power and only percent dissent within

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the sort of stale repartee of sort of predictable Left-Right political positions.

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I mean, why do you think it's been so difficult if it is so for opinion journalism to sort of pursue the principles that have

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been put so clearly by yourself and other generations of journalists who care about the importance of journalism,

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of opinion craft?

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Yeah, I think that there's there's definitely, again, a culture sort of dogma of journalism, and it's called the sort of idea of both sides left,

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right, black, white, and that somehow we're supposed to be we're supposed to pretend that we're all neutral,

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that we have this view from nowhere, which honestly, given the power asymmetries in between communities, between various social groups,

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racial groups, is simply the ability to be neutral on the sandbaggers is a luxury that only the privileged can afford.

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And I think if we look back to history, particularly the civil rights history in the US,

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that there's a very strong tradition, for instance, of the black press,

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which not only covered lynchings, civil rights leaders, movements that the white press did not,

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but also used those pages to forcefully advocate for for justice.

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So I think when we when we do talk about I think it's very easy to talk about journalism, big J,

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big tent journalism without also understanding and and disentangling that at least again, at least in this country,

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there has always been a tradition of advocacy of of columnists who have used their platforms to, for instance,

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go into into communities and and report on them and then advocate for the policies that would help those communities that,

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you know, they spent time with.

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So I guess I again, I think that what we do need is, first of all, I think even as within us, as an industry, to so clearly,

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like elucidate the standards that we have should have even sometimes I find myself thinking that it seems like news reporters also have this.

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That sends that opinion journalism is just, you know, waking up one day and just having thoughts and putting them out there,

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but but at least, you know, for me and the writers that I've worked with, it is it is a rigorous it is still a rigorous process.

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And we are thinking about how do we how do we help people?

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Digest Contextualise, I think a lot of readers,

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a lot of people are looking to to understand how they should think about the news that's coming their way, how they should organise their thoughts.

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And me personally, I can only speak for myself. I often write in a way that says I don't necessarily have all the answers.

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What I'm doing is I'm I, too, am processing the different sides of an event of of a certain person's statements and trying to make sense of it.

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And I'm inviting you as a reader along that journey with me.

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I eventually will figure it out, figure it out together. That's just personal.

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You know, my my my style.

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But I look, it's it's it's I think we as humans, we as humans want to know other humans think, oh, we like to get inside, inside, inside their brains.

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But, you know, I think for me, you know, I at least can promise to people who read me that and I have done the homework,

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I have done as much reading as much, speaking to people as I possibly can under deadline.

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Mind you, I think you should appreciate that we don't often give ourselves two to three weeks to think about what we should think about.

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The Facebook outage happened yesterday. Our jobs are to try to come up with something usually pretty quickly.

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So but yeah, we're all part of this process of kind of understanding and processing and organising and making sense of of this world.

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And we're not always going to get it right.

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I have I've had to even, you know, have to revisit my positions on certain things in the past publicly and being able to say,

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you know what, I didn't quite look at this correctly that time.

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Here's how I'm involved in it. And I wish journalists, more journalists had more courage to do that.

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I also think that I do think I wish there was more, as you said, raspiness quality.

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I wish there's more courage, frankly, to to go against established dogma and to to really challenge authority,

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to not just sit and take down without, you know, critique criticism of what people in power say.

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And I count people in power is not just politicians, but frankly, frankly, I think when I wrote something criticising Beyonce,

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I think I got a lot of messages of people asking whether or not I was like digitally OK because they were so afraid of her fanbase.

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You know, that that goes and silences criticism.

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So I think our job again, and not just is opinion journalists, but I, I really am guided by the fact that our job is to hold the power to account.

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And I would like to see more of that instead of I think what we're seeing sometimes, which is cosying to power being adjacent to power.

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And I got it. It's it's attractive and it's it's got it's a particular currency and in a certain way of doing things in the journalism world.

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But but I think our job is, as the saying goes, is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

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And I think for for opinion journalism, we have a special runway to be able to say,

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yeah, this person X of importance said this or does this, but it's not right.

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It's not right. It's not true. It's not it's harmful.

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And we also have the power to say this afflicted person or afflicted community deserves support, deserves there's more power in their own lives.

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So I'm pretty sure if you have to say I'm pretty kind of black and white when it comes

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when it comes to that and I choose poetry stories I'm not interested in amplifying,

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just sort of lazily amplifying folks to who already have the power.

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You already have the platform. What's more interesting are those who don't and and how to, I guess,

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trying to balance the power as much as we can a little bit, if that all makes sense.

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As opinion journalist, if I can help tell the story of somebody who's whose story might not get out

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there because the city or the school board or the police union has more allies,

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more friends, more money,

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if I can help balance that power a little bit during opinion journalism and tell people this person is who you should be paying attention to,

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then I feel like I've done my job. Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.

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I can't think of a better place to end than with what is one of my personal favourite descriptions of the purpose of journalism.

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I'm so glad that you that you highlighted that.

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Our guest today was Karen Atai, columnist at The Washington Post, made up of equal parts curiosity, courage, humility and a commitment to reporting.

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Karen, thank you so much for joining us.

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Make sure to follow our podcast channel and Spotify or Apple podcast so you don't miss the next episode if you don't want

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to miss inducements to subscribe to our weekly newsletter by clicking the link on our Twitter buya or on our home page.

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Thank you again for joining us and thanks for listening to the future of journalism.

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I'm Rasmus Nielsen. We'll be back soon.