A Voice for the Voiceless

There is one thing all leaders have in common. They’ve all stood in a room and were mocked for what they believed in. More importantly, they left that room and continued to believe.

In October, I attended a CNN roundtable discussion on the 2008 election. Naturally, the conversation led to the economy and its downturn. Toward the end, I mustered up the nerve to ask the respected panel full of news executives and respected journalists a question about over-reporting. My question, perhaps poorly phrased, was how to keep the audience interested in a story that was so over-reported. How do you get people to care?

And the laughter came. “I think people do care, you may be the only who doesn’t.”
“You can’t force someone to care, you can only tell them the story,” said the president of a popular political blog.

I wanted to scream at him, but the mic had already been passed back to the host. The panel full of privileged individuals from generations of wealthy families all agreed that you can’t force the audience to care about issues. I wanted to tell them that they were wrong. I wanted to lecture them on the responsibility of journalists to draw the viewers in and make them care. But I knew they would think I was naïve and perhaps blinded by foolish optimism.

After that morning, I believed that true change started with anger. I was so angry at myself, at that room, at that CNN president. I was angry at the ignorance and the audacity to just brush away my ideas as if they meant nothing. But only a few weeks later when I saw Barack Obama win the presidency, the anger faded and hope was reborn.

In my work as a journalist, I’ve met people who have tuned out politics and journalism completely. The two fields are remarkably similar in how they treat the average individual. In the words of Edward R. Murrow, "The American public is more reasonable, restrained and more mature than most of our industry's program planners believe." If you treat the audience as if they have a valuable opinion, they will express it. Some may go overboard, but others will most likely appreciate being treated as thinking individuals. President-elect Obama certainly appealed to the average person. New voters turned up at the polls in record numbers. Citizens who couldn’t care less about politics were all of a sudden joined together in believing they could unite and change the norms that have been accepted for centuries.

I pray each day that the same thing will happen in journalism. Today, when we turn on the news, you don't see diversity. The reporters may be diverse, but the stories are not. As an Asian woman, I really can’t see this country with an Asian president. I can’t even see an Asian senator. Asians are the fastest growing minority next to Hispanics. Many go to college and make great lives for themselves. But many live in poverty. With lack of money comes lack of opportunity. That is why I chose to be a journalist. Giving a voice to the voiceless is how change comes about. I’ve done stories on Hispanic families whose lives are in such despair that they can never imagine what it’s like to own a home much less lose one in a bad economy. I met a black mother who lost her son in a gang-related drive-by shooting. When I pitched that story to a news station, they brushed it off as old news not worth reporting.

When everyone around you is telling you to give up, you hear a voice that faintly tells you to go on. There has to be a constant push to force the voice inside you to grow louder. The time has come for change in Washington. I believe the time has come for change in news.