Journalism is in trouble. A combination of economic vulnerability, opaque algorithms, and disinformation threatens the very foundation of independent reporting.
Fortunately, there are people who care deeply about their beloved profession and are finding ways to address these threats.
In this series, I intend to find out how individuals are working to make journalism more resilient. In today’s conversation: why all journalists should become social activists.
“Aren’t you becoming too much of an activist?”, a Turkish colleague asked after Fréderike Geerdink moved from Istanbul to Diyarbakir in 2012. The question haunted her. Was she losing her beloved profession, and with it herself? Or had she finally seen the light?
Years later, speaking via video call from her home in Utrecht, the Netherlands, Geerdink has her answer. In her new book All Journalism is Activism[1], she argues that all journalists have a duty to hold power to account.
“If journalists act with integrity”, she says, “they are by definition activist”. In practice, however, many end up supporting those in power. It’s an uncomfortable truth.
“I find it shocking that I had to travel 4000 kilometers to understand what was happening in my own country”, she now says.
A turning point
Geerdink’s mother always knew she would become a journalist as she was already writing books in elementary school. But it took working among Kurdish colleagues and interviewing countless citizens to truly understand what journalism should be.
Between 2006 and 2020, Geerdink worked as a correspondent in Turkey and Kurdistan covering the Kurdish struggle. Her move to Diyarbakir in 2015, the largest Kurdish-majority city in Turkey, became a turning point in her career.
There, surrounded by people whose stories were systematically ignored, she began questioning everything she had learned in journalism school.
However, her renewed coverage of Kurdish perspectives also provoked President Erdoğan of Turkey, whose patience had run out. Later that year, his government charged Geerdink with making propaganda for a terrorist organization. Though she was acquitted, she was deported back to the Netherlands.
Back home, her perspective had fundamentally changed. “I started looking differently at my own country and the journalism that I knew”, she explains. The supposed neutrality she’d been taught now seemed more like complicity.
It was time for Geerdink to abandon her detached watchdog role.
A journalist’s confession
When Geerdink asks journalists who consider themselves as detached watchdogs, most hands go up proudly. But for her, this is not something to celebrate. “I see it more as a confession”, she says.
According to research by Thomas Hanitzsch, a professor of communication at LMU Munich, journalists typically see themselves in one of three roles: supporters of power, detached watchdogs, or critical change agents.
Most journalists in Western countries prefer to see themselves as impartial observers who present both sides without taking a position.
But what these journalists fail to see is their own dominant position in society. “Their supposed neutrality”, she argues, “is nothing other than viewing the world through white, male glasses”.
But white glasses are tinted glasses too. And more problematically, they’re the same glasses worn by people in power.
Thus, journalists describing themselves as neutral only prove that they don’t see their position. “Journalism that does not try to achieve something is really not journalism. Isn’t it journalism’s core task to hold power to account?”, Geerdink says.
Journalists must, after decades of pretending to be neutral, take an honest look in the mirror. What they’ll see is that they’ve only convinced themselves they’re objective watchdogs. “Everyone views the world in a specific way”, she emphasizes, “so true objectivity does not exist”.
That’s why all journalists should become critical change agents: they must dare to stand for something.
Start by listening
But how can journalists actually do this? To start, journalists must build trust with the powerless – the marginalized groups who have no institutional power.
“If you were a reporter in 1930s Berlin wanting to know what was really going on, did you need access to Hitler or to the Jewish people?” she asks.
Yet in many countries around the world, having access to those in power is what brings you prestige.
“Many journalists say they will listen to everyone, but this is simply not possible”, Geerdink points out. Journalists have access to certain people – normally those in power. Journalists do not have access to marginalized groups because these groups simply do not trust them.
It is essential for journalists to take the voices of marginalized communities seriously. “When Palestinians warned the world about genocide in 2023, journalists should have taken this seriously and conduct thorough research instead of dismissing it”.
Even now, she notes, many journalists still hesitate to use the word genocide because it says something about ourselves: we are complicit in the genocide by Israel.
Introspection
Journalists should also reflect on their own prejudices. “Often, it is older white men who continue to deny their biases”, she observes. “Luckily, younger journalists are more flexible”, she adds with a knowing wink.
Change takes time, but the stakes are high, she emphasizes. “Journalism is also a matter of life and death. “If we, as Western media, had immediately recognized that a genocide was taking place, we could have saved thousands of lives”.
Despite the somber outlook in the world, Geerdink remains hopeful. “The hope lies with grassroots people trying to bring about change.” Her book seems to be helping with this: established institutions like ANP and other newsrooms have invited Geerdink to discuss these challenges.
The world is screaming for courageous journalism that speaks truth to power. For Geerdink, that time is now.
[1] For the Dutch readers, here Geerdink’s book: https://www.debezigebij.nl/boek/alle-journalistiek-is-activisme/?srsltid=AfmBOooJQicQPa2JYV1t87CqZoYYJ__N1OewxCLxt17tozcf2heUKrVk