It's a thought-provoking essay and one I'm gonna have to think about for a while, but it also reminds of one thing about that Peggy Noonan piece that really bugged me that no-one else seems to have mentioned: her totally clueless sense of entitlement.
I've canvased on college campuses for a variety of progressive causes and candidates, and one thing I'm certain of: if a 73 year old well-dressed White woman approaches a bunch of college women and starts by saying "Friends, talk to me," their initial instinct is always going to be to turn away. Why on earth does Peggy Noonan think they WANT to talk to her? Someone in her position will more often than not be opposed on every fucking level to what these college kids want.
Turns out that college kids don't want to talk to some old rando who accosts them in order to interrogate them. They've already encountered too many retired folks who've taken on as their personal mission preaching to the college kids about everything (verbatim quote from one such: "Hi. Why do you girls want to murder babies?"). Why does Peggy Noonan think they should trust her? At least the Jehovah's Witnesses just stand there and chat only if they're approached. Maybe if Peggy had worn a big sign around her neck reading 'Trusted Wall Street Journal Reporter' it would have made a difference. Probably not.
Hi Adrian, big fan of the Substack and the podcast. If you've not already read it, I think you'd find this concept of bad faith credentialism really resonates with Olúfémi Táíwò's analysis of epistemic deference here ( https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference ) and in his book Elite Capture. He's also interested in a failure of informal political representation, but not one that always comes from bad faith. Rather, he's interested in how the very experiences and backgrounds that might lead a member of a marginalised group to find themselves as an informal representative in an elite space, could also indicate that they are likely to have had relatively atypical experiences for a member of that group (and so be less representative of the group as a whole). While "epistemic deference" to such representatives ("let's hear from one of the women in the room...") may come from a genuinely laudable place, he argues that it often fails to recognise the filters that prevented so many other marginalised people from getting into the rooms where such conversations happen in the first place. Obviously this can be abused in bad faith ways (eg to manufacture legitimacy for rightwing economic policies that will disadvantage most members of marginalised social groups, but not the most privileged among them), but even if good faith is assumed it seems like a fairly organic outgrowth of the desire among the socially conscious but relatively privileged to find informal representatives of marginalised communities in deeply stratified societies.
I would like to add a few aspects to your thoughts on "bad faith credentialing" and IPR from my perspective as a long-time reporter in crisis and conflict zones.
First, I think you have to keep in mind that for narrative journalism (i.e. especially for reportage), which is one of the things mentioned in the examples, it is absolutely necessary not (only) to talk to representatives (of certain movements, population groups, etc.) who are officially legitimized by whomever and to reproduce their statements.
The principle of seeking one's own interlocutors has a very long tradition in journalism. It is one of the core elements of freedom of the press not to adhere to guidelines about who can talk to whom about what and in what way. At the same time, it is a very good democratic tradition to allow people to speak who have no secure status and who, in case of doubt, represent themselves first and foremost.
Finding "real individuals" as opposed to legitimized speech machines when doing research on the ground - and doing so in good faith! - is therefore the first thing you have to learn as a reporter. This is the only way to convey at least a minimum of "authentic experience".
Admittedly, this is difficult in many ways. As a reporter, I know how much reporting is subject to the pressure of the expectations of the respective media companies, which want to see people on the ground ("in the field") who come close to the world view of the media recipients at home or at least of the respective publisher. I myself have experienced this all too often and have (also) written an entire novel about it ("In Dschungeln. In Wüsten. Im Krieg. Eine Art Abenteuerroman", Berlin, 2022).
What's more, as a reporter, I can always be wrong anyway out of sheer imperfection or prejudice and choose as my interviewee someone who is the exact opposite of the other members of her group. But then at least my name is written under the perhaps slanted text and I have to take responsibility for it.
And: As society, we all have to put up with this if the press is to be at least halfway free. At the same time, I have been arguing for years that a lot would be gained if my colleagues would finally abandon their claim to objectivity (as Rudolf Augstein, founder of "Der Spiegel" famously declared: "Saying what is." - absurd!) and admit their inevitable subjectivity.
On the other hand, of course, there is no such thing as an "authentic" individual. In any case, as a reporter in even the most remote parts of the world, I have seen time and again that members of all kinds of victim groups in particular know exactly how they want to express themselves to the media and what images they want to convey. Mothers of dead fighters in Chechnya know to stop laughing when a camera is nearby. Militiamen in Darfur, Afghanistan or Libya know how to present themselves and their group as the reincarnation of Che Guevara, and so on.
"I'm not trained" - who in the world is that supposed to apply to? Certainly not the Instagram generation on a campus in the US.
It's a thought-provoking essay and one I'm gonna have to think about for a while, but it also reminds of one thing about that Peggy Noonan piece that really bugged me that no-one else seems to have mentioned: her totally clueless sense of entitlement.
I've canvased on college campuses for a variety of progressive causes and candidates, and one thing I'm certain of: if a 73 year old well-dressed White woman approaches a bunch of college women and starts by saying "Friends, talk to me," their initial instinct is always going to be to turn away. Why on earth does Peggy Noonan think they WANT to talk to her? Someone in her position will more often than not be opposed on every fucking level to what these college kids want.
Turns out that college kids don't want to talk to some old rando who accosts them in order to interrogate them. They've already encountered too many retired folks who've taken on as their personal mission preaching to the college kids about everything (verbatim quote from one such: "Hi. Why do you girls want to murder babies?"). Why does Peggy Noonan think they should trust her? At least the Jehovah's Witnesses just stand there and chat only if they're approached. Maybe if Peggy had worn a big sign around her neck reading 'Trusted Wall Street Journal Reporter' it would have made a difference. Probably not.
Hi Adrian, big fan of the Substack and the podcast. If you've not already read it, I think you'd find this concept of bad faith credentialism really resonates with Olúfémi Táíwò's analysis of epistemic deference here ( https://www.thephilosopher1923.org/post/being-in-the-room-privilege-elite-capture-and-epistemic-deference ) and in his book Elite Capture. He's also interested in a failure of informal political representation, but not one that always comes from bad faith. Rather, he's interested in how the very experiences and backgrounds that might lead a member of a marginalised group to find themselves as an informal representative in an elite space, could also indicate that they are likely to have had relatively atypical experiences for a member of that group (and so be less representative of the group as a whole). While "epistemic deference" to such representatives ("let's hear from one of the women in the room...") may come from a genuinely laudable place, he argues that it often fails to recognise the filters that prevented so many other marginalised people from getting into the rooms where such conversations happen in the first place. Obviously this can be abused in bad faith ways (eg to manufacture legitimacy for rightwing economic policies that will disadvantage most members of marginalised social groups, but not the most privileged among them), but even if good faith is assumed it seems like a fairly organic outgrowth of the desire among the socially conscious but relatively privileged to find informal representatives of marginalised communities in deeply stratified societies.
I would like to add a few aspects to your thoughts on "bad faith credentialing" and IPR from my perspective as a long-time reporter in crisis and conflict zones.
First, I think you have to keep in mind that for narrative journalism (i.e. especially for reportage), which is one of the things mentioned in the examples, it is absolutely necessary not (only) to talk to representatives (of certain movements, population groups, etc.) who are officially legitimized by whomever and to reproduce their statements.
The principle of seeking one's own interlocutors has a very long tradition in journalism. It is one of the core elements of freedom of the press not to adhere to guidelines about who can talk to whom about what and in what way. At the same time, it is a very good democratic tradition to allow people to speak who have no secure status and who, in case of doubt, represent themselves first and foremost.
Finding "real individuals" as opposed to legitimized speech machines when doing research on the ground - and doing so in good faith! - is therefore the first thing you have to learn as a reporter. This is the only way to convey at least a minimum of "authentic experience".
Admittedly, this is difficult in many ways. As a reporter, I know how much reporting is subject to the pressure of the expectations of the respective media companies, which want to see people on the ground ("in the field") who come close to the world view of the media recipients at home or at least of the respective publisher. I myself have experienced this all too often and have (also) written an entire novel about it ("In Dschungeln. In Wüsten. Im Krieg. Eine Art Abenteuerroman", Berlin, 2022).
What's more, as a reporter, I can always be wrong anyway out of sheer imperfection or prejudice and choose as my interviewee someone who is the exact opposite of the other members of her group. But then at least my name is written under the perhaps slanted text and I have to take responsibility for it.
And: As society, we all have to put up with this if the press is to be at least halfway free. At the same time, I have been arguing for years that a lot would be gained if my colleagues would finally abandon their claim to objectivity (as Rudolf Augstein, founder of "Der Spiegel" famously declared: "Saying what is." - absurd!) and admit their inevitable subjectivity.
On the other hand, of course, there is no such thing as an "authentic" individual. In any case, as a reporter in even the most remote parts of the world, I have seen time and again that members of all kinds of victim groups in particular know exactly how they want to express themselves to the media and what images they want to convey. Mothers of dead fighters in Chechnya know to stop laughing when a camera is nearby. Militiamen in Darfur, Afghanistan or Libya know how to present themselves and their group as the reincarnation of Che Guevara, and so on.
"I'm not trained" - who in the world is that supposed to apply to? Certainly not the Instagram generation on a campus in the US.