Maryam Jameel Is Observant Of How Sources Respond To Her

Mark here for a quick second. I’m trying to ascertain how often my newsletter subscribers listen to episodes in a given month (0 times, 1, 2, 3, 4). Can you please comment with your reply (even if your answer is 0- it’s fine- some people just like the newsletter)

I’m Luke DiStefano and I’ll be helping Mark with the newsletter for a while. I’m a student at The College of New Jersey majoring in Journalism & Professional Writing, with a minor in Creative Writing. Outside of this newsletter, I am the Nation & World editor at The Signal newspaper, and I am a published poet—with my poetry collection “the gentlemen gallery” available on Amazon.  

On this episode of The Journalism Salute, Mark Simon spoke to Maryam Jameel, an engagement reporter for ProPublica—an independent nonprofit newsroom focused on workers' rights, occupational safety, immigration and the federal government. Being an engagement reporter means both connecting with your audience and connecting with sources, and Maryam just finished working on a campaign featuring ads on DC Metro cars, encouraging federal workers to share their stories. She talked about that in the episode and the two also spent time talking about the world of reporter-source interactions

Maryam, like all reporters, deals a lot in one-to-one interactions, all in the effort to platform the stories she finds her duty to tell as a journalist. All journalists, on some level, understand this truth of the field: you have to be able to talk to people. 

Maryam, like all journalists, is fully capable of this. And yet…

Maryam is Muslim and  “I cover my hair (with Hijab),” she said, then noted later “I have been very fortunate. I think in general in life, people have been very nice to me. But it is something that changes the way that I think people receive me.”

“With Latin American immigrants or Latin Americans, I receive a positive curiosity. I guess I end up talking about my heritage and my religion … talks with sources that the average person wouldn’t have. 

“One project I did when I was with The Center for Public Integrity was in rural red Pennsylvania, and that's the most intimidated I remember feeling because of my way that I present. It was a project about fracking, which also makes people very angry. I remember feeling vibes in the air and then doing research and seeing that vibe was more than just a vibe.”

Maryam talked about this more in the episode. She’s a case that reminds us that as much as journalists certainly write as if they are above our biased world, we still must move through and be tied down by said biased world. The job simply just isn’t created equal for every reporter, as intersectionality can sometimes manifest itself in this very tangible way—by preventing one from engaging with the people they’re supposed to be informing. 

These hurdles don’t just manifest themselves from the public either. It’s easy to view the newsroom as this neutral think-tank of sorts, but in reality, it’s still just a group of people attempting to do a task together—which is equally prone to these kinds of interpersonal conflicts which arise in the context of more marginalized identities. 

Maraym recalls an instance of a past tension with a “male, caucasian, older editor,” who “comes from a really different time and set of experiences within journalism where ethics and the standard way to do something was different from now.” 

For as much as journalistic objectivity can often be thought of as removing bias from one’s stories, there also comes into play a willingness to simply ‘get the job done,’ as it were. 

Maraym certainly agrees, saying “what we both think might be quite different. We both have good intentions and really figuring that out and having things turn out in a way that is both true and not harmful and hopefully beneficial. Sometimes it is quite a challenge.”

I’ve had my fair share of experiences in this way, especially when it comes to covering stories close to one’s heart. There’s a certain double-edged-sword aspect to being a journalist with a natural capacity for empathy. You want to cover the stories close to you, as you feel most educated and passionate about the topic. However, conversely, sometimes it's that removed perspective which can get at the heart of matter maybe even better than you can.

It’s a tough internal debate I know myself and a lot of other reporters have had when a story they’re personally invested in is presented to them. Even if you try to be self-aware of your bias to where you on-board a co-writer for the sake of a neutral voice in the story, it can be flat-out difficult to work with a journalist who disagrees with what you deem objective fact.

After all, journalism is all about the facts. We journalists aren’t fond of situations in which nuance requires subjectivity.

However, it’s not all bad, as she even goes so far as to say “It's one of my favorite things about this though, that feeling of when you're done, what we really try to do at ProPublica is you are not exaggerating a single thing. There's nothing in there that's said about anyone that's negative or positive that they haven't had a chance to clarify that. We really try to be perfectly true and fair.” 

Maryam’s salute: “The journalists who have been reporting on the genocide in Gaza. Approximately 250 have died just in these last few years.”