Writing in journalism isn’t hard for everyone. It isn’t hard to write without biases, and it is not hard to diversify your writing staff. The best thing a journalist can do right now is tell stories without division. Segregation, for example, continues to be a divisive subject matter. There are multiple angles to this problem, and multiple solutions. None of them involve divisive frames from journalists writing to a specific audience.
It is hard to escape bias, but the goal is to be down the middle on issues. Divisive reporting tends to lead to people taking positions on issues that often are the complete opposite of one another. The media cannot be allowed to keep people down this path because it only contributes to the problems. With segregation, for example, many people come up with reasons for it to exist because of biases present in studies, news reports, and other media. Biased news can skew viewpoints deliberately, which do nothing to create a dialogue.
Keeping politics out like the first two linked articles did is key. Writing without any underlying agenda or belief guiding the thought process is not necessarily obtainable, but it is possible to keep your personal opinions out of your writing. Journalists have the ability to sway popular perceptions, and that power should be handled responsibly.
An example of a good way to begin the story would be:
“Segregation is a problem of the past and a problem of today. Schools in America are becoming even more segregated than they once were.
Too many educational institutions in the united states are trying to find loopholes around Brown v Board of Education. Practices like child-tracking are used to separate children, and it appears that although the segregation is supposed to be based on learning levels, they are based on race instead.”
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