Following national and school-wide controversies, students of color want the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and ASU to do more to support them throughout their academic careers.
After the death of George Floyd in May, journalists and students of color took to social media to discuss their experiences of racism in the industry and at school.
This year has brought about a “much-needed” discussion on how journalists of color are perceived and cover stories during a turbulent time mired by not just a pandemic but also a social movement, said Kiarra Spottsville.
Spottsville, president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) at ASU and vice president of the Native American Journalists Association (NAJA) at ASU, has been vocal on social media about racism and the lack of diversity within journalism and at the Cronkite school.
Over the summer, Spottsville and other journalism students formed the Multicultural Student Journalists Coalition (MSJC) and have been looking into the treatment of students of color at the Cronkite school.
“When we look back on it, we see that students of color are oftentimes kind of pushed aside,” Spottsville said.
Within three months the Coalition demanded the removal of both Sonya Duhé, a former Loyola University professor, from her position as incoming dean of the Cronkite School and Rae’Lee Klein from her position as the station manager at Blaze Radio, a student-led radio station at ASU, which both sparked from tweets on Twitter.
The Cronkite school teaches students not to show favor when reporting and brand themselves as neutral because it can affect their objectivity. The coalition and other students are challenging this as they examine how their identities intersect with their roles as journalists.
Nicole Shinn, co-president of MSJC Cronkite, said she and other students feel that Cronkite students, particularly students of color, can’t express their support for Black Lives without fear of repercussion from the school.
“White students don’t have that same fear of the faculty and admin at Cronkite that students of color do when speaking out against things,” Shinn said.
McKenzie Allen-Charmley, a Dena’ina Athabaskan from the Eklutna tribe and Black student journalist, said she felt compelled to take down BLM on her twitter in response to suggestions that she could be perceived as biased.
“I’m glad that this kind of Cronkite journalism movement is happening because I never knew how guarded I was about hiding aspects of my culture or my ethnic identity because I was worried that my peers or my audience or my supervisors would look down upon that,” Allen-Charmley, secretary of NAJA at ASU, said.
Some students bring up a double standard in how Cronkite is dealing with social media.
“For students of color, we have to worry about if I tweet this, will I get a job? If I tweet this, will I get in trouble with the Cronkite school,” Spottsville said. “But then we have other students who are white and they can post whatever they want and face minimal consequences for.”
Alexis Young, NABJ at ASU director of special affairs, said she wants to see more action from Cronkite, “because I feel like change is something we always talk about in theory, but we never put it into practice.”
Raphael Ruiz, one of the students who formed MSJC Cronkite, said he wants Cronkite to be better when it comes to serving Black, Brown and low-income students.
“It’s really hard for me being from a low-income, brown neighborhood, to try and recommend going to the Cronkite school when I know myself I’ve experienced racism within the walls of this institution,” Ruiz said.
Ruiz said he believes that people feel the need to judge him by a different standard based on his Chicano identity.
“I feel like in my reporting, oftentimes I get this check on whether I’m being biased or not in the way in which I cover the community, which is mainly Black, brown communities,” Ruiz said.
A narrow perspective of objectivity has been mentioned numerous times as a reason for scrutinizing the work of students of color, especially when it comes to covering their own communities.
“We’re always just walking on a fine line; like I know with my Twitter, I’m always extremely scared about accidentally liking something and people might think, ‘Oh no, like these are her political views’ and whatnot,” said Farah Eltohamy, the diversity officer for the State Press and a Cronkite student.
Eltohamy says her identity as both an Egyptian and Muslim American has given her more power as a reporter.
“I had sources where I was literally, you know, flipping from like Arabic to English in my interviews,” Eltohamy said. “I would actually tell their stories accurately because I have that same lived experience.”
She came to Cronkite feeling that her identity made her biased, but through her work, she realized that was wrong.
Her work involves helping reporters who cover sensitive issues, and she leads a diversity council filled with staff from different marginalized groups that works on several initiatives.
“Because this field lacks so much diversity, so many communities are covered so inaccurately or just painted in this false light because we don’t have a diverse set of reporters to be able to report on a diverse set of communities,” Eltohamy said.
In response to claims and allegations that these kinds of concerns weren’t being heard, the Cronkite school launched the Cronkite Experience Project.
Vanessa Ruiz, the diversity director for diversity initiatives for the Cronkite school, said that over the summer conversations were held with students, alumni and faculty to receive feedback on how the school can provide a better experience.
“There are eight working groups in total. Each one of them tackling a specific area that leadership has identified as an area that we want to work on.”
These areas included concepts like student experiences, recruitment and retention of diverse faculty members, and better informing of students on where and how to report a claim of misconduct.
“And so right now, it’s going to be a third party ASU office that is handling all those complaints in the office of Student Rights and Responsibilities,” Ruiz said. “We really want to make that process as transparent as possible.”
She is hopeful for what will come out as the initiatives start kicking off in the next few weeks.
“It has been so incredibly moving, inspiring,” Ruiz said. “It makes us realize that, again, while the Cronkite school is so good at so many things, (there are) still areas that we need to work on.”
Contact the reporter at lzambra2@asu.edu.
