Journalism Reality Check

The managing editor of Ocean FM, in her radio station's control room.

"Everyone listens to you, everyone knows who you are, but you don't make any money." This was how one radio journalist characterized her father's lament that his smart, talented daughter insisted on being a radio reporter.

The U.S. Embassy in Cotonou, Benin, invited five Beninois women journalists to a roundtable discussion with me about what it's like to be in our profession, and what we can learn from each other. The pretense of these setups always worries me — that I have indispensable wisdom to impart, or that the strategies and tactics I've learned in the U.S. will be applicable to their circumstances.

A report by Freedom House describes Benin's press freedom as not great, but better than its neighbors. The problem of access journalism — the ability of reporters to directly question and get honest answers from people in power — is familiar, but the consequences here are more dire. In America, over reliance on access can lead to stories that lack important critique or stories that curry favor with the very politicians who should be covered critically. Here, critical reporting might lead to the government shutting down your newspaper for a period of time, as happened to the major publication Le Matinal.

The confluence of social media and “fake news” is also creating problems for news media here, which these women described with grim expressions. The encrypted messaging service WhatsApp is used widely in Benin, often with large distribution lists circulating dubious information. On the one hand, accurate information can spread so easily and quickly that it leaves journalists wondering what their own role is in distributing information; on the opposite hand there have been numerous fictitious stories that spread on WhatsApp, and that then were repeated in mainstream media by poorly skilled reporters who didn’t ground truth the story.

And then there is the problem of per diems. This isn’t unique to journalism, many people in Benin are not paid salaries but instead receive per diem payment for work. For reporters, it means someone is paying you to report a specific story, or not report it. (The Freedom House report names this what it is: bribery.) It puts reporters in the position of getting paid, or not getting paid, in dubious circumstances.

On the surface, many of the problems they face would make their American female colleagues nod in solidarity. Dealing with squirrelly politicians. The metastasis of fake news. Low pay.  I listened and took notes as they spoke through an interpreter about their specific experiences with these problems, and it left me feeling like.... wow, do we (Americans) have no idea what our colleagues are facing around the world, even in relatively good circumstances.

And then there is sexism.

Their stories unfolded gradually, their trust in each other growing the longer we spent together. One woman would obliquely refer to the sexism she faces being one of the few women working as a political reporter, and everyone would nod. The next woman would add a little detail, noting that women reporters were passed over for the plum assignment to cover the opening of the parliament that week. By the end of the discussion, one woman had explained that men would sometimes demand sex in exchange for giving her an interview, an anecdote that elicited entirely too little reaction from her peers. They hadn’t had these conversations among themselves before, and they hadn’t yet found support and solidarity with women working in competing newsrooms. Yet they bonded in the shared frustration of trying to pursue their work in an ecosystem that wasn’t built to to honor their integrity.

As they talked, I was thinking of the countless hours I've spent reading and discussing the #metoo stories that eviscerated U.S. newsrooms and shattered journalists' trust in their own institutions. The response to those stories was outrage, and that demonstrates the difference between what U.S. journalists are dealing with and what faces these colleagues in Benin. Meanwhile, I was also internally cataloging the minor grievances and petty rivalries that can preoccupy a break room or give rise to secret Slack channels back home, and I was feeling ill over how those slights compare to the egregious circumstances these women matter-of-factly described. And even as I counseled myself that it's unproductive to compare indignities, I knew in the back of my mind that I am lucky for the things I have to complain about.

Five of Cotonou's journalists explained to two Americans what it's like to do their work in Benin, but still had energy to smile afterward.

[April 2018]

Radio Free Benin

When you are a radio pro on a tour of a radio station and the director of a live show asks you, “Want to go on the air?” The answer can only be, “Absolutely!” 

Ocean FM is owned by the same Cotonou, Benin, media group that publishes a major newspaper here, Le Matinal. The offer of a tour sprang from a talk I gave earlier in the week; I had hoped I might be able to visit a local radio station, and a few days later I was standing with the managing editor of Ocean FM in their control room, on the guest end of a spontaneous booking process.

A public affairs officer from the US Embassy here had arranged my visit to Ocean FM and she balanced my "yes, obviously" with a hesitant, "ok but...." The co-hosts would ask me questions in English, and presumably interpret some of the conversation into French. The PAO didn't want to be on the air and she sat away from a mic went we got into the studio. But the free-wheeling nature of the show didn't conform to those subtleties and sooner than later the host was lobbing her questions, too.

I don't speak French or any of the several local languages in Benin, but I do speak control room, and it felt great to hang out here.

Ocean FM isn't exactly a morning zoo format but it was loose enough that the host riffs unscripted on the news of the day, takes listener calls and is clearly comfortable spending a few minutes with impromptu guests who weren't pre-interviewed. Three topics emerged from their  questions to me: What do you think of our radio station? How can our journalists get training in the U.S.? Why is radio important?

The second question is a variation on a theme that I encounter frequently, and it stabs me in the heart a little every time. It lays bare the truth that opportunities aren't equally distributed; that people in developing countries are rightfully ambitious and unflinching in seeking advancement; it belies the curiosity that people are still keenly interested in coming to America, even though some parts of America clearly aren't interested in welcoming them; and for me, it stirs up a nest of unresolved feelings about how the place of your birth sets a course of fortune or misfortune that can be hard to disrupt, and why some people are born with the luck of geography and others aren't.

"How can we come to the U.S.?"

My thoughts on this are so tangled that I can feel my chest fill with emotion, and yet my answer in careful English is entirely anodyne and superficial. "I know there are training programs that exist for journalists, and I'm sorry I don't have details about them." Ugh. Pathetic dodge.

I was on more comfortable ground with their other lines of questioning. So much of the equipment and setup of Ocean FM was familiar. The studio mics, the desktop editing software, the mixing boards -- you'd find versions of this equipment (maybe slightly newer) in most radio stations in the U.S. One small workroom had tables around its perimeter with computers and mixers where reporters and producers wrote and mixed their stories. The larger workroom had a large common table at its center, but everyone's attention was oriented to the assignment board that filled one wall. In the workrooms, lazy ceiling fans half-heartedly dispersed the heat and humidity, but the studio and control room were noticeably cooler, preserving the temperature-sensitive equipment.

I do love an organized assignment board!

Why is radio important? In America, my answer would resemble a lot of what you hear people like me tell you during public radio pledge drives. But my brief introduction to Benin led me to this conclusion: education levels are low and poverty is high, but Benin is still one of the most stable republics in West Africa. This is exactly the kind of place where reliable, solidly reported news on the radio can make an important impact on how citizens relate to their government and their communities. Good radio is democratizing: you do not need wealth to hear it, you do not need literacy to learn from it and it can reach nearly everywhere.

[April 2018.]

News In The Garden

This is what the sky looked like, almost every single day.

"Our president just fired our secretary of state."

I was sitting at the wooden table under one of the gazebos with the purest of blue skies overhead, in the midst of a carefully designed rock garden surrounded by orange trees. The shocking fuchsia blooms of a bougainvillea cloaked the nearby stucco wall. This place is idyllic. The news was not.

"I'm so sorry!!" Oumaima exclaimed sympathetically, as if I personally was the one who just got axed on Twitter.

My volunteer gig at the nonprofit Amal Association in Marrakech was to help them rebuild parts of their web site, and being constantly online meant I could also enjoy a steady feed of news all day while I worked. I could start the day with Monocle and BBC, and then around midday Morocco-time I transitioned to public radio as the east coast of the US woke up. Sitting in a beautiful garden, helping incredibly good people who do inspiring work, mainlining global and political news -- this is pretty much as good as gets!

Oumaima is the director of Amal's Targa Center, and the garden was my workspace during the time I volunteered there. The wifi from the upstairs office reached far enough that I could sit in the warm shade amidst the plants and birds while I built web pages, rewrote copy and edited photos. From here, I could watch the daily rhythm of the tourists coming in for cooking classes, the trainees hurrying to their kitchen stations, the kitchen prepping and dispatching meals. At predictable intervals, staff and trainees would congregate for sweet mint tea, and to eat fresh bread dipped in honey and olive oil. At unpredictable intervals, Oumaima would appear full of excitement for new ideas, rushing from meeting to phone call to meeting, but always taking time to focus her attention on the person in front of her. (Even when the person in front of her was focused on what's happening in the White House on the other side of the planet.)

While energy swirled through the classrooms and kitchen each day at Amal, I found my groove outside. When I hit an HTML snag that I couldn't solve or just generally reached my limit of screen time, I'd leave my laptop in the front garden and take my earbuds with me to the herb and vegetable patches in the backyard... and I would pull weeds.

The 'Solidarity' gazebo was my outdoor office, more often than not.

Honestly, pulling weeds was more fun for me than building web pages, but that wasn't what they needed from me most. Pulling weeds was a treat, the web site was my job.

The first time I visited Amal it was February, and the garden beds had tiny sprigs of green that seemed adorably optimistic in the vast tracts of brown dirt. By mid-March though, the tiny shoots had transformed into self-respecting plants and by April the green had overtaken the brown completely, with stems and leaves and vines rioting in defiance of their garden beds' neat edges.

I would happily spend hours in that garden, carefully teasing out individual weeds out from among the coriander, sage and spearmint. I would attack with vicious joy the noxious creepers that overtook the gravel walkways, and feel satisfied when their eradication was complete. While I worked, I would not come close to draining the reservoir of news podcasts on my phone, but I would occasionally instead crank up the Hamilton soundtrack and sing along (badly) while I freed the potato plants from the crab grass that encroached their space.

The staff and trainees at Amal seemed partly amused and partly mystified by my love of weeding; only the head gardener was unambiguously delighted by my hobby. I loved the satisfaction of applying just the right amount of tension to a reedy, annoying stem and seeing its full root emerge from the ground. I loved the immediate difference that was visible -- rows of beautiful greens in fluffy soil, free of pestering interlopers. I really loved the massive haystack of weeds that would pile up at the edge of the garden as I worked.

I think Rex Tillerson's firing stands out among all the news stories I heard during the untold hours I spent in those gardens for two reasons. First, Oumaima's response was uniquely un-American in that she was thinking of me personally, rather than reacting to the information itself. If I had relayed the same breaking news to an American, it would have been met with a highly charged opinion -- about the president, the circumstance, Twitter, something. So that fact that she said, "I'm so sorry!" struck me as humorously unusual, and also very kind.

But second, my departure for Morocco and West Africa was only weeks away when President Trump reportedly demanded to know why the US should accept immigrants from "shithole" African countries. And now Rex Tillerson was in Africa, apparently to smooth over the fissures that statement caused, and he gets called back to Washington in time to read his firing on Twitter.  I felt a personalized proximity to the bookends of this news story. And I listened to coverage of the fallout while working in a beautiful garden, surrounded by an incredible group of people who are truly making the world a better place every day.

[March 2018]