Speaker 1: Pushkin from Pushkin Industries. This is Deep Background, the show
Speaker 1: where we explore the story behind the stories in the news.
Speaker 1: I'm Noah Felt right now. On Deep Background, we're focusing
Speaker 1: on power and the media. Today's guest is someone who
Speaker 1: can speak about this topic perhaps better than almost anyone
Speaker 1: else working in journalism today, because she's not merely a
Speaker 1: supremely successful journalist, but she has also herself become the
Speaker 1: subject of a deep national discussion around the power of
Speaker 1: journalism and the effects it can have. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: Nicole Hannah Jones. Nicole Hannah Jones is a Pulitzer Prize
Speaker 1: winning journalist, a staff writer for The New York Times,
Speaker 1: and the winner of a MacArthur Genius Grant. She is
Speaker 1: the creator of the sixty nineteen Project, a long form
Speaker 1: journalism project drawing on history, sociology, and journalism together that
Speaker 1: seeks to highlight the contributions of African Americans to the
Speaker 1: story of the United States, while simultaneously recentering the historical
Speaker 1: role of slavery and segregation to American history. The sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project, as you know, both proved wildly successful in
Speaker 1: terms of stirring and creating a national discussion and being
Speaker 1: adopted into curriculates some places, but it has also stirred
Speaker 1: up a significant amount of controversy. That controversy has gone
Speaker 1: so far as to lead Republican state legislators to propose
Speaker 1: laws that would ban the teaching of what's called critical
Speaker 1: race theory. In those laws will leave aside the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not exactly the thing that has historically been
Speaker 1: identified as critical race theory, but those are laws that
Speaker 1: are motivated by an attempt to argue against the teaching
Speaker 1: that slavery played a central and indeed perhaps definitive role
Speaker 1: in the creation of our national experience. The sixty nine
Speaker 1: project is therefore an extraordinary and important example of journalism
Speaker 1: having power and on the relationship between the power of
Speaker 1: institutional journalism, institutional history, and political response and reaction. We're
Speaker 1: very grateful that Nicole was open to appearing here on
Speaker 1: deep background, and we're thrilled that she is here now. Nicole,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for being here. Nicole, I want
Speaker 1: to begin by asking you about the extraordinary range and
Speaker 1: impact that the sixteen nineteen project has had. I'm really
Speaker 1: fascinated by that kind of complex, hybrid nature of the project.
Speaker 1: You know history and journalism and public policy and education
Speaker 1: for a couple of reasons. One is I'm just, at
Speaker 1: a basic intellectual level, completely sympathetic to the idea that
Speaker 1: part of journalism's job is to explain how things got
Speaker 1: to be the way they are. I mean, that's why
Speaker 1: I have a podcast called Deep Background, and I don't
Speaker 1: think it's plausible at all that you could explain the
Speaker 1: way things are except by looking into their deep historical past.
Speaker 1: So I love it because that makes perfect sense to me,
Speaker 1: and I'm fascinated by the ways that it was so innovative.
Speaker 1: The second reason I'm interested in it is that, you know,
Speaker 1: we're exploring here on Deep Background, this idea of the
Speaker 1: power of different institutions and different modes of thinking. And
Speaker 1: it seems to me I have a hypothesis that one
Speaker 1: of the reasons for the amazing power and influence of
Speaker 1: this project is exactly that you didn't think, oh, we
Speaker 1: have to stay in our lane. You didn't think, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that's history and that's a job for historians and we're journalists. No,
Speaker 1: you thought, this is a job for a newspaper and
Speaker 1: a magazine, and we're going to include historians in our work.
Speaker 1: But we also think that that can be contiguous with journalists,
Speaker 1: And I wonder whether you agree that part of the
Speaker 1: power of this project is that you broke the genre lines. God,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'd never thought that that's what we were
Speaker 1: doing or setting out to do, though clearly because of
Speaker 1: the response to the Pride, I see that that is
Speaker 1: how people understand what we did. But again, I've always
Speaker 1: done my own archival research, unearthed original documents, dug through
Speaker 1: the archives of cases that I was writing about and
Speaker 1: people I was writing about. I feel like I've been
Speaker 1: trying to do that in my work for more than
Speaker 1: a decade now, where all of my writing is deeply historical,
Speaker 1: that all of my writing has been talking about modern
Speaker 1: day phenomena and trying to unearthed history in order to
Speaker 1: help us understand how did we get there and to
Speaker 1: explain you know, usually school segregation or housing segregation, or
Speaker 1: racialized policing. I've always always done journalism that didn't just
Speaker 1: kind of drive by history. But you know, if you
Speaker 1: look at my work on school segregation, on housing segregation,
Speaker 1: two thirds of it is about the past and the
Speaker 1: rest is about what's happening right now. So when people
Speaker 1: talk about breaking genre. I've just like, this is journalism.
Speaker 1: This is the way that I've always done journalism, and
Speaker 1: that the journalists I've admired have done journalism. I think
Speaker 1: what was different, though, What was different was it wasn't
Speaker 1: just a single article, but an entire project that was
Speaker 1: an entire issue of the magazine, a special section of
Speaker 1: the newspaper, live events, as well as a podcast series.
Speaker 1: So we were doing something that, at least for The
Speaker 1: New York Times, had not been done before, and that
Speaker 1: we very explicitly set out the aims of the project,
Speaker 1: which was not just saying, hey, We're going to tell
Speaker 1: you something about your country that you didn't know, but
Speaker 1: saying we were explicitly seeking to reframe the narrative and
Speaker 1: understanding that we have all had about our country. And
Speaker 1: that is different. I mean, that's something that I think
Speaker 1: journalists don't typically do. Even if that is their aim,
Speaker 1: they're not blastically stating it. So maybe that's that's what
Speaker 1: was so different. But I really I just felt like
Speaker 1: this was an extension of the work that I've always
Speaker 1: done and the way that I believe journalism should be.
Speaker 1: And we included history, we included historians, but historians are
Speaker 1: writing for journalistic organizations all at the time now, So
Speaker 1: I guess I just didn't and maybe I was naive.
Speaker 1: I mean, I felt naive in some ways just because
Speaker 1: of how visceral and kind of unrelenting the attacks on
Speaker 1: the project have been. That to me, it just was
Speaker 1: a project that in that moment made sense and was
Speaker 1: part of the work I've always seen myself as doing.
Speaker 1: That's a fascinating answer. It may be that the combination
Speaker 1: of the topic of race and racial justice, which is
Speaker 1: such a central topic to not only the American historical
Speaker 1: path between American present, and the enhanced institutional centrality of
Speaker 1: the New York Times in an era when other mainstream
Speaker 1: journalism is in certain ways declining and the power of
Speaker 1: the Times is in many ways greater than it's ever been.
Speaker 1: You know, the historians, sociologists and others who participated in
Speaker 1: the project alongside you and other journalists have been saying
Speaker 1: the stuff that you've all been saying for a long
Speaker 1: time without it generating this kind of backlash. And so
Speaker 1: I guess I want to ask about the institutional power
Speaker 1: of the idea here of the New York Times. You know,
Speaker 1: do you think one reason that the people who are
Speaker 1: upset are so upset. Is part of it that you
Speaker 1: think the objectors said, well, it's the New York Times
Speaker 1: saying it, and if it's in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: people will think it's true, and we really don't want
Speaker 1: people to think these things are true. Could that be
Speaker 1: part of it? Yes? I think absolutely that this project
Speaker 1: ran in the paper of record, the New York Times,
Speaker 1: as you said, probably the most powerful news organization, at
Speaker 1: least a news organization that's not television in the world.
Speaker 1: That has been a major part of the response, both
Speaker 1: of those who support the project who were really surprised
Speaker 1: that the New York Times would run something like this,
Speaker 1: and those who have opposed a project who are also
Speaker 1: very surprised that the New York Times would run something
Speaker 1: like this. And as a historian, you know this project
Speaker 1: is based on decades of scholarship, but that there has
Speaker 1: been kind of this wall between the scholarship and a
Speaker 1: popular understanding of the scholarship, right, it hasn't really breached
Speaker 1: for many people. The role of slavery, the role of
Speaker 1: flavory and the Revolution, Abraham Lincoln's racial views, slavery, capitalism,
Speaker 1: and developing the American economy. These are not radical thoughts
Speaker 1: within the academy. But as you understand, history is academic,
Speaker 1: and then history is what is popularized, and what most
Speaker 1: Americans think of its history is often not what's actually
Speaker 1: in books written by actual historians. So to kind of
Speaker 1: breach that line with this project and then for it
Speaker 1: to be really embraced by high school teachers and by
Speaker 1: public schools, I think is where the huge backlash has
Speaker 1: come from. It's one thing for Alan Taylor to write
Speaker 1: about slavery and the revolution in his poet Surprising books.
Speaker 1: It's another thing for high school students to now be
Speaker 1: questioning the role of slavery might have played to motivate
Speaker 1: the men that we are taught popularly to treat as demigods.
Speaker 1: And then we also can't discount who brought this project fourth,
Speaker 1: which is you know, a black woman, quite outspoken, who
Speaker 1: doesn't present the way that some people believe I should present.
Speaker 1: I've been credentialed a lot, people asking well, how can
Speaker 1: she write this, she's not a historian, as if historians
Speaker 1: don't use journalism in their work every day consulting, you know,
Speaker 1: the New York Times. You know, My question to that
Speaker 1: has always been who did historians write for? If historians
Speaker 1: don't don't want lay people like myself, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: majored in history in Underground, but I'm not clearly an
Speaker 1: academic historian. If historians don't want lay people to read
Speaker 1: their texts and use them in real life to understand
Speaker 1: their world, which is what I do as a journalist,
Speaker 1: then what why are historians produced in history? And who
Speaker 1: are they? Who are they doing it for? So I
Speaker 1: found that credentialing to be actually quite interesting, both from
Speaker 1: you know, the small group of academic historians who have
Speaker 1: publicly criticized the project, but also from many people who
Speaker 1: just don't believe the project should exist at all. Nicole,
Speaker 1: there's so many fascinating strands and what you just said,
Speaker 1: let me just plug out three and maybe we'll talk
Speaker 1: about them in turn. First the idea of the New
Speaker 1: York Times as this incredibly powerful institution and the fight
Speaker 1: over what it would or wouldn't do. Then the national
Speaker 1: narrative point about the high school teachers. And then third
Speaker 1: the credentialing argument focused on you with the idea that
Speaker 1: an African American woman who doesn't have a PhD in
Speaker 1: history how could she be the person setting the tone
Speaker 1: for this whole national conversation. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: about all three of those strands. Let's start with The
Speaker 1: Times and its power in the center of the story.
Speaker 1: Is it a good thing that The New York Times
Speaker 1: is as extraordinarily institutionally powerful as it is right now?
Speaker 1: I mean, I tend to think better to still have
Speaker 1: The Times than not to have The Times, given that
Speaker 1: the alternative would be to have no institution like this.
Speaker 1: That said, would we be better off in a world
Speaker 1: where there were more news organizations that had credibility and
Speaker 1: some claim to use a term that will come to
Speaker 1: later quote unquote objectivity. So I would say yes to
Speaker 1: both of those things. I think The Times is critically
Speaker 1: important for our democracy and for understanding our world. There
Speaker 1: are few news organizations that have the resources to cover
Speaker 1: the globe the way that The New York Times does,
Speaker 1: and it has done no unparalleled reporting that I think
Speaker 1: is necessary. And there aren't many places that could have
Speaker 1: produced a project like the sixteen nineteen project period, not
Speaker 1: just because of amount of money or resources put into it,
Speaker 1: but because of the platform that The New York Times provides.
Speaker 1: So I think that's critical. But I also think that
Speaker 1: in order for news to be the firewall of our democracy,
Speaker 1: news itself needs to be democratized, and that the fewer voices,
Speaker 1: the fewer institutions, particularly local news, that are out there
Speaker 1: and have the resources to publish and do accountability journalism
Speaker 1: and do journalism that's just more reflective of our very
Speaker 1: diverse nation and very diverse world. I think that we
Speaker 1: are less informed because of that. I think power is
Speaker 1: less held to account because of that, And so I
Speaker 1: think that, yes, it's absolutely critical to have both the things.
Speaker 1: I think we need institutions like the New York Times
Speaker 1: that are unparalleled, and I think we also need institutions
Speaker 1: like local news reporting, you know, ethnic press. I mean
Speaker 1: all of that. We need to be in a news
Speaker 1: rich environment, particularly in the world that we're in right now.
Speaker 1: But we need to be in a news rich environment
Speaker 1: where the people providing that news actually have some ethics
Speaker 1: and standards of the trade. And I'm worried about how
Speaker 1: some of that is eroding. Yeah, I worry about that too,
Speaker 1: And I worry about, you know, since a newspaper does
Speaker 1: have as part of its DNA the idea of holding
Speaker 1: power to account there's also the question of, you know,
Speaker 1: who holds the newspaper to account, and in the past
Speaker 1: the answer was other newspapers. And in that in that extent,
Speaker 1: if there's an institution that is sees that as its job,
Speaker 1: but there isn't a rich environment of other newspapers that
Speaker 1: see their job as holding that newspaper to account, you
Speaker 1: know that that potentially in the long run complicates things,
Speaker 1: especially if there are people, you know, let's say you're
Speaker 1: your political conservative and you think the New York Times
Speaker 1: skews liberal, which on certain things on its editorial policy,
Speaker 1: of course it does. Then you might think, well, what's
Speaker 1: my alternative. It's Fox News And you know I love
Speaker 1: a journal. Yeah, the Journal on its editorial page, I agree,
Speaker 1: But the journal has such a rigorous distinction between its
Speaker 1: editorial page and its newspaper the national narrative point that
Speaker 1: you were raising, that is fascinating to me as well.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons that the City nineteen project is
Speaker 1: so significant is that it actually you conceived it as
Speaker 1: planning to reach curriculum, and it is indeed reaching curriculum.
Speaker 1: And then that in the backlash has produced these proposed
Speaker 1: pieces of legislation around the country purporting to outlaw something
Speaker 1: called critical race theory, which, since I'm a law professor,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm I know the critical race theory was
Speaker 1: produced by Derek Bell and Kimberly Crenshaw as a rich
Speaker 1: theoretical apparatus that was not actually primarily about the historical
Speaker 1: issues that you were writing about, so as a kind
Speaker 1: of terminological mismatch there. But in practical terms, it's a
Speaker 1: reaction to you, guys into the sixty nineteen project. Why
Speaker 1: do you think the fight over the national narrative is
Speaker 1: so brutal right now? Is it just the polarization that
Speaker 1: we're already familiar with, or does it have something to
Speaker 1: do with the idea that we still don't want to
Speaker 1: recognize in many quarters, that are founders were not pure,
Speaker 1: and that they that they had a complex set of
Speaker 1: beliefs and attitudes, and that their institutions were in many
Speaker 1: ways profoundly inflected by by the structure of racism and
Speaker 1: of slavery. Well, first, let me just correct the record
Speaker 1: a bit. The project was not originally conceived as curriculum.
Speaker 1: The project. I did not know that. Fascinating, Okay, thank you, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I conceived of the project as a work of journalism.
Speaker 1: That's what we set out to create. And it was
Speaker 1: later months down, once the project was already fully formed
Speaker 1: and conceived and that we were beginning to report and
Speaker 1: write the pieces, that we started talking about turning it
Speaker 1: into curriculum. So I think that that has become the
Speaker 1: narrative that the project from conception was designed to infiltrate
Speaker 1: America's classrooms. It wasn't. I'm a journalist and I was
Speaker 1: producing a work of journalism and the Times, you know,
Speaker 1: it's a huge organization with many, many arms, and we
Speaker 1: actually have a curriculum division. So we started discussing that
Speaker 1: and then ultimately decided, you know, to partner with the
Speaker 1: Pulitzer Center, which turns regularly turns journalism into curriculum. And
Speaker 1: no one has a problem with that. But it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, the sixteen nineteen project. So just to clear
Speaker 1: that up. But I've you know, I've thought a lot
Speaker 1: about the response to the project, particularly, I don't know
Speaker 1: another work of journalism that has been as legislated against
Speaker 1: as the sixteen nineteen project. You know, the project has
Speaker 1: been mentioned in both of Donald Trump's impeachment trials for
Speaker 1: god knows why, except it's you know, being used as
Speaker 1: a tool of white resentment, these laws that are being
Speaker 1: passed all across the country, including in my home state.
Speaker 1: And I've thought a lot about why that is. And
Speaker 1: it's hard to sometimes grasp when you're in the middle
Speaker 1: of something, what are all the causes. This is why
Speaker 1: we like to study history, because with some distance you
Speaker 1: can get more understanding of all of the forces. But
Speaker 1: several things are happening. The project came out in twenty
Speaker 1: nineteen during the Trump presidency, which some on the right
Speaker 1: saw as planned, though I certainly couldn't have planned for
Speaker 1: the four hundred anniversary to fall in twenty nineteen. That
Speaker 1: was put into motion four hundred years ago, and I
Speaker 1: was very careful at the project really not to mention
Speaker 1: Donald Trump at all, because the project was not about
Speaker 1: a single moment in American history. The project was about
Speaker 1: the sweep of four hundred years, and whether Donald Trump
Speaker 1: was a president or Obama was a president, everything in
Speaker 1: the project would have been just as true. But I
Speaker 1: think because it landed in that moment when we had
Speaker 1: replaced the first black president with I would say, an
Speaker 1: the white nationalist president, where we were seeing a lot
Speaker 1: of Americans really trying to understand because they believed that
Speaker 1: the election of Obama had somehow banished racism in America
Speaker 1: and we had reached this post racial age, and then
Speaker 1: a white minority alex A white nationalists as president. And
Speaker 1: then after the project comes out, of course, we see
Speaker 1: George Floyd, Brianna Taylor, and the largest protests for civil
Speaker 1: rights in the history of our country. And with that
Speaker 1: is coming, I think a lot of fears being stoked
Speaker 1: about the changing demographics of our nation, a changing sense
Speaker 1: of power. You started seeing, of course, all these companies
Speaker 1: embracing Black Lives Matter, a massive shift in white Americans
Speaker 1: embrace of Black Lives matter for the first time, more
Speaker 1: than fifty percent of white Americans supported that movement. White
Speaker 1: Americans were starting, I think large percentages of them were
Speaker 1: really starting to believe that maybe there is something systemic
Speaker 1: going on in this country that not just about individual
Speaker 1: black people choosing to take advantage. And the sixty nineteen
Speaker 1: Project is in the middle of all of that. And
Speaker 1: I think what happens then is there as a tremendous
Speaker 1: pushback by those who are in power. We're talking about
Speaker 1: sitting us senators, We're talking about the Secretary of Defense, right,
Speaker 1: we're talking about Nicky Haley, who was at the United Nations.
Speaker 1: People who are standing for institutional power in a almost
Speaker 1: entirely white political party began to see the sixty nineteen
Speaker 1: project as as symbolic of some larger I think, cultural
Speaker 1: shift and that this could be something that could be
Speaker 1: a useful political tool because it was, I think they
Speaker 1: were tapping into a feeling amongst many white Americans like, well,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe things have gone too far. Okay, I support
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter, But now are they saying I have
Speaker 1: to hate this country's founding. Now they want me to
Speaker 1: talk about the fact that George Washington wasn't Enslaver and
Speaker 1: Thomas Jefferson wasn't Enslaver. And we have a g deal
Speaker 1: of investment in the mythology of America. I mean, every
Speaker 1: country has investment in its own mythology. But what's so
Speaker 1: hard about the United States is no other country was
Speaker 1: founded on these ideals of liberty where their entire identity
Speaker 1: as a country is on this belief that we are
Speaker 1: the freest, greatest, most liberatory country in the world. And
Speaker 1: so we have not wanted to grapple with what it
Speaker 1: means to be founded on slavery and freedom. That freedom
Speaker 1: for white people in this country was actually created on
Speaker 1: the enslavement of black people. That's why the project had
Speaker 1: to exist in the first places. We haven't wanted to
Speaker 1: deal with that, and so to have this project come
Speaker 1: out and then this really turbulent time with Black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter protests and our president who is openly stoking white resentment,
Speaker 1: I think we got this really combustible mix, and that's
Speaker 1: where we are right now. We're seeing a massive pushback
Speaker 1: against the belief that black people's gains are coming too
Speaker 1: swiftly and they are coming at the cost of white Americans.
Speaker 1: And we've seen this before, So that to me is
Speaker 1: why this is so fundamentally difficult and why we fight
Speaker 1: so hard not to be truthful about our past. Is
Speaker 1: we don't feel like the narrative of our nation can
Speaker 1: withstand the truth. And you know, I guess I'm just
Speaker 1: not sure what as a as a black person in
Speaker 1: this country who always say we're the most you know,
Speaker 1: inconvenient people to this nationalistic narrative that Americans need to have.
Speaker 1: What are we then supposed to do with that? We
Speaker 1: are just supposed to ignore that we didn't have freedom,
Speaker 1: that we were held in bondage, that we're still fighting,
Speaker 1: you know, for equality. Now I can't do that and
Speaker 1: I won't do that. That's a fascinating and I think
Speaker 1: very astute historical analysis of the moment that you're in.
Speaker 1: And I agree that the fact of the social movement
Speaker 1: of Black Lives Matter and it's its successes and the
Speaker 1: relevant historical moment has to be understood in conjunction with
Speaker 1: the with the response to Black Lives Matter. That also
Speaker 1: explains some of the personal attacks on you, you know,
Speaker 1: which may come in the form of attacking credentials, but
Speaker 1: are presumably also included in a very fundamental way, the
Speaker 1: idea that you're a black woman telling people, Hey, this
Speaker 1: is the truth, and here's all the proof that hits
Speaker 1: the truth, and it's hard for people to say it's
Speaker 1: not the truth because it is, and so their responses,
Speaker 1: who are you right? I mean, you don't have the
Speaker 1: relevant credential. I mean that's sort of like the worst
Speaker 1: least convincing form of argument that can be imagined. But
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean it's not pretty difficult to have to
Speaker 1: sustain it on a day to day basis. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's been I mean, it's actually been fairly successful. I
Speaker 1: think that argument because I mean, and you know this
Speaker 1: as as someone who works at academia, that disagreement is
Speaker 1: inherent to academia, and that history and the field of
Speaker 1: historiography is about interpretations of fact, and you can look
Speaker 1: at two historians can look at the same exact facts
Speaker 1: and come up with different and interpretations of them, and
Speaker 1: that's not seen as disqualifying. But what has occurred with
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineteen project is really I can't even say
Speaker 1: the sixteen nineteen project. It's almost been exclusively just my
Speaker 1: opening essay in the sixteen nineteen project is the fact
Speaker 1: that some historians felt I made an argument too strong
Speaker 1: about the American Revolution and the role of slavery. That
Speaker 1: that has been used then to justify trying to discredit
Speaker 1: the entire project as well as me as a journalist.
Speaker 1: And that's what I think we've been fighting against ever since.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how many times I put up pieces
Speaker 1: written by other historians who say, actually their interpretations are
Speaker 1: well within the range of accepted scholarship, we agree with
Speaker 1: their interpretations, it doesn't matter, because there really is a
Speaker 1: vested interest that really spans the political spectrum. It's not
Speaker 1: just a vested interest of white conservatives. I think there's
Speaker 1: a vested interest of many white moderate and progressives as
Speaker 1: well to believe that we may have been a country
Speaker 1: that has failed in some ways, but that we are
Speaker 1: fundamentally good and we are founded by fundamentally good people.
Speaker 1: And I'm saying I don't it's not an argument about
Speaker 1: whether our founders were good or bad. Right, every human
Speaker 1: being is capable of doing really terrible things and really
Speaker 1: great things. It's just a matter of what they did
Speaker 1: is what they did, and what they said about how
Speaker 1: they felt about black people is what they said. And
Speaker 1: I just don't see the benefit of obscuring that, even
Speaker 1: if it makes us very uncomfortable. We have to be
Speaker 1: able to have complex discussions about who we are as
Speaker 1: a people in a nation. We'll be right back, Nicole.
Speaker 1: I'm glad that you raised this issue of interpretation as
Speaker 1: the kind of day in and day out work of
Speaker 1: historians and then the relationship of that to the work
Speaker 1: of journalism, because it leads us to one of the
Speaker 1: topics that to me is most important here, and that
Speaker 1: is the contested idea of objectivity. Yeah, and so I
Speaker 1: want to spend a minute talking with you about, first
Speaker 1: of all, whether the word objectivity has different meanings in
Speaker 1: the context of journalism and the context of history, and
Speaker 1: second of all, about whether that word is useful at
Speaker 1: all to us in either of those contexts, because I
Speaker 1: think that's a hard question. I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: simple answer to it, but I think it does have
Speaker 1: something to do with why the fights here have been
Speaker 1: enabled to be so brutal. I'm not in any way
Speaker 1: disputing what you're saying about there being vested interests, but
Speaker 1: you know, there are different kinds of vested interests. They
Speaker 1: are vest interests that are grounded in economic, interests that
Speaker 1: are grounded in capital, and then they're vested interests that
Speaker 1: are grounded into people's deeply held beliefs that may have
Speaker 1: something to do in some instances with underlying economic interests,
Speaker 1: but also have a life of their own. So I
Speaker 1: guess I want to start with objectivity in journalism and
Speaker 1: then talk about objectivity in history, and then we'll talk
Speaker 1: about how they bump into each other. So you've you've
Speaker 1: spoken about this before. What's your view on objectivity in journalism? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Thank you, for that, and let me just just quickly
Speaker 1: back up. I don't think the opposition to the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project, or to kind of the rendering of history
Speaker 1: and society that the sixteen nineteen project poses is merely economic.
Speaker 1: I don't even know that it's primarily economic. It really
Speaker 1: is about the power to shape identity and how we
Speaker 1: think about ourselves as a nation and the fundamental goodness
Speaker 1: of America that we're indoctrinated into from when we take
Speaker 1: our first breath. What that said, I think your question
Speaker 1: about objectivity and history and objectivity in journalism is a
Speaker 1: very interesting one and not one that I've gotten though
Speaker 1: I'm clearly working around both areas, and after I answer,
Speaker 1: I'd actually love to hear your answer on that. Sure
Speaker 1: so one. I think in some ways they're slightly different
Speaker 1: because journalism encompasses not to is kind of daily reporting,
Speaker 1: just the facts reporting, but also opinion writing. You know,
Speaker 1: we do reporting that is accountability reporting, and I don't
Speaker 1: think you can when you're writing about Watergate, you're not
Speaker 1: being objective. You don't think the government should be corrupt,
Speaker 1: and there's explanatory reporting, and I think history you don't
Speaker 1: tend to think of of being about opinion, but really
Speaker 1: of unearthing what happened, in helping us understand why and
Speaker 1: what it meant. So I think there's there's some differences there,
Speaker 1: but I do think both of them both field really
Speaker 1: do I would say, hide behind, but certainly offer up
Speaker 1: the armor of objectivity, that the person who is producing
Speaker 1: the work is not operating from their own personal sense
Speaker 1: of things or their own personal politics, that they're just
Speaker 1: going where the facts lead us. Of course, that's never
Speaker 1: bench true. I mean, we know that that's never been true.
Speaker 1: And you know, you look at someone like Sean wilentzon
Speaker 1: no property in men. There's been plenty of other historians
Speaker 1: who have disagreed with the way that he sees the
Speaker 1: role of slavery and the Constitution in James Madison motivations
Speaker 1: for putting that right. So one could say that objectively,
Speaker 1: based on his understanding of that history, that's why he
Speaker 1: writes that. But I would say that's not actually coming
Speaker 1: from an objective perspective. That he is a man with
Speaker 1: certain beliefs about this nation. He is a man who
Speaker 1: grew up in this nation racialized and genderized in a
Speaker 1: certain way, with a certain class status and that all
Speaker 1: of these things play into your and even your field
Speaker 1: of study. Right, have you spent a ton of time
Speaker 1: studying slavery in particular or not? And I think all
Speaker 1: of those things then go into how you're interpret these
Speaker 1: different documents and the motivations, because what that really is
Speaker 1: about is trying to interpret the motivation and that is
Speaker 1: not unless the person you know, James Madison said I
Speaker 1: am putting this in here because I feel this way
Speaker 1: about slavery. Then we are trying to surmise based on
Speaker 1: a lot of contextual things. And that's similar, I think
Speaker 1: to what journalism does, which is what we choose to
Speaker 1: study in the first place, both as historians and journalists
Speaker 1: rarely objective, almost always subjective, Who we study, what primary
Speaker 1: documents we use, what is going to be the focus
Speaker 1: of the work. These are not objective decisions. And when
Speaker 1: I think about objectivity, I think we should all strive
Speaker 1: for objectivity of method. And the word is useful in
Speaker 1: that way. Right. Am I being fair? Am I being accurate?
Speaker 1: Am I accurately describing the events as they happened? And
Speaker 1: am I being fair to the parties involveolved in my
Speaker 1: rendering of the events that happened. But that's very different
Speaker 1: than pretending that what I'm doing is in and of
Speaker 1: itself objective. When I choose to write about school segregation
Speaker 1: as opposed to writing about something else in education, that's
Speaker 1: a subjective choice. I think that it's important other journalists
Speaker 1: did not, and they didn't write about it that much,
Speaker 1: And I think we should just be more honest about
Speaker 1: the limits of this notion of objectivity, and that it
Speaker 1: has never existed, and that all of us are pursuing
Speaker 1: work through the framework of our own lived existence and
Speaker 1: what makes sense to us as we study scholarship, how
Speaker 1: we interpret it. I write about this actually in the
Speaker 1: new in the preface for the sixteen nineteen book, and
Speaker 1: I talk about Abraham Lincoln and the offense that, you know,
Speaker 1: the small group of scholars took to thinking I was
Speaker 1: calling Abraham Lincoln racist, which actually didn't call him racist.
Speaker 1: I did say that, according to his own words, he
Speaker 1: didn't believe in equality for black Americans. But two different
Speaker 1: historians can look at Lincoln's view on colonization, for instance,
Speaker 1: and one could argue that he believed in colonization as
Speaker 1: a political argument because he just didn't think white moderates
Speaker 1: would agree to abolish slavery if there were going to
Speaker 1: be a bunch of free black people living in America.
Speaker 1: And I think you could justify that based on what
Speaker 1: we know about Lincoln. And others might say, well, we
Speaker 1: think Lincoln actually didn't believe black people had a place
Speaker 1: in our democracy and that they were going to be
Speaker 1: the troublesome presence, and that the best thing to do
Speaker 1: would be to leave them. That these were his personal beliefs.
Speaker 1: And I think you could support both of those things,
Speaker 1: which is the objective view in that case. But as
Speaker 1: you know, most Americans don't have a real understanding of
Speaker 1: how the field works, and so they think there is
Speaker 1: an answer, a single right answer. But historians know better.
Speaker 1: And I think that's why some of the criticism, not
Speaker 1: the criticism, but the efforts to actually credit the facts
Speaker 1: that the project felt personal to me, which is I'm
Speaker 1: getting off on a TANTISI apologize. No no, if no,
Speaker 1: don't apologize, And it's not a tangent. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think everything you said hung together. Let me take up
Speaker 1: your invitation to just say a word about how it
Speaker 1: looks from high perspective, I hear. I tend to agree
Speaker 1: with you that it's helpful to try to distinguish, both
Speaker 1: in journalism and in history the part of the work
Speaker 1: that is focused on getting facts and which should strive
Speaker 1: to objectivity. I'm not saying it can never perfectly reach it,
Speaker 1: but should strive to reporting and setting down factual events
Speaker 1: in as accurate a way as possible. Right, So, let's
Speaker 1: say we're trying to figure out what Abraham Lincoln said
Speaker 1: to the group of five prominent Washington, DC African Americans
Speaker 1: who were invited to meet with him in the White
Speaker 1: House in the period right before he announced the Emancipation
Speaker 1: Proclamation or after he'd mentioned his draft. There was a meeting,
Speaker 1: there was a conversation there. We'll never get the exact
Speaker 1: transcript of what was said, because it's not Watergate. There
Speaker 1: were no tapes, but we have various reports of what
Speaker 1: was said, and both a journalist and a historian would
Speaker 1: try really hard to get the facts of what was
Speaker 1: said at that meaning to the extent possible and knowing
Speaker 1: full well that there are gaps in the record. So,
Speaker 1: for example, you know, we've got some accounts of what
Speaker 1: Lincoln said, the accounts of what the African Americans who
Speaker 1: had been chosen for that delegation said are harder to
Speaker 1: come by. They're there, but there it takes more work
Speaker 1: to find them. And you know, we weren't in the room.
Speaker 1: We don't know exactly what went down. But that's the
Speaker 1: part that I think we can strive for objectivity on.
Speaker 1: Then comes the interpretation part, and there it's tricky because
Speaker 1: I think all working historians know and except that the
Speaker 1: job of historian isn't just to say what happened in
Speaker 1: the meeting, but to say what it meant, you know,
Speaker 1: how it fit together, and to try to speculate on
Speaker 1: why people said what they said, and also to specul
Speaker 1: on what they might have meant when they said what
Speaker 1: they said. So, you know, we know with pretty high
Speaker 1: degree of objectivity that Lincoln told that that group of
Speaker 1: men they were men. You African Americans are the cause
Speaker 1: of the war. It's your fault. You know. He used
Speaker 1: this metaphor that Frederick Douglas was so horrified by afterwards,
Speaker 1: and it's still very horrifying today where he you know,
Speaker 1: he basically told them white people are killing each other
Speaker 1: over you, so you're you're the problem. That's very close
Speaker 1: to verbat him. What Lincoln said, but to understand what
Speaker 1: he meant by that requires a work of interpretation, and
Speaker 1: that part, I think is much harder to describe as
Speaker 1: objectives because it's reconstructive. You know, it's an effort of
Speaker 1: trying to figure out what was in somebody's mind and
Speaker 1: what were the political circumstances. In means, that's true in
Speaker 1: journalism as well, and to that extent, there's an interpretive
Speaker 1: component to journalism as well, otherwise it would just be
Speaker 1: a transcript. And so I think, you know, in both contexts,
Speaker 1: striving for objectivity, even knowing we'll never get there, is
Speaker 1: pretty valuable. But I also think at the same time
Speaker 1: that that claim to objectivity gives a lot of authority.
Speaker 1: What you were describing as the armor or the power
Speaker 1: of objectivity, it gives a lot of power, right, The
Speaker 1: claim to objectivity is itself a claim to power. So
Speaker 1: that's my first thought on it, and my second has
Speaker 1: to do with what you were saying, Nicole about you know,
Speaker 1: each of us has it come from where people of
Speaker 1: a certain race and gender and historical context. I think
Speaker 1: that's all true, and it contributes to why we see
Speaker 1: things the way we see things. But I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that it's ever fully determinative, because you know, we could
Speaker 1: look at Sean Willentz and his interpretations, say of James Madison,
Speaker 1: and then some other white guy historian. I'll use myself
Speaker 1: as an example who reads the same sources and reaches
Speaker 1: a different conclusion about James Madison's views based on Madison's
Speaker 1: own words. I think some of it is just the
Speaker 1: human work of interpretation is hard, and people will reach
Speaker 1: different conterpretations. Yeah, I mean, I certainly would not argue
Speaker 1: that your race, gender, or class dat is determinative. I
Speaker 1: would argue that it is influential, and that even within
Speaker 1: white men of a certain age who grew up in
Speaker 1: a certain place, of a certain class, dad is they
Speaker 1: were certainly raised with different values, right, and raise with
Speaker 1: different backgrounds and histories. Maybe one is one step out
Speaker 1: of poverty, maybe his family came from immigrants. There's lots
Speaker 1: of factors, but my larger point is is this belief
Speaker 1: somehow that we can share ourselves of our identity and
Speaker 1: just become objective kind of arbiters. I just don't think
Speaker 1: that that is realistic. And that's why when I say
Speaker 1: what I strive for and what I think we should,
Speaker 1: you know more honestly strive for is again objectivity of method,
Speaker 1: and objectivity of method is getting down all of your facts, right,
Speaker 1: Like you said, who said what at that meeting? When
Speaker 1: did it occur, where did it occur, why did it occur?
Speaker 1: And then what is an accurate kind of presentation of
Speaker 1: based on what we know about Lincoln what we think
Speaker 1: he might have been trying to do with that meeting? Right, That,
Speaker 1: to me is what we're trying to do. But to
Speaker 1: then say, as Sean Mullins argued in his essay against
Speaker 1: the sixty nineteen project, it's just about the facts. To me,
Speaker 1: it's false and it is giving the idea of I
Speaker 1: know the truth and this is not the truth. Now
Speaker 1: you could say that about did this meeting occur on
Speaker 1: this day? If I got the date wrong, then that
Speaker 1: is just about the facts. But saying the role of
Speaker 1: slavery in the revolution, when we know that slavery played
Speaker 1: a role, it's that type of credentialing that I think
Speaker 1: I'm up against. And that's the same thing that I
Speaker 1: face in journalism when I say we don't see objective coverage, right,
Speaker 1: the fact that for years you weren't seeing any real
Speaker 1: accounting of police violence, and what we were seeing was
Speaker 1: newspapers and TV news again and again running the police
Speaker 1: report is fact. The police said that they shot him
Speaker 1: because he went for the gun, and then citizen journalists
Speaker 1: started putting up video showing actually he was running away
Speaker 1: and got shot in the back, right. But we were
Speaker 1: saying that that was just subjective. We were just reporting
Speaker 1: the facts. That was I would argue a subjective decision.
Speaker 1: And I think that's what I'm trying to get at
Speaker 1: is to really help us understand that so much of
Speaker 1: the people who are helping us interpret our world that
Speaker 1: it's impossible to be interpreting that world through a sheerly
Speaker 1: objective lens, because objective means I'm completely impartial. I have
Speaker 1: a neutral point of view, and I'm just telling you
Speaker 1: what happened. What I'm actually telling is what I think
Speaker 1: is important for you to know, and that's what I'm
Speaker 1: reporting on, and I think we should just be more
Speaker 1: honest about that. I agree with you, and I think
Speaker 1: that's very powerfully put. What I always keep in the
Speaker 1: back of my mind is a debate between you and
Speaker 1: Sean Lenz is a debate at least in my view,
Speaker 1: between people of goodwill trying to get it right, and
Speaker 1: then off on the other side somewhere there's Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: for whom a debate about objectivity is just an opportunity
Speaker 1: to say, look, it's all relative, there is no truth,
Speaker 1: and then he can tell you with the Washington Post
Speaker 1: counted what thirty thousand lies. And so if we undercut
Speaker 1: the idea of objectivity to such a degree that we
Speaker 1: don't think there is objectivity at all, that can make
Speaker 1: your really hard to say, well, wait, there are some
Speaker 1: things that are true, and there are always some things
Speaker 1: that are false. We shouldn't fall into relativism. So I
Speaker 1: think what's best, at least in my view, and I
Speaker 1: think you and I probably agree about this, is that
Speaker 1: we should acknowledge objectivity as a goal and as a
Speaker 1: possibility with respect to facts, and therefore not feel like
Speaker 1: we have to give in to the Trumpian line that
Speaker 1: it's all interpretation, it's all relative their facts and then
Speaker 1: they're alternative facts, while still being able to say honestly
Speaker 1: that when it comes to the interpretation of facts, whether
Speaker 1: in journalism or in history, there's no true objectivity and
Speaker 1: there probably can't be anything like true objectivity, and a
Speaker 1: lot of life is interpretation. A lot of life is
Speaker 1: picking and choosing which which facts you're going to focus
Speaker 1: on in order to interpret agree. But that's not the
Speaker 1: sound by society we live in. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: is right. This is the struggle with my work, with
Speaker 1: your work, I think with being the country that we
Speaker 1: are is these are complex issues, but we want to
Speaker 1: be able to summarize them in very simplistic terms. And
Speaker 1: I think your example of Madison is a great you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I'm trying to complexify the narrative of history.
Speaker 1: And that's not saying we should hate James Madison and
Speaker 1: never talk about James Madison. It is to say, however,
Speaker 1: that our founders were human beings. They were deeply contradictory.
Speaker 1: They both just like a drug dealer understands that selling
Speaker 1: drugs is wrong but has a financial, vested interest in
Speaker 1: still doing something that they know is wrong. That it's
Speaker 1: possible to hold contradictory views. In fact, most of us do.
Speaker 1: Most of us do, and that can be hard to
Speaker 1: have that complex conversation. Like even as I was saying
Speaker 1: that to you, I was just seeing the Fox News
Speaker 1: headline is probably going to run as soon as this
Speaker 1: podcast posts, says Nicole. Hannah Jones compares James Madison to
Speaker 1: a drug dealer, like this is the society I'm telling you.
Speaker 1: I've spent the last few days with Fox News running
Speaker 1: NonStop one sentence of of a clip I talked about
Speaker 1: Cuba in an hour long interview, one sentence, you know,
Speaker 1: to make an argument against me. And this is this
Speaker 1: is the world that we're living in where very few
Speaker 1: people are wanting to verify. They're not interested in the
Speaker 1: more complex, nuanced story. What gets, you know, through the
Speaker 1: fray of all of this information we have and disinformation
Speaker 1: and misinformation we have, are these tiny simplistic ways of
Speaker 1: saying someone hates America or someone loves America. Our founders
Speaker 1: were all good, or we're saying that they were evil,
Speaker 1: and it can be hard to do this kind of
Speaker 1: complex work and understanding that I think we're both working
Speaker 1: towards in that environment. Thank you for that, And you know,
Speaker 1: if it'll add to their clip, I'll say that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe Madison could be compared more to a drug addict
Speaker 1: and a drug drug dealer there so far as you know,
Speaker 1: he was born into the arms of an enslaved person,
Speaker 1: and an enslaved person closed his eyes when he died.
Speaker 1: His entire economic existence, the thing that enabled him to
Speaker 1: do the work he did for the country was based
Speaker 1: on slavery, and in that sense, he was completely dependent
Speaker 1: on it. He couldn't do without it, And he also
Speaker 1: knew it was wrong at some level. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: Jefferson entirely knew that, but I think that Madison did
Speaker 1: know that slavery was fundamentally wrong and immoral, and the
Speaker 1: enslaving another human being was fundamentally wrong, and he went
Speaker 1: on doing it. I'm comparing him to a drug addict
Speaker 1: in that sense, who knows. I don't want to be
Speaker 1: on drugs, but I'm stuck on it, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to not going to change my ways.
Speaker 1: So people are complicated. I think I agree with you there,
Speaker 1: and it is a great challenge to contemplate our history
Speaker 1: and connect it to our future in the honest, acknowledgment
Speaker 1: that people in the past were deeply flawed and that
Speaker 1: people in the present, including us as well. And I want,
Speaker 1: I really want to thank you, Nicole for your extraordinary
Speaker 1: body of work and for your ongoing work in trying
Speaker 1: to complexify the way we think about our past, our present,
Speaker 1: and our future. And congratulations on your new position at Howard,
Speaker 1: and congratulations to the students that you're going to have
Speaker 1: whom you're going to teach journalism alongside the journalism that
Speaker 1: you continue to do in the history that you continue
Speaker 1: to do. Thank you, Thank you so much. I really
Speaker 1: enjoyed this conversation. We'll be right back listening to Nicole
Speaker 1: Hannah Jones. I was struck again and again by just
Speaker 1: how important and complicated the sixteen nineteen project is, and
Speaker 1: how thoughtful she is about the controversies that have arisen
Speaker 1: around it if you really think about it. The fact
Speaker 1: that the sixteen nineteen project appeared in The New York
Speaker 1: Times gave it a kind of institutional centrality to our
Speaker 1: American debate from the get go, because it appeared in
Speaker 1: what is still broadly considered the paper of record. People
Speaker 1: who might have passed by this project altogether, either in
Speaker 1: support of it or in opposition to it, had it
Speaker 1: been produced in an academic journal focused and took it seriously.
Speaker 1: People who are attracted to the narrative of the sixteen
Speaker 1: nineteen project appreciated that the New York Times was willing
Speaker 1: to put its institutional prestige on the line by publishing
Speaker 1: something that had both historical and contemporary relevance and importance.
Speaker 1: At the same time, people who were opposed to that
Speaker 1: narrative were particularly upset. I think because The New York
Speaker 1: Times stands for a journalistic objectivity, and if you wish
Speaker 1: to contest the historical interpretation that the sixteen nineteen project
Speaker 1: coalesces around, it's a lot harder to do so given
Speaker 1: that it did appear in The New York Times, which
Speaker 1: brings with it the association of journalistic objectivity than it
Speaker 1: would have been had these arguments appeared, as in many
Speaker 1: cases they had before, in academic journals. Thus, the question
Speaker 1: of journalism's power was central to a debate that then
Speaker 1: quickly became a debate about another form of power, the
Speaker 1: power to set our national narrative. Who gets to do that.
Speaker 1: Politicians in state legislatures believe they should have the right
Speaker 1: to do that by determining by law what gets taught
Speaker 1: in American schools about our history. Historians believe that they
Speaker 1: should have the institutional power to do that through their
Speaker 1: historical interpretation and through the work that they do in
Speaker 1: credential scholarly journals. And yet in reality, everybody who has
Speaker 1: a voice has the capacity to contribute to that national narrative,
Speaker 1: and that includes journalism. In this sense, legacy media and
Speaker 1: The New York Times is the very essence of legacy
Speaker 1: media actually still plays a crucially important role, even in
Speaker 1: the age of social media, in defining who we think
Speaker 1: we are and in getting people to argue about that
Speaker 1: core question of who we are. A further theme that
Speaker 1: emerged from Nicole Hannah Jones's analysis is the theme of
Speaker 1: objectivity and figuring out exactly what it means. Nicole believes
Speaker 1: in what she calls objectivity of method, where you try
Speaker 1: very hard to get the facts right, whether those facts
Speaker 1: are journalistic or historical. And yet the moment that we
Speaker 1: start asking which facts are we adducing to make a point,
Speaker 1: which facts matter, and what do the facts mean, we are,
Speaker 1: she says, out of the realm of objectivity and into
Speaker 1: a different realm, a realm of opinion and interpretation. In
Speaker 1: her view, where you come from, what your sociological background is,
Speaker 1: those are important factors in determining what you end up thinking.
Speaker 1: If there was any nuanced disagreement between us. I think
Speaker 1: it may have been over how much of what we
Speaker 1: know about a person's point of view can be deduced
Speaker 1: from those come from about the person. Finally, I think
Speaker 1: a key takeaway from what Nicole Hannah Jones has to
Speaker 1: say is that we do need to insist on getting
Speaker 1: the facts right. We shouldn't be relativists about facts. We should, however,
Speaker 1: be grown ups who recognize that interpretation is complex and
Speaker 1: that historical figures were complex. Plexity is for grown ups.
Speaker 1: If we can recognize that our foundation as a country
Speaker 1: grew simultaneously out of the impulse to liberty and the
Speaker 1: impulse to slavery. If we can accept the reality that
Speaker 1: there were contradictions in people like James Madison and Thomas
Speaker 1: Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln, then we can realize that our
Speaker 1: own world is a complex one where we two are
Speaker 1: imperfect and we two are full of contradictions. Taking that
Speaker 1: on board may not be easy, but it is a
Speaker 1: crucial step towards being the kinds of grown ups we
Speaker 1: need to be as a nation to lead us into
Speaker 1: a better future. Deep Background is taking a two week
Speaker 1: summer break. We will be back to you soon. With
Speaker 1: new and exciting episodes until the next time I speak
Speaker 1: to you. Breathe deep, think deep thoughts, and have a
Speaker 1: little fun. Deep Background is brought to you by Pushkin Industries.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Mola Board, our engineer is Ben Tolliday,
Speaker 1: and our showrunner is Sophie Crane mckibbon. Editorial support from
Speaker 1: noahm Osband. Theme music by Luis Gara at Pushkin. Thanks
Speaker 1: to Mia Lobell, Julia Barton, Lydia Jeancott, Heather Faine, Carlie Migliori,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Eric Sandler, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find
Speaker 1: me on Twitter at Noah R. Feldman. I also write
Speaker 1: a column for Bloomberg Opinion, which you can find at
Speaker 1: Bloomberg dot com slash Feldman. To discover Bloomberg's originals later
Speaker 1: of podcasts, go to Bloomberg dot com slash Podcasts, and
Speaker 1: if you like what you've heard today, please write a
Speaker 1: review or tell a friend. This is Deep Background.