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Covering undercovered communities

Jan Diehm, The Pudding

Nausheen Husain, Chicago Tribune

Mark Walker, New York Times

https://tinyurl.com/undercovered20

https://tinyurl.com/undercovered-tips

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Should you be doing this story?

-- Do you have the time, resources and editor support to understand the nuances of the story?

-- Do you understand the issue well enough to go beyond “both-sides-ing” the story?

-- Are you able to do the story without using your friends in these communities as free labor?

-- Do you have sources to explain to you the flaws and shortcomings of the data?

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Source:

Chicago Tribune

Source:

Chicago Tribune

-- I’m going to go through some more general ideas around covering Muslim communities and then will go into some data stuff

-- Because of my somewhat limited time to report on this community, I’ve had to come at it with a very clear sense of purpose. From my reporting, I’ve found that there are at least two kinds of stories that a lot of us trying to cover these communities end up doing: stories that “humanize” the undercovered community and stories that reveal some structural targeting of the community.

-- When you are trying to convince your editors that you want to more regularly cover any specific community that tends to be undercovered, I have found that they (and the general population) tend to be more comfortable with the former category than the latter because it is just less complicated and provides a nice friendly narrative for the community that is more accepted by the mainstream.

-- I think both of these are important but because the latter is harder to convince editors to take on, I try to do more of those because who doesn’t love a fun challenge. But more importantly, it’s important to recognize that the former story type is aimed at comforting the mainstream, and I don’t think that is what I am here to do.

-- So I think before you try to tackle this, you should think clearly about why you’re doing it -- are you trying to comfort the mainstream? And sometimes, that is necessary. Are you trying to reveal structural issues? Obviously also extremely important.

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Source:

Mona Chalabi and

Univ of Alabama

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Stories that highlight uncommon things...

Source:

Religion News Service

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...but don’t treat stereotypes as though they are fact

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Muslims can be sources for non-Islam things

“If a reporter has a contact who is of a Muslim background, they can ask, what else can you talk about? They can pass that contact around to talk about other things...It’s important to expand how Muslims can contribute to public conversations.”

-- Hind Makki, Chicago

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Add the American militaristic context for global issues

Source:

Chicago Tribune

-- for migration stories, of which there are always a ton because of the various travel bans we have, I don’t think we do a good enough job of highlighting the fact that the US’ foreign policy heavily affects Muslims around the world

-- It’s hard to find a way to acknowledge that but I think we need to keep in mind that history is also data. So for the last refugee story the Tribune did we added in this little library that lets you click through so you can understand how our refugee numbers have changed, but also what involvement the US has had in the creation of refugees. So when you’re reporting on an Iraqi refugee community, or the BDS movement in the American Palestinian community, or Kashmiri Americans who can’t talk to their families, or Iranian students who’ve lost their visas, it might be helpful to add in some history on how that community got here and how the US has been involved in some of their issues. In general I think we do tend to shy away from like US military history in our community reporting because they seem so different from each other but the fact of the matter is, they are often intimately connected.

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Muslim Twitter is wild and wonderful

@DrSuad (Su’ad Abdul Khabeer)

@MazMHussain (Murtaza Hussain)

@AyshaBKhan (Aysha Khan)

@SarahParvini (Sarah Parvini)

@Rowaid_Abdel (Rowaida Abdelaziz)

@MaryamSaleh (Maryam Saleh)

@FaizaPatelBCJ (Faiza Patel)

@Aziz_Huq (Aziz Huq)

@KhaledBeydoun (Khaled Beydoun)

@SaharAziz (Sahar Aziz)

@MariemRMasmoudi (Mariem Masmoudi)

@ZahraBilloo (Zahra Billoo)

@DandiaAsad (Asad Dandia)

@Islamoyankee (Hussein Rashid)

@WajahatAli (Wajahat Ali)

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Pew Research has a whopping three different sections on Muslims
Census doesn’t ask about religion, BUT there is a IL Muslim Complete Count Committee

Institute For Social Policy And Understanding has national polling on more nuanced Muslim issues

Center for American Progress put out a report called Fear, Inc. which detailed the widespread Islamophobia network
CAIR has reports on civil liberties and Islamophobia
Muslim Public Affairs Council has reports on hate crimes, drones, elections, etc.

There are some data sources...

-- the census doesn’t ask people about religion, BUT this year, at least in IL, there is an “Illinois Muslim Complete Count Committee” which is trying to insure that Muslims are at least counted in the census

-- Pew has so much data on Muslims and regularly does American Muslim surveys and you can download their datasets! This is useful if you’re looking at national numbers or national polling of this community. Or just interesting topics to broach about the community: “65% of immigrant Muslims said there is a lot of discrimination against Muslims. Of American-born Muslims, the number is a whopping 91%”

-- the Institute For Social Policy And Understanding has great analysis for more nuanced Muslim topics, like Muslims and philanthropy which is important because Muslim philanthropy often comes under suspicion of federal authorities, or Muslims and interfaith marriage.

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...but there is a lack of data on communities that seem “hidden.”

Source:

Mimi Onuoha

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Source:

Pew Research

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Source:

Chicago Tribune

-- so this story also came from a report by Sahar Aziz on counterterrorism initiatives and strategies that the US government has used against Muslims

-- because a lot of this stuff is not widely discussed by the government for obvious reasons, talking to civil rights lawyers and reading law reports and court documents for fun are very very helpful

-- there are activist and nonprofit groups who take these things on and are also good to know about

-- there are more and more family members of these folks who were incarcerated, often in cases that had secret witnesses, who are speaking out about some of these issues. Many of these people were convicted based on philanthropy that they participated in, some were convicted by paid informants, and some who are young have been assigned to “countering violent extremism” trainings which take a “mental health” approach to the threat of political violence, which have their own issues and criticism within Muslim communities.

-- for the Guantanamo North story, there is actually a group of folks called the Coalition For Civil Freedoms who put together a conference for the family members of those who were incarcerated, and they have started to collect their own data and publish their own reports

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*Actual* sources for undercovered issues

Center For Constitutional Rights (national issues of minority targeting)
Brennan Center for Justice (national issues of minority targeting)
Stop CVE (Chicago, Boston, LA, Minneapolis)
Desis Rising Up And Moving (mostly New York)
Justice For Muslims Collective (DC-based)
EqualityLabs (South Asian minority targeting)
CLEAR at CUNY (legal representation for those targeted by law enforcement
Creeping Sharia newsletter by Aysha Khan
Muslims Of The Midwest (new digital archive at MSU)
Coalition For Civil Freedoms (families of targeted/incarcerated people)
Lawyers, academics, lawyer-academics! They have the receipts.

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Topics to think about

Tanzin v. Tanvir
‘Terrorist Screening Database’ -- collaboration between FBI and local/state governments
‘Prevent’ counterterrorism program in the UK violates human rights, acc to UN expert. (equivalent of CVE program in the US)
Use of paid informants in government stings
Denaturalization of naturalized citizens
During election years, Muslims have tended to be vulnerable to hate
International issues that affect local Muslims: India/Kashmir, Uighurs, Palestine, migrants in Europe, US presence in Middle East
Ramadan starts in April (lol but really it does)

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THE

QUEER

COMMUNITY

LGBTQ /

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Men are from Chelsea, Women are from Park Slope�The Pudding, June 2018

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Don’t “rainbow wash”�
Ask people how they self-identify

Don’t assume pronouns

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WHAT

IS OUT

THERE?

DATA

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Government data

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The Most Detailed Map of Gay Marriage in America�The New York Times, Sept. 2016

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Public opinion data

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This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind�Bloomberg, June 2015

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Academic research data

The Williams Institute
Scholars including: Dr. Gary Gates, Dr. Amin Ghaziani, Dr. Janice Fanning Madden, Dr. Matthew Ruther, and Jack Gieseking

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Non-profit research data

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Social & tech data

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Make your own data

Collect and organize data from sources including: original documents, surveys, sensors, photos/video, news reports and observations
Combine multiple data sources into one index

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Gay rights in the US,

state by state�The Guardian US, May 2012

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WHAT

DATA

LIMITATIONS?

ARE THE

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We’re using proxies for queer people

The US Census doesn’t even ask any questions about sexual orientation or gender identity
Instead, we’ve been relying on “same-sex unmarried partner households”

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We have sampling & miscoding errors

There are just fewer queer people to count — researchers estimate 4.5—10% of the �US population is LGBTQ
Small data errors in the larger population (non-LGBTQ) can create big errors �in the smaller population

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We have undercounts

Surveys undercount minorities and non-binary or gender-nonconforming people
The most vulnerable populations may feel at risk if they answer honestly, or answer at all

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We’re not asking the right questions

Surveys don’t feel inclusive and our data collection methods haven’t evolved
Questions limited to “male/female” or “man/woman”
And data representation matters!

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Queering the Map�Queering the Map, crowdsourced

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Plot Me Genderfluid�Kelsey Campbell, GaytaScience

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QUANTITATIVE

What numbers

tell you

QUALITATIVE

What people

tell you

Where you want to be

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RESEARCH. ASK. RESEARCH.

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WHO ARE THE EXPERTS?

Consult with experts and advocate ahead of your reporting.

Ask them about the history behind the issue you are covering.

What are the important developments that are not being covered?

What pitfalls should I avoid?

Is there something that I’m missing or not taking into consideration?

Is there data available that I may not know about?

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WHAT ANGLES HAVE NOT BEEN COVERED?

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GET CREATIVE WITH YOUR DATA

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PROVE IT?

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DON’T JUST RELY ON ANECDOTES!
Sometimes those stories can do more harm than good.
Create and vet an irrefutable methodology to build your story around that includes data, documents and anecdotes.