Take your heart out of the freezer

I had intended this newsletter to be independent of the news cycle. To create a space where we can work to gradually lengthen the half-life of our response reflex—to respond not only to what is happening right now but also to attend to the “how did we get here?” Then we would fix some things.

But we need to attend to the now. It's been four days since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis shot protester Alex Pretti in the back after they restrained him on the ground. This is a profound personal tragedy for the people who loved him. For the rest of us, we are tasked with deciding what else Alex Pretti's death means to us.

The personal, the civic, and the professional are hard to disentangle sometimes. We don't have to pretend they aren't. Those of us who work in and around news don't always feel we have the time to think through what events mean to us before we try to help others better understand or work through them. We put our heart in the freezer, as the journalist and author Ece Temelkuran has said.

Try to take it out.

I have not found it easy to call forth my humanity and feel, specifically, for Alex Pretti. My heart has been on ice since 2012. I would like to emotionally acknowledge Pretti's death as a tragedy, but I don't want to actually feel it. His death blends with the other people I don't know but whom I have also seen after they were dead, only through images, and there have been so many these past years. Nobody is calling me to it, but I want to be a more humane witness.

I know what my human response to a tragedy should be, but I've suppressed it. This is different altogether from my civic and professional responsibilities. Those are less clear. Our responsibilities are changing in this environment. If you've found ways to work and feel your way through these events, I would love to know where you are finding meaning. I offer only three ideas here in case you, too, are looking for how to respond as information providers and as Americans. These are not the only things, nor are they the best. I offer them anyway.

More reporting

Federal ICE agents have killed two protesters in less than three weeks. The Trace has identified 19 instances of ICE agents opening fire since last fall. Five people have been killed, and 8 have been injured.

Violence at the hands of the state is the business of everyone who works in news. We don't always fulfill our duty to help create accountability for state violence, but we can try again here. It will demand our focus after the fever pitch decreases. Reuters did a thorough explainer on what it would take for the courts to hold individual ICE officers and their department liable for the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. It's simple and clarifying.

Outlier did an exhaustive anatomy of a routine traffic stop that escalated into a detention for two Venezuelan asylum seekers, a mother and her teenage son, with upcoming court dates. The reporting showed, in detail, how local police officers called Customs and Border Protection officers onto the scene. The mother and son spent a month in a Texas detention facility, but they have been released and not deported.

Local news is also covering how residents have, successfully, been demanding action from city and state officials. Michigan's state supreme court is even considering a ban on civil arrests, but not arrests with an outstanding warrant, at courthouses in an attempt to curtail federal agents targeting immigrants showing up to scheduled court dates. I read about that development in Planet Detroit, an environmental news organization that shifted their reporting to respond to the emergency unfolding in the neighborhood they cover most.

Opinion is rarely clarifying

Federal officials have lied about what led up to the killings of both Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota. This is not a cover-up, though there is obstruction of local officials attempts at fact-finding. Instead, we are spectators and participants in a brazen battle for narrative control.

Each of us is asked to normalize these acts of state violence by doubting the facts in these cases or by ignoring them and moving on with our lives. This cover-up is distributed. During the last several election cycles, serious money has been spent trying to educate people who work in news about how to deal with disinformation. We can lean on those lessons now.

Cognitively, credibility is often a zero-sum game. Our brains would rather not divorce information from the sources where we get that information. They do not. If I'm being asked to believe something new that contradicts information from a source I believed to be credible, chances are I will stick with my initial understanding. I may even believe that initial source to be more credible in the aftermath of this new information arriving on the scene. It is a mental shortcut we all take.

The barrage of opinion writing following any major event with political and moral ramifications is unhelpful here. It hardens those cognitive camps because so much opinion writing centers on conflict. You have to choose a side with most opinion writing. Once you do, accepting new information is more difficult. The White House wants these battle lines drawn; they have a “media bias portal” ready and waiting for tips.

To actually help people make sense of developing or conflicting information, the list of tactics is both detailed and careful. An open newsroom where questions are taken seriously would serve people in ways that a column or an op-ed never will.

There is so much we can do civically

I had three basic avenues for my own civic participation when I was in the newsroom. For the most part, I would report, attend public and community meetings, and vote. This is too narrow a menu for somebody who does not do significant amounts of either item one or two. My friend and favorite archivist, Kimberly Springer, came to the rescue. She shared a very long list called, perfectly, “Some Actions That Are Not Protesting or Voting.” Use it as inspiration and share it with anybody who has been asking, “What can we do?” There really is so much.

Take care until next week.