Like many newspaper-reading citizens, I’ve sent in my share of letters to the editor, mostly to my local paper. I’ve praised my community for raising funds to put into farms into a land trust, spoken up for local candidates, or shared my pedestrian perspective that drivers need to stop at crosswalks.
When, at age 7, my kid wrote about the importance of everyone having a home — and the paper printed it — my heart burst with pride. Getting one’s idea in the paper, it’s like a microburst of democracy across a page. Recently, my new hobby is to write letters to the editor that will never get published (if my track record so far is any indication). Rather than weigh in about local issues to my local paper, I’m writing to papers elsewhere about the ways stories are being covered. It’s like a microburst of media literacy (that doesn’t get published).
For example, in a story about Jeffrey Epstein awaiting trial in a Manhattan jail for horrific crimes against young women, the New York Times ran a photo of him in a casual sweater, looking tanned and relaxed, nothing like the person who’d been deemed a flight risk, reduced to a jumpsuit and number. I noted in my letter that a mug shot would have better aligned with this story.
I questioned the Washington Post’s description of President Trump’s “unorthodox mind,” noting that praising dictators over allies is more aptly called undemocratic behavior for a sitting president. I wrote the Times to object to a headline for a story about Brett Kavanaugh’s alleged sexual harassment of another student at Yale. The clickbait headline didn’t focus upon new corroborations of this complaint, but rather “Brett Kavanaugh Fit In With The Privileged Kids. She Did Not.”
In my letter, I reflected that the headline should have lined up to the heart of the story “about how the F.B.I. and the Senate Judiciary failed to find facts two reporters were able to surface simply by asking, no muscle of the law necessary.” Whether the “she” in question fit in had nothing to do with the story’s news value.
Words do matter. Images, too, so when words and images about the news favor some (the powerful, privileged men) and disadvantage others (very often women, very often people without such power and prestige), I believe it’s a problem that cuts at the knees the point of good journalism, which is to inform us about the news.
Editorials belong on the editorial pages. I am not a reactionary crying “fake.” I’m trying to hold news organizations accountable to accurately report their stories.
My new hobby has done nothing to relax me. Neither did last year’s hobby, which was to join the ranks of postcard writers sending “Postcards to Voters” about upcoming elections. Sure, there were markers, doodling and exclamation points involved. But also, stress.
This is a stressful period, after all. These “hobbies” reflect the times. But like knitting (pussy hats) was for some people, speaking up is for me, a fidget calmer for my democracy restlessness. Like many hobbyists, I know the product or outcome is not the point; the point is to do something with your free time. And this is what I’m doing with mine.
Sarah Buttenwieser is a writer and community organizer who lives in Northampton.