Editorial: Covering politics, serving democracy

As the ones writing about it and reporting on it, we’re getting just as tired of it as you.

What makes it “worse” this year is it’s an election year; it’s inescapable. We know that after a certain point, even the mostly politically invested people get tired of it. But at the same time, the abundance of information is beneficial, and even necessary, to understand every aspect of this election.

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Who is still looking into whether Vice President Kamala Harris worked at McDonald’s in the 1980s? Or that former president Donald Trump’s “small loan” from his father was much larger than he claimed? 

Who were the ones hosting and fact checking the president and vice president debates, and who are the ones still ruthlessly providing you information with less than a week until the election? 

Journalists are.

Maybe you will argue that the news can be politics-free. To that, I ask you to look at some of America’s oldest newspapers - specifically, the Boston Gazette. For those who grew up learning United States History, that name might be familiar, as it played a critical role in criticizing the British government just before the Revolutionary War. The paper was also one of the first to report on the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre. 

To colonists, those were bizarre, one-off events that were just newsworthy. At present day, we know them as historical events that completely influenced the war and shaped America politics as a whole (we have the right to protest, the right to bear arms and “no taxation without representation” because of them).

You can say the same with events during the last four years - the Jan. 6 insurrection, the multiple attempted assassinations attempts on Trump and Joe Biden dropping out of the race and endorsing Harris in his place are all things we’ve already dubbed as “historical events” that are also very political in nature. Multiple people reported on it through social media - but who verified the information and continued to ask questions to get the facts right? Journalists did.

You may be tired of hearing the same things over and over again. As students studying the field and working within the industry, so are we. But you cannot deny the importance of journalism in politics, both on a historical level and on a personal level, so that the public can intimately understand what is going on in their own country. 

Democracy demands journalism, you should too

There isn’t an easy definition of a journalist. The standard might once have been "someone who works for a news organization." 

Now that we live in the age of digital media where formal news organizations aren’t the only ones that can publish information, the definition has to be boiled down to its basic components. 

It would be fair to say that a journalist is someone who seeks information with the intent to publish it in a way that’s fair, accurate and educational. That can be anyone from employees of traditional news outlets to independent bloggers and content creators. 

Here’s a little secret: most of the methods journalists have for information gathering are also available to the public. We’re just nosy enough to look for it. 

But the role of true journalists – not TV personalities, not every content creator – has immense impact. 

Think about this election. If you pictured Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump on the debate stage, remember that the debate was moderated by ABC News and the journalists who want to provide voters with information. 

Maybe you thought back to an article from your local newspaper that provided you even more information. 

Or, maybe thinking about the election brought up feelings of anxiety. Valid. 

Journalists are everywhere (hopefully not causing you anxiety), and we have been for a long time. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were the famed reporters who covered the Watergate robbery during Richard Nixon's Presidency.

Both of those reporters, like the rest of us today, had to work hard and build relationships with sources (and be pretty nosy) over a long period of time before any of that would have been possible. That’s the product of a successful career, not the start of one. 

You might have even heard us called "muckrakers" – a once-derogatory nickname for the journalists in the 1890s-1920s like Ida Tarbell and Upton Sinclair, who made names for themselves as thorns in the sides of people in power. 

They weren’t afraid to get into the nitty gritty, the less-than-picturesque parts of life in the United States. It is in their honor that we aren’t either. 

It’s not always big-picture victories, it’s the everyday work. It’s covering (arguably dry) local government meetings where the decisions that impact our lives the most are made. 

It’s breaking down a federal election by issue, rather than by candidate, because informed decisions are based on policy, not personality. 

It’s sitting in on the meetings of the CMU Board of Trustees to see how they’ve decided to spend your tuition dollars. 

Democracy demands journalism because an effective democracy requires an informed, decision-making public. Without it, our sole source of information is individuals who have a vested interest in a positive interpretation of their messages. 

Tired of election coverage in your feed? At least it’s reliable. Democracy demands journalists, and so should you. 

How does CM Life make its editorial decisions? 

At CM Life, the goal for our political coverage is to inform our community – CMU students and Mount Pleasant residents. 

We are here to bring you news about your local government and localize the national news by finding out it impacts us here, in Mount Pleasant.

Jim Wojcik has been a journalism professor at CMU for over 50 years. Out of those, he was a CM Life advisor for 30 years. Before, Wojcik worked as a sports editor at a daily newspaper. He said that the best community is the one that’s informed accurately and fairly.

“I used to say the future of journalism was local journalism, and to me, that is the only thing that I think has a chance of saving journalism,” Wojcik said. 

In our coverage, CM Life is guided by journalistic principles and ethics. We follow the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics that tells us to:

• Seek and report truth
• Minimize harm
• Be accountable and transparent
• Serve the public and be independent

Wojcik said that in today’s world, he worries about the freedom of the press, freedom of the speech and the credibility of journalism. He said the public’s trust in journalism has been broken and many people think that news is one-sided. 

“I could give you names for every major network that I think leans politically one way or another,” Wojcik said. “I shouldn’t be able to do that. … You’ve heard the old line, the toothpaste is out of the tube, you’re not getting it back in. … To me, that trust is the toothpaste.”

In our political coverage this election season, we are hoping to bring that trust back by providing CMU and Mount Pleasant with accurate, fair and balanced news reporting. 

That is why we sent questionnaires to local candidates from both parties; we are going to cover both Republican and Democratic watch parties on Tuesday; and in our stories, we strive to give voice to both perspectives. 

Our newsroom policy is to have at least three sources in a news story, two of which must be interviews with people. It is important for us that our sources also represent different voices and perspectives, for example, in “More than two ideas," Editor-in-Chief Lauren Rice interviewed both Planned Parenthood and the College Republicans.

But giving voice to different perspectives doesn’t mean spreading lies – we double check whether what the source says is true, and you can follow the attached links in our stories to where we received information. 

Similarly, we cover news that happens locally. If Democratic candidate for Senate Elissa Slotkin visits CMU campus, we will cover it. But if Republican candidate for Senate Mike Rogers didn’t come to campus – there is nothing to cover.

In our editorial decisions, we are also guided by journalistic principles of what is newsworthy: timeliness, proximity, impact, human interest, conflict, prominence and oddness. 

But most importantly, we make those decisions independently. No one – not CMU, not the local political parties and not people who buy our advertising space – tells us what to cover. 

For every person on the editorial staff of CM Life, journalism is not just our greatest passion, but also a value that we hold and that is vital for democracy. 

Press is the only profession that is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. That is also something we remember when we do our work here at CM Life, because we are here to serve our local public and protect democracy.