“They Always Get Our Story Wrong”: Addressing Social Justice Activists’ News Distrust Through Solidarity Reporting

Abstract

This study positions social justice activists’ objections to dominant reporting norms as a catalyst for critically reassessing these norms and their connection to diminishing trust in US journalism. Based on a conceptual application of discourse ethics to journalism and qualitative analysis of 28 in-depth interviews with social justice activists, we examine how participants experience and evaluate mainstream coverage of social justice, and why they think journalism could improve its trustworthiness through practices consistent with solidarity reporting norms.

Full text

Media and Communication (ISSN: 2183–2439)
2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X
https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v11i4.7006
Article
“They Always Get Our Story Wrong”: Addressing Social Justice Activists’
News Distrust Through Solidarity Reporting
Anita Varma 1,*, Brad Limov 1, and Ayleen Cabas‐Mijares 2
1School of Journalism and Media, The University of Texas at Austin, USA
2Diederich College of Communication, Marquette University, USA
* Corresponding author (anita.varma@austin.utexas.edu)
Submitted: 21 April 2023 | Accepted: 11 July 2023 | Published: in press
Abstract
This study positions social justice activists’ objections to dominant reporting norms as a catalyst for critically reassessing
these norms and their connection to diminishing trust in US journalism. Based on a conceptual application of discourse
ethics to journalism and qualitative analysis of 28 in‐depth interviews with social justice activists, we examine how par‐
ticipants experience and evaluate mainstream coverage of social justice, and why they think journalism could improve its
trustworthiness through practices consistent with solidarity reporting norms.
Keywords
activism; journalism; trust in news; social justice; solidarity
Issue
This article is part of the issue “Trust, Social Cohesion, and Information Quality in Digital Journalism” edited by Thomas B.
Ksiazek (Villanova University), Jacob L. Nelson (Arizona State University), and Anita Varma (University of Texas at Austin).
© 2023 by the author(s); licensee Cogitatio Press (Lisbon, Portugal). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY).
1. Introduction
Eroding trust in news in the US has prompted a wide
breadth of research, public engagement initiatives, and
industry responses (see Robinson et al., 2021). One com‐
mon solution is to encourage media literacy (cf. Plaut,
2023). By teaching audiences to regard journalism as
a rigorous, reliable, and superior form of information
within digital ecosystems, researchers, news practition‐
ers, and philanthropists have suggested that journalism
could restore its mantle of public authority. Despite
a range of such interventions, however, trust in US
news remains low, based on audience surveys (Knight
Foundation & Gallup, 2023).
A popular narrative is that dominant US journalism
was once a trusted, authoritative institution that unified
society (Obama, 2022; cf. Schudson, 2022). Yet dominant
journalism has never been an unanimously trusted insti‐
tution: Due to dominant journalism’s longstanding ten‐
dency to dehumanize, distort, and undermine marginal‐
ized groups who struggle for survival (Santa Ana, 2002;
Squires, 2009; Walters, 2001), marginalized communities
are among the original skeptics and critics of mainstream
journalism (González & Torres, 2011).
Decades of scholarship have demonstrated how
US journalism often portrays marginalized communi‐
ties’ collective activism using negative, criminalizing
frames aligned with “the protest paradigm.” This cover‐
age tends to ignore (or minimize) the structural causes
and demands of collective activism (Boyle et al., 2012;
Entman & Rojecki, 1993; Gil‐Lopez, 2021; Gitlin, 1980;
Harlow et al., 2020; McLeod, 2007). Adherence to the
protest paradigm varies depending on factors like issue,
location of protest, whether protestors aim to challenge
versus protect the status quo, and the ideological orien‐
tation of news outlets (Harlow et al., 2020). News cov‐
erage is most likely to align with the protest paradigm
when activists use radical tactics (Boyle et al., 2012;
Lee, 2014) or seek to advance racial justice (Brown &
Harlow, 2019). For example, Brown and Harlow (2019)
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 1

have found that the protest paradigm is uncommon in
coverage of climate action, except when climate action
focuses on Indigenous communities.
Against the backdrop of the protest paradigm, our
study leverages insights from social justice activists and
organizers to interrogate US journalism norms for cover‐
ing social justice issues and to analyze their implications
for trust in US news. We use Varma’s (2020, p. 1706)
definition of social justice as “dignity for everyone in a
society,” and define social justice activists as people who
participate in collective efforts to challenge and address
systemic marginalization (Young, 1990).
Based on 28 in‐depth interviews, we argue that low
trust in US news may indicate a lack of consensus about
the merit of dominant journalism norms, instead of indi‐
cating that audiences lack awareness or understanding
of these norms. Interviewees identify promising recon‐
figurations in ethical news‐making processes that could
help journalists develop relationships with social justice
movements, in the service of producing more nuanced,
accurate, and trustworthy coverage of ongoing struggles
for basic dignity.
We begin by synthesizing dominant reporting norms
in mainstream journalism and contrasting them with
solidarity reporting norms (Varma, 2020, 2022, 2023).
Then, we provide an overview of discourse ethics as
a framework for justifying this study’s focus on social
justice activists. Discourse ethics, based on Glasser and
Ettema’s (2008) application to journalism, calls for delib‐
eration when anyone affected by a norm objects to
it, thereby guaranteeing that journalism criticism is no
longer restricted to people with journalistic creden‐
tials or institutionally‐validated expertise. Social justice
activists in our study belong to and represent con‐
stituencies negatively impacted by dominant journalism
norms, which means their perspectives should be incor‐
porated into discussions of trust in journalism that tar‐
get these norms. We find that participants critique dom‐
inant reporting norms and articulate solidarity reporting
norms as more trustworthy alternatives. Finally, we con‐
clude by considering the prospects for building trust in
journalism through transformed reporting norms, and
the implications of solidarity reporting for journalism
that attempts to serve heterogeneous news audiences.
2. Conceptual Framework
2.1. Contrasting Dominant and Solidarity Reporting
Norms
Dominant reporting norms emphasize accuracy and
transparency in pursuit of objectivity (Aitamurto, 2019).
With a dominant monitorial role (Christians et al., 2009),
journalism aims to shine a spotlight on society’s influen‐
tial institutions, leading to a focus on politicians, experts,
and institutional spokespeople (Bennett et al., 2006).
Professionalized into prioritizing journalistic autonomy
(Carlson, 2017), journalists often take an adversarial
stance toward sources in interviews (Clayman, 2002),
strive for balance in reporting, and prioritize detach‐
ment, impartiality, and neutrality as signals of credibil‐
ity, authority, and trustworthiness (cf. Bratich, 2020).
Journalists are usually trained to be generalists with
procedural expertise in how to report a story without
background expertise or prior knowledge of the topics
they cover (Perry, 2016). Dominant framing becomes
episodic (Iyengar, 1990), individualizing (Bennett, 2016),
and emotional when profiling marginalized individuals
(Schneider, 2012).
In contrast, solidarity reporting norms (compared in
Table 1) move journalism from a monitorial function
to an interpretive process (Carey, 1992) of accounting
for unjust shared conditions that deny people’s inher‐
ent dignity. Solidarity reporting brings an ethical impera‐
tive for journalism that aspires to be accurate and fair
to also represent “the grassroots epistemologies ema‐
nating from the streets” (Canella, 2022, p. 5). To do
so, solidarity reporting prioritizes people with grounded
insights into systems of oppression (for a conceptual
explication of oppression, see Young, 1990). Framing
in solidarity is societal, systemic, and political (Varma,
2020). News values become radical hope, mutual aid,
and collective empowerment (Varma, 2022). Rather than
an adversarial stance toward sources during interviews,
solidarity reporting develops collaborative and construc‐
tive dynamics. Finally, journalists who enact solidarity
as an ethical priority reflexively attend to their own
positionality and represent the various standpoint epis‐
temologies they encounter in the production of news
(Cabas‐Mijares, 2022).
Past research has not considered the implications of
a solidarity approach to journalism for audience trust.
We focus on social justice activists’ insights, grounded
in their participation in collective efforts to navigate
and disrupt oppressive systems, and justify this focus
using Glasser and Ettema’s (2008, p. 525) application
of Habermas’ discourse ethics to journalism. Discourse
ethics requires consensus among “all affected” by a norm
for it to be defensible, and deliberation is set in motion
when anyone affected objects to the status quo. Rather
than deferring to individuals’ consciences, experts, or
majoritarian rule, conditions of access and argumen‐
tation are required for developing ethically defensible
norms (Glasser & Ettema, 2008, p. 524).
Habermas’ work has been critiqued for neglecting to
account for actually‐existing power dynamics in public
discourse that create substantial barriers to access and
argumentation (Fraser, 1990). Näsström (2011) offers
an important addition to the discourse ethics frame‐
work through the “all‐subjected principle,” which adds
a power analysis for deciding who, among “all affected,”
should be prioritized. People subjected to norms experi‐
ence them as disempowering impositions that they can‐
not refuse or avoid, whereas people affected may or
may not be adversely impacted. Aligned with the all‐
subjected principle, our study begins with social justice
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 2

Table 1. Dominant reporting norms and solidarity reporting norms.
Dominant reporting Solidarity reporting
Journalist’s dynamic with Adversarial, hostile, extractive Collaborative, constructive, reflexive
sources
Framing Individual, episodic, emotional Societal, systemic, political
News values Skepticism, conflict, sensationalism Radical hope, collective empowerment,
shared conditions
Narrative structure Balance between opposing views Truth based on what is happening on
the ground
Sourcing emphasis Officials, institutional experts People affected by social injustice or engaged
in collective efforts to address social injustice
Journalist’s professional Procedural knowledge of reporting Procedural knowledge as well as subject matter
skillset practices knowledge of social justice issues and histories
Basis for trustworthiness Detachment, impartiality, neutrality, Commitment to people’s basic dignity,
of journalism transparency human rights
Primary purpose of Shine a spotlight on society’s Represent underlying causes of ongoing social
journalism influential institutions justice issues
activists for whom refusing or avoiding dominant news
coverage altogether is implausible, given the history of
the protest paradigm, as well as their own need to
reach a broad, general public beyond their own networks.
Mainstream journalists have used activists’ work, strug‐
gles, and lives in news coverage shaped by norms that
activists find objectionable and harmful (Bragg, 2022;
Holzer, 2022; Torres, 2015). Thus, affected by and sub‐
jected to journalism norms, social justice activists offer
specific and relevant insights for enriching journalism as
a public service.
Discourse ethics usefully distinguishes between two
interconnected levels of justification and application
(Rehg, 1994), such that objections at the level of appli‐
cation mean general principles are no longer satisfac‐
tory at the level of justification (Glasser & Ettema, 2008).
Addressing a crisis of trust begins, we argue, by exam‐
ining why people do not trust journalism and journal‐
ists (see Duchovnay & Masullo, 2021; Robinson & Culver,
2019; Wenzel, 2020), which often arises at the level of
application and destabilizes the justification for domi‐
nant norms that are taken‐for‐granted within the jour‐
nalism profession as hallmarks of credibility. Social jus‐
tice activists’ substantive objections to dominant report‐
ing norms at the level of application mean, based on the
logic of discourse ethics, that they should be included in
discussions of how to address these issues.
Journalists committed to traditional norms around
objectivity and neutrality are, however, typically wary of
accepting insights originating from social justice activists
and their associated social movements or community
groups (Jha, 2008). News organizations may fear that
activists’ efforts constitute “special interest pleading,”
but as Ryan et al. (1998, p. 179) note, “only in collective
endeavors can marginalized groups accrue the resources
sufficient to enter the news arena.” Even when social jus‐
tice movements’ limited resources are redirected to con‐
form to dominant news routines and tailored to court
disinterested reporters, journalists may persistently dis‐
card this input and ignore structural inequities in their
coverage (Ryan et al., 1998). News coverage that sen‐
sationalizes or misrepresents collective action further
erodes trust in dominant news media among social jus‐
tice activists (Wasserman et al., 2018). Pragmatically,
dominant reporting norms have not preserved or built
trust in journalism, which signals a lack of consen‐
sus for dominant reporting norms and the need to
develop alternatives.
2.2. Journalism and Community (Dis)Trust
Trusting journalism as an institution means believing
news media will provide credible information, even
when audiences cannot independently verify all claims
(Jakobsson & Stiernstedt, 2023). This creates a risk,
which loyal news audiences accept due to their expec‐
tation that news media’s professional norms will ensure
high information quality with respect to what audiences
perceive as accuracy and fidelity to the issues at hand
(Hanitzsch et al., 2018; Kohring & Matthes, 2007).
US survey research suggests that the prospects for
improving trust in local news are relatively high, with
only 18% of US adults having low trust in local news, as
opposed to 41% with low trust in national news (Knight
Foundation & Gallup, 2023). As Usher (2021) has argued,
discourse about declining trust in US news often fails
to consider how previous and emerging economic mod‐
els for journalism—including at the local level—privilege
rich, white, and liberal audiences who pay for news,
and the fact that there have always been “historical
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 3

news deserts” where journalists parachute into areas
to produce extractive, stereotypical coverage. By build‐
ing deeper relationships with communities, journalists
may “legitimate their specialized knowledge by know‐
ing places,” and develop “place trust” (Usher, 2019,
pp. 131–132).
To address news distrust at a community‐level, some
news initiatives place themselves within local storytelling
networks, a process where journalists engage commu‐
nity members in collectively defining and responding to
their problems (Wenzel, 2019, 2020). “Listening litera‐
cies” initiatives aim to encourage community members
to critically assess information and engage news organi‐
zations and journalists as they co‐create and share infor‐
mation (Robinson et al., 2021). As Almeida and Robinson
(2023, p. 511) ask, “What would it look like for commu‐
nity news outlets to partner with community activists
in solidarity and seek reparations for their city’s or
town’s historical wrongs?” Local news is well‐positioned
to develop such a dynamic since relationships between
journalists and activists can develop over time, leading
local journalists to treat social justice efforts as newswor‐
thy (Kutz‐Flamenbaum et al., 2012; related discussion in
Varma, 2023).
In the absence of such constructive dynamics within
dominant news media, however, activists have often
sought recourse in alternative media to articulate
grievances, demands, and visions for change on their
own terms. While alternative media have historically
functioned as intragroup communication within move‐
ments (Downing, 2014), digital media have placed more
control over external communications in the hands of
activists (Richardson, 2020). “The media” is no longer an
outside institution to which activists must make appeals,
and instead is a constitutive part of the social prac‐
tices of activism (Canella, 2022). Nevertheless, activists
continue to view mainstream journalism as a way to
advance social justice (Lester & Hutchins, 2009), despite
a commercial media system that is often misaligned with
their aims.
We pose the following research questions to guide
our examination of social justice activists’ dynamics with
dominant news media and the impact of these dynam‐
ics on activists’ evaluations of news information quality
and trustworthiness:
RQ1: How do social justice activists experience and
evaluate dominant journalism norms in mainstream
coverage of social justice?
RQ2: What reporting norms do social justice activists
articulate for improving trust in journalism?
3. Methods
This study uses qualitative thematic analysis (Braun &
Clarke, 2006) of 28 semi‐structured, in‐depth interviews.
We began recruiting social justice activists and organizers
in June 2022. First, we contacted organizing groups and
asked journalists who regularly cover social justice issues
for suggestions. We also circulated a call on a list‐serv
which includes journalists, activists, organizers, and edu‐
cators working on social justice issues. Finally, we asked
interviewees for suggestions about others to contact for
the study. All identifying information has been removed
to protect study participants, including the names of
individual journalists and local news organizations with
whom participants interacted.
We conducted interviews from July to September
2022 via Zoom and in‐person across three US cities.
Interviews lasted for 30–60 minutes. In each interview,
we began by asking activists to describe their involve‐
ment in social justice work, and then asked for their
thoughts on news coverage of social justice issues and
their activism efforts. Next, we asked if they had inter‐
acted with journalists directly, and if so, what those
interactions were like. Then, we asked interviewees how
journalism could improve, if at all, and what advice
they would give to a journalist who wanted to cover
social justice activism. Qualitative thematic analysis of
audio transcripts followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006,
p. 87) steps of “generating initial codes” before devel‐
oping themes based on “coded extracts” situated within
the full set of qualitative data. We focus our find‐
ings on themes that arose in multiple interviews to
encapsulate recurring experiences, critiques, and recom‐
mendations. Codes including “news routines,” “news‐
worthiness,” “perspectives in news coverage,” and “infor‐
mation quality” were prominent across transcripts, as
interviewees regularly identified these areas as roots of
their distrust of dominant journalism. Through close tex‐
tual analysis, we found that interviewees primarily cri‐
tiqued reporting norms, rather than individual reporters
or news outlets.
Activists in this study self‐described as participating
in a range of social justice efforts across multiple, inter‐
secting, and interconnected areas due to their struc‐
tural understanding of social justice. These areas include
reproductive justice, housing justice, labor unions, immi‐
gration, climate change, public safety, racial justice, and
gender equity. Critiques of dominant journalism norms
were consistent across issue areas, as were articulations
of solidarity reporting norms as trustworthy alternatives.
Due to ongoing and intensifying attacks on social jus‐
tice activists in the US, we assured interviewees that they
would not be identified, named, or individually profiled
in this study. We received Institutional Review Board
approval before beginning this study, which requires
that we protect interviewees’ anonymity. Also, most
participants rejected the idea of categorizing or label‐
ing themselves in terms of a single issue (or an assort‐
ment of issues), since they viewed social justice activism
as a holistic commitment to societal transformation.
For these reasons, we refer to interviewees under the
umbrella of “social justice activists,” rather than using
issue‐specific categories or profiles.
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 4

4. Findings
4.1. Dominant Journalism Norms as Obstacles to
Information Quality and Trust
Social justice activists primarily described their experi‐
ences with news media in negative terms, character‐
izing their interactions with journalists as “frustrating,”
“difficult,” “intimidating,” and “scary.” Most participants
attributed this tenor to mainstream journalism norms of
professional practice rather than to reporters’ personal
politics or unprofessionalism.
In this section, we present activists’ experiences with
and assessments of dominant journalism norms in main‐
stream coverage of social justice. Participants articu‐
lated objections to dominant norms, including journal‐
ists’ adversarial stance toward sources and journalists’
tendency to use individualizing and episodic framing
when covering social justice issues.
4.1.1. Adversarial Interviewing Tactics
Participants regularly critiqued journalists’ approach to
interviewing. Journalists conducting interviews, they
said, displayed hostility toward communities impacted
by social injustice, asked loaded questions laden with
skepticism, and attempted to extract quotes to fit a pre‐
conceived narrative. The adversarial stance that activists
described is consistent with how watchdog reporters
confront officials in power (Clayman, 2002). In the
context of covering social justice efforts, however, jour‐
nalists’ adversarial stance alienated sources and con‐
tributed to activists’ low evaluations of mainstream jour‐
nalism’s credibility. One activist who refused “to be
the victim” shared a frustrating experience with a local
reporter who pressed for a response to a question that
the activist told the reporter, repeatedly, was based on
a distortion:
I was telling the reporter, “I’m not going to answer
that”….And she would rephrase it and I’m like, “I’m
not going to answer that.” On mic, on camera…“You
are trying to get a reaction out of me. You’re trying
to sensationalize something and I’m not going to play
into it.”
Journalists taking adversarial stances during interviews
was expected behavior, according to participants who
had a sharp awareness of the protest paradigm (McLeod,
2007). Rather than a sign of rigor and watchdog report‐
ing, activists experienced adversarial interviews as an
attempt by journalists to manufacture conflict for the
sake of turning social justice issues and activism into a
spectacle. In this context, journalists abiding by a norm
of maintaining an adversarial stance toward sources con‐
tributed to activists’ suspicion and skepticism of journal‐
ists’ and news organizations’ motives.
4.1.2. Individualizing, Emotional, and Episodic Framing
Activists in our study tracked news coverage of their
efforts and were often disappointed due to individual‐
izing, emotional, and episodic framing (Bennett, 2016;
Iyengar, 1990; Schneider, 2012) that omitted collective
organizing work. As one activist shared, news stories
tended to erase community initiatives and demands,
which implied that “we’re just complaining residents
who are upset about the world not being the way that
we want it.” Another activist articulated the same omis‐
sion problem at the level of framing:
It’s easy for the movements to become obscured
when you’re just talking about a personal story from
a worker….Having those emotional individual stories
is important, but I think it’s a disservice when it’s not
tied to organizations and unions that have been push‐
ing for [change] for many years.
Activists indicated that individual stories focused on
emotion were inadequate for representing the scope
and dimensions of social justice organizing. As a dif‐
ferent participant noted, “The power dynamic is not
acknowledged” in stories that use episodic framing, and
mainstream journalism often portrays social injustice
as “unavoidable.”
Event‐framed reporting, activists said, neglects the
institutional decisions and structural conditions behind
social injustice. One activist provided the specific exam‐
ple of factory layoffs that dominant news media “pre‐
sented as an unavoidable business cost….The status quo
of workers generally not having power is reflected in
the media coverage by just not giving them the space.”
Officials, business owners, and experts receive dispropor‐
tionate airtime and amplification through news, activists
pointed out, which leads to distorted narratives about
social justice issues and further diminishes activists’ trust
in journalism.
Participants implicated flagship news organizations
in their critiques of mainstream journalism, as well
as smaller news organizations. They characterized jour‐
nalism’s shortcomings as systemic, industry‐wide, and
entrenched. At the same time, activists rarely endorsed
the idea of abandoning mainstream media altogether in
favor of focusing their attention exclusively on alterna‐
tive news outlets. Instead, pointing to the benefits of
mainstream journalism’s wide audience reach, capacity
for in‐depth reporting, and continued influence on public
opinion and policy‐making, activists articulated specific
ways for mainstream journalism to improve, which we
analyze next.
4.2. Solidarity Reporting to Address Distrust Among
Social Justice Activists
In this section, we examine specific practices that
activists indicated would improve social justice coverage
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 5

and their trust in journalism. Adopting norms of solidar‐
ity reporting including prioritizing grassroots sourcing,
replacing dominant news values with solidarity news val‐
ues, and improving journalists’ grasp of social justice con‐
cepts and histories were key changes that activists rec‐
ommended as desirable and effective correctives to jour‐
nalism’s shortcomings (see Table 1).
Rather than attempting to forge opportunities for
movement propaganda or public relations through jour‐
nalism, participants in our study described paths for
improving trust that were aligned with their shared inter‐
est in truthful, evidence‐based reporting. None of the
interviewees were in favor of opinion pieces replacing
factual reporting, nor did they seek endorsements from
news organizations. Furthermore, activists recognized
the unmet need for shared public definitions of pressing
issues, and expressed concerns about media fragmenta‐
tion for society (aligned with rhetoric found in journalism
trust initiatives, see Robinson et al., 2021):
I see very much the real harms of a fraying media land‐
scape where everybody has their own press. If you
don’t share facts, you really can’t share a govern‐
ment….I fear where this goes. It’s hard to see a coun‐
try persist where everybody’s got their own version
of the truth.
Truthful reporting on social justice issues and activism,
participants argued, requires quoting people with direct
experience, and representing structural conditions.
4.2.1. “Quote People”: Redefining Expertise by
Prioritizing People With Direct Experience
Activists were aware that journalists routinely cultivate
relationships with officials and institutions of power to
ensure access to ongoing coverage, and said that they
would like to see the same dynamic with organizing
groups. “First, journalists have to be willing to build rela‐
tionships with people on issues they’re covering,” said
one participant. Another activist provided similar practi‐
cal advice: “Quote people. Don’t take people out of con‐
text. Quote them at length. Don’t do sound bites….You
don’t have to be equal. Just be fair.” Quoting people,
participants said, would help ensure that coverage was
less distorted and dependent on officials. Although quot‐
ing people sounds like an obvious practice, activists said
that it was rare for journalists to talk to people directly
experiencing oppression and groups working to address
it. As one activist explained:
I don’t see a lot of media or journalists who are will‐
ing to make sure they’re talking directly to the peo‐
ple they’re writing about, which often results in a
rehashed version of law enforcement perspective or
narrative on the topic at hand with maybe a nod to
someone with a different perspective at the end to
signal objectivity.
A disproportionate emphasis on academics, corporate
management, police officers, and politicians solidified
distrust among activists, who said that expanding rep‐
resentation to include people “who are actually on the
ground experiencing this in real‐time” would improve
their trust. However, interviewees also sensed that jour‐
nalists assumed that non‐credentialed people would not
have insight worth quoting:
What I’ve noticed is that [journalists] focus a lot
on the politicians…they go and spend 20 minutes
with the elected official….And then they go and grab
another politician, which is cool, but it’s like, “You
already interviewed 20 of them.”
Aligned with a solidarity reporting norm of prioritiz‐
ing “all subjected” to social injustice (Varma, 2020,
2023), activists suggested that journalists de‐emphasize
officials and other elite sources in coverage of social
justice. Expanding the sourcing pool and acknowledg‐
ing the expertise of people experiencing and resisting
oppressive systems is consistent with practices show‐
cased by journalists in other contexts who improve the
accuracy of their reporting by considering standpoint
epistemologies different from their own (Cabas‐Mijares,
2022). Centering the perspectives of marginalized peo‐
ple accomplishes more than merely improving represen‐
tation; it introduces more nuance to reporting norms
and produces fuller stories, which participants said could
improve the credibility of journalism.
4.2.2. Representing Underlying Causes, Structural
Context, and Shared Conditions
At the level of news values and framing, activists said
they would trust news with less sensationalism, negativ‐
ity, and individual profiling, and more explanatory report‐
ing of structural factors and shared conditions. Activists
advised journalists to focus on “underlying influences,”
which would help remedy the problem of portraying
social justice issues as isolated “one‐offs.” Dominant
episodic framing (see Iyengar, 1990) treats social jus‐
tice issues as if they were new, spontaneous, or unex‐
pected, which interviewees said neglects the ongoing
and long‐term nature of their social justice work and
movement strategies.
One activist, whose family’s eviction had attracted
news attention, noticed that the coverage did not
account for how widespread the issue of eviction was in
the city:
I think that the part that would’ve been good to
add…was, “Okay, this particular story is happen‐
ing. How many more like that are happening right
now?” To me, one of the things that was inter‐
esting in this…day in this courtroom…just sitting
through and listening to one story after another, after
another, until they got to ours. Wow. Housing court is
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 6

full….I was like, “There’s a little industry here. They’re
just going.” So, the fact that there’s so much of that
going on, it didn’t come through [in news coverage].
To accurately report the extent of social injustices,
activists regularly identified a need for journalists and
editors to have a better understanding of the basic roots
of social justice issues such as housing, eviction, abor‐
tion, prison systems, immigration, gender‐based discrim‐
ination, racism, and labor unions. “Know your topic,” said
one activist. Knowing what a union is, what abortion
access means, and why major cities in the US are expe‐
riencing a housing crisis were three (of many) specific
examples that activists provided as illustrations of basic
facts that journalists seldom knew, even when setting
out to report on unions, abortion, and housing issues.
When journalists lack basic knowledge of what they
are covering, activists found themselves needing to not
only provide interview quotes but also to educate the
reporter in order for there to be any hope that the story
would be accurate. Activists lamented that journalists’
lack of background knowledge made interviews frustrat‐
ing and time‐consuming. As one activist noted, “It can be
very painful to have to do that education” when a jour‐
nalist is clearly uninformed or misinformed about what
a social justice effort is about in the first place. Another
activist said:
What I think I see are a lot of people who come
from a fairly homogenous background writing about
a topic that they’re not very familiar with and thinking
that their collective biases are neutral or that they’re
being objective when they’re not.
Some participants conceded that public misunderstand‐
ings of movements may come from ignorance rather
than ill intent, as many people are unfamiliar with
social justice issues and the purpose of collective action.
However, in the words of one participant, “Journalists
are supposed to find out.” While inexperience, lack of
resources, or the pace of news publishing could under‐
mine journalists’ capacity to learn nuances of an issue,
participants observed that poor coverage of social justice
efforts also frequently comes from well‐resourced and
well‐established outlets like The New York Times,NPR,
and flagship local newspapers in their cities.
Participants urged journalists to seek out patterns
of experience within and across communities to better
account for the reality of persistent social injustices. “It’s
better to interview a community than one person,” said
one activist. Here, changes in news values and framing
are aligned with replacing dominant news values and
individual framing with solidarity news values (Varma,
2022) and solidarity framing (Varma, 2020). Advancing
awareness of the historical trajectories of social justice
issues and movements is aligned with and extends the
logic of solidarity reporting, as it enriches journalism’s
ability to represent the roots of ongoing issues.
5. Discussion and Conclusions: Improving Trust Across
Axes of Difference With Solidarity Reporting
This study has investigated why social justice activists
distrust news and how journalism organizations could
address their objections. Social justice activists found
dominant journalism norms distressing, demeaning, and
distorting. As a result, they tended to evaluate domi‐
nant news as having low information quality and, there‐
fore, limited trustworthiness. At the same time, activists
rejected the idea that focusing their energy exclusively
on grassroots media was a sufficient remedy, due to
dominant journalism’s wider reach and influence on pub‐
lic opinion.
Solidarity reporting (Varma, 2020, 2022, 2023)
encapsulates much of the approach and specific prac‐
tices that activists and organizers articulated when
asked what would improve their trust in journalism.
Through newsworthiness judgments, sourcing prioritiza‐
tion, and framing, wider adoption of solidarity reporting
would address many of the critiques that interviewees
raised. Related work on engaged journalism projects for
community relationship‐building (Wenzel & Crittenden,
2021) may also be relevant to addressing these issues.
However, none of the interviewees endorsed a more
time‐intensive dynamic with journalists. Instead, they
sought more fruitful interactions that would begin with
reporters doing better background research on social jus‐
tice concepts and histories prior to interviews. Doing so,
activists maintained, would enhance the accuracy, fair‐
ness, and trustworthiness of news coverage. Activists
consistently said that journalists and editors need to edu‐
cate themselves about social justice before attempting to
educate the public.
Solidarity journalism offers a practical alternative
to dominant reporting norms, by prioritizing grounded
facts and dismantling journalism’s deference to insti‐
tutional authorities (Varma, 2023). A compatible addi‐
tion to the solidarity journalism framework, based on
activists’ calls for improved social justice background
knowledge among journalists, is to incorporate histori‐
cal and contemporary context into how journalists pre‐
pare to report a story, which would mean creating con‐
ditions for journalists to learn and become conversant
in topics like labor unions, reproductive justice, eviction,
and immigration. Aligned with Perry (2016), this study
affirms the need for journalists to have a basic grasp of
history before they can reasonably expect to be regarded
as trustworthy.
Certainly, journalists would benefit from educating
themselves about the history of any issue they cover.
Some issues, however, are likely closer to journalists’
realm of experience, education, and familiarity than
others. Multiple studies have found the US journal‐
ism profession to be disproportionately white, cis‐male,
and middle‐to‐upper class (Bauder, 2021; Grieco, 2020;
Usher, 2019). This homogeneity in newsrooms, along
with professional conformity pressures, may contribute
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 7

to why journalists have conserved racist, heterosexist,
classist, and other biases in reporting (Alamo‐Pastrana
& Hoynes, 2020; Brown, 2021; Lowery, 2020). Disrupting
hegemonic biases requires taking seriously the insights
of people outside of newsrooms who are affected by
them, as our study has begun to do.
The present study has focused on social justice
activists’ evaluations of journalism from mainstream
news outlets. A major limitation of this study is its exclu‐
sive use of social justice activists’ self‐reported interac‐
tions with journalists and evaluations of coverage. We did
not ask interviewees to provide examples of coverage
that they criticized, nor could we observe their interac‐
tions with journalists firsthand. It is possible that journal‐
ists already utilize some of the solidarity practices identi‐
fied in this study. However, our research questions focus
on social justice activists’ evaluations and articulations,
which makes addressing the potential chasm between
perceptions and practices an area for future research.
Another area for future research is to assess the role
of movements using their own social media accounts
to reach the public, instead of relying on journalism.
Some activists in the present study mentioned that social
media did not offer a viable alternative to news coverage
due to having like‐minded followers, and due to misin‐
formation and disinformation on social media platforms
making truth difficult to parse.
A related future study could examine social justice
coverage from the perspective of journalists who develop
this reporting to understand why journalists uphold dom‐
inant reporting norms over solidarity reporting norms.
Such a study could also identify practical barriers that
may prevent journalists from doing solidarity reporting.
Finally, the present study is of a single country with declin‐
ing trust in news, and future work could develop a com‐
parative study across countries with rising trust in news
to assess whether solidarity reporting norms are more
prominent in these countries, or if the mechanisms for
trust are distinct depending on country‐level context.
Scholarly and practitioner dismay over eroding trust
in US journalism signals a disconnect between jour‐
nalism’s self‐perceptions and public perceptions. This
study’s findings indicate that there are clear reasons why
people fighting for social justice do not trust journalism.
Due to reporting routines that dehumanize, decontextu‐
alize, and deny the lived realities of people struggling
against the status quo, social justice activists experience
trustworthy journalists as the exception rather than the
rule. As a result, they express exasperation with trying
to improve journalism narratives both as sources and as
suppliers of background knowledge for journalists.
Protest paradigm scholarship has diagnosed an
important problem that helps explain the tension
between social justice activists and journalism, but
has seldom provided actionable, plausible alternatives
for dominant journalism. Rather than viewing journal‐
ism as obsolete or unnecessary, activists interviewed
in this study argued that journalism is crucial for the
work of social justice, since—even in a social media
era—journalism contributes to constructing a base‐
line of shared facts across society. By incorporating
activists’ articulations for how journalism can improve,
the present study has contributed a grounded approach
for journalism to address dwindling trust through solidar‐
ity practices, based on the logic of discourse ethics.
Discourse ethics also includes a consideration of
appropriateness, which means that generalizable norms
must account for context‐specificity (Glasser & Ettema,
2008). Dominant reporting norms may be appropriate
for contexts where journalists are, for example, aiming to
expose official corruption, but inadequate and ill‐suited
for covering social justice activism and organizing efforts.
Pragmatically, if dominant reporting norms led to accu‐
rate, rigorous, and widely‐trusted coverage, then there
would be little basis or justification for calling for change
aside from a group’s idiosyncratic preferences. Yet US
journalism facing a crisis of eroding trust needs to heed
and incorporate specific calls for change—or accept a
likely outcome of continued diminishing trust that places
journalism on a trajectory toward obsolescence in the
eyes of a growing range of people who are unconvinced
that journalism seeks to serve the public. To develop
trust in journalism, journalism organizations would bene‐
fit from moving from asserting their credibility to assess‐
ing it based on insights from people who experience
journalism not as practitioners but as subjects of it—
including social justice activists.
Habermas’ discourse ethics calls for consensus
among “all affected” (Glasser & Ettema, 2008, p. 525).
The present study has focused on one group affected by
dominant reporting norms. Analyzing their recommen‐
dations provides a step in the direction of developing
more defensible journalism on social justice issues. It is
possible, however, that trust in journalism is a zero‐sum
game: What makes journalism trustworthy for those
who seek to restore an era in which fewer people had
rights, for example, may be fundamentally incompatible
with what makes journalism trustworthy for people who
aim to advance a more inclusive society. Determining
whether recommendations from different groups who
object to dominant reporting norms are compatible is an
area for future research. The encouraging insight from
this study is that many of the recommendations are
consistent and compatible with ideas about how jour‐
nalism should improve from conservatives (Duchovnay
& Masullo, 2021), racial minorities (Robinson & Culver,
2019), trans people (Fink & Palmer, 2020), and people
who avoid the news (Palmer & Toff, 2020), which sug‐
gests that wider adoption of solidarity reporting norms in
dominant mainstream news venues could improve trust
across axes of difference.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the American Council
of Learned Societies (grant number V6AFQPN18437).
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 8

The authors also gratefully acknowledge members of the
Movement Journalism list‐serv, Aubrey Nagle (Resolve
Philly), and the Society of Professional Journalists
(Northern California chapter) for inspiring and encourag‐
ing this work.
Conflict of Interests
For this article, editorial decisions were undertaken by
Thomas B. Ksiazek (Villanova University) and Jacob L.
Nelson (Arizona State University).
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About the Authors
Anita Varma (PhD) is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Media at the University
of Texas at Austin. Her ongoing research examines the role of solidarity in journalism that represents
marginalized communities. Dr. Varma’s work focuses on the social justice implications of dominant
journalism norms. She was previously the assistant director of Journalism and Media Ethics at the
Markkula Center for Applied Ethics (Santa Clara University) and a visiting lecturer at the UC Berkeley
Graduate School of Journalism. Her peer‐reviewed research has been published in Journalism Studies,
Journalism, and Journalism Practice.
Brad Limov is a PhD candidate in the School of Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at
Austin. His research examines how social justice movements influence communities of practice across
convergent media industries and platforms, in turn shaping the politics of broader publics. His work
has appeared in Critical Studies in Media Communication,International Journal of Communication, and
NECSUS_European Journal of Media Studies. He is currently completing his dissertation as a University
Graduate Continuing Fellow at UT Austin.
Ayleen Cabas‐Mijares (PhD) is an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Marquette
University. She is a critical/cultural media scholar whose research agenda aims to examine the role
of media and journalism in social change. Her research focuses on the Latin American region and
the Latinx diaspora. Dr. Cabas‐Mijares has conducted studies on media activism by multiple social
movements, such as the indigenous environmental movement in Honduras, the feminist movement
in Argentina, and the Undocuqueer Movement in the US. Her work has been published in journals
such as Journalism,Journalism Practice,Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, and Feminist
Media Studies.
Media and Communication, 2023, Volume 11, Issue 4, Pages X–X 11