Objective journalism has always been a lie, even historically. In recent decades, corporate consolidations have shifted our news media’s inherent bias toward the wealthiest and most powerful members of society, all under the mask of “impartiality.” But might we still use the power of the media to give back a voice to working-class Americans? That question is at the heart of More Perfect Union’s (MPU) advocacy journalism mission.
Before working at MPU, I spent years butting up against the limits of objectivity at traditional media outlets. I was on the video team at HuffPost, which was then owned by Verizon. After attending a 2020 Bernie Sanders rally in New Hampshire in a personal capacity, I walked into the office the next day to see my face plastered all over Getty Images. I was called into a meeting with editorial leadership and told that we need to avoid attending rallies or openly supporting specific candidates to protect ourselves from appearing biased in our coverage and, especially, to guard against bad-faith, right-wing attacks.
This incident prompted me to reflect on my responsibility as an American citizen within a larger media ecosystem. Did I consider my personal values less important than protecting my employer’s desire to seem “impartial”? And who was this “impartiality” really for? Some imaginary reader who would swear off our coverage based on staffers’ political views? Or was it our corporate owners and advertisers who might take issue with any stance that threatened their profit motive?
Soon after, I worked at the New York Times, on the opinion video team, where there was more leeway in editorial direction than on newsroom teams. We thought in terms of creating real-world impact and moving the needle on specific policy solutions advocated for by the subjects in our op-eds. There, I produced a video op-ed with Ahmaud Arbery’s mother that called for a local anti-hate crime bill to honor her son’s life. The resulting video applied pressure to state politicians at a crucial moment and forced them to respond, including in Georgia, which at the time was one of only four states in the country without one of these bills.
I saw then the power of journalism to go a step beyond objectively reporting the facts. And today I see “advocacy journalism” going a step further than the “opinion” page. At More Perfect Union, we’re not just presenting solutions; we’re actively campaigning to turn those solutions into realities.
This isn’t a new debate. In the 19th century, objectivity was not the norm. Newspapers often took on very partisan views, and ultra-rich owners like William Randolph Hearst used the outlets they owned to pressure the US government to start an entire war. But in 1896, Adolph Ochs bought the New York Times and, in a single-page announcement, set the goal of “giving the news impartially, without fear or favor, regardless of party, sect, or interests involved.”
There was, however, another group of journalists who thought that pure objectivity was not the correct response to biased “yellow journalism” in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Called “muckrakers,” writers like Upton Sinclair sought to expose the injustices of brutal factory work and to champion reforms in industrial America. It was a time of rampant corporate greed, and the muckrakers felt they couldn’t stand on the sidelines. In The Brass Check, Sinclair wrote, “American journalism is a class institution, serving the rich and spurning the poor.”
Sinclair would have no place in our current mainstream media institutions. Joseph Kahn, executive editor of the Times, told the Washington Post, “You can’t be an activist and a Times journalist at the same time.” The old guard treats the words “activist” and “advocate” as slurs, but younger journalists have no issue with wearing both hats. At More Perfect Union, we wear them proudly.
After all, we are again living in a time of runaway greed. According to the Economic Policy Institute, between 1978 and 2020, CEO pay increased 1,460%, while a typical worker’s compensation went up only 18% during the same period. Traditional news media outlets have failed to meet the moment. To respond to this reality, MPU reports stories in a completely different way. We very clearly take a side against corporate greed, putting workers front and center — and this approach is resonating.
Our coverage of Ticketmaster's monopoly power took a deep dive into the history of antitrust law and the corporate mergers that got us to $5,000 Bruce Springsteen tickets and an army of pissed-off Swifties. We used our video to focus and direct bubbling consumer outrage toward a petition that garnered 50,000 signatures and was a key part of the larger movement calling on the Justice Department and Congress to take action. Last year, we also launched a campaign that prompted over 40,000 letters calling on reforms to “junk fees," which cost working Americans billions of dollars yearly.
Our advocacy-oriented labor coverage has drawn support from workers and notice from C-suite Americans, such as Kellogg’s former vice president Ken Hurley, who called More Perfect Union “a very, very worthy adversary.”
Traditional news outlets draw a line against the sort of advocacy campaigns we dive into on a daily basis. MPU's approach challenges the status quo, and our success demonstrates that this is a path other media brands should consider. Since February 2021, we’ve built up more than 1 million followers across social media and received over 190 million views across TikTok, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. We also get better cross-channel engagement per post than the New York Times, the Washington Post, Vox, Vice, and HuffPost. It’s what the audiences want, and it fits the time in which we live.
I encourage other young journalists not to be scared off by the old guard’s obsession with impartiality. As income inequality worsens and corporate power grows to unimaginable heights, I don’t want to be caught sitting on the fence. It’s time to choose a side and fight for a better future for all of us.
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