The Fieldston News: What We Represent and What We Hope to Become

In 2020, the 24-hour news cycle has never felt so important, and simultaneously, so contentious. The “truth” has become a bragging point instead of the baseline and hyperpolarization is virtually unavoidable. Recently, to underline this fact, one hundred and fifty three eminent American journalists, artists, authors and academics, penned a letter in Harper’s Magazine, claiming that forces of “illiberalism” are gaining traction in our society. 

“The free exchange of information and ideas,” they wrote, “is daily becoming more constricted… censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” 

The critiques of that letter also raised questions about what a good society, or a liberal society, or a fair society, or a democratic society had overlooked, missed, undervalued or ignored: at a time when the Covid-19 pandemic is destroying old illusions and street demonstrations are bringing down racist battle flags and challenging police abuses, opportunities seem to be in the street instead of in the First Amendment. 

How do we bridge these gaps? 

Freedom of the press matters. Journalism matters. It’s a profession so vital that it has a whole constitutional amendment declaring it to be an “essential worker” in the fields of the republic. And it comes as part of a larger package containing the rights of speech, worship, petition and assembly. 

Right now journalism is under assault at home and abroad, from the political right as well as the political left, from authoritarians as well as well intentioned reformers. Autocrats in Russia, China, Turkey, Hungary, and The United States, are gutting older forms of citizenship and human rights, jailing, “re-educating,” threatening, provoking violence or murdering. 

In the midst of this international assault on the press, these attacks upon the role of journalists and more broadly, the place of journalism itself in our lives– we see it fitting to clarify, re-examine, the role of The Fieldston News, one of many student publications, in both the context of our school and of our democracy. 

The pandemic revealed that the inequalities of our system were greater than we had imagined. It was no longer theoretical academics pointing fingers at “systemic racism;” it was the daily 

indictment of the morbidity and mortality reports that were saying people of color were being disproportionately impacted; our inequalities are killing us. Rising death rates offer tangible proof that we are all in danger because we refuse to change. 

In the midst of these paradigm shifts, The Fieldston News, which has long been focused on the parochial, has changed its shape and turned its lens outwards. The editors have turned a printed newspaper that came out once every three weeks into an electronic newspaper with almost daily postings that will use a printed copy as an archive, once we return to campus. Writers, photographers and staff ventured into the streets of a city that was at the epicenter of plague when remote reporting wasn’t enough. The News began posting during the first part of the quarantine in March, and has continued posting through the summer months. 

So, what exactly are we? 

On a most fundamental level, we are an independent newspaper and our job is to showcase human voices and experiences–very often student voices and experiences– and those experiences are written by young writers. We are NOT the official voice of the students, we are not the official voice of the administration, we are not the official voice of any department or constituency, committee or club: we are not the sole mouthpiece of the school. 

Just as we have the right to capture in print every voice within our community, popular or unpopular, every member of the community has the right to write a letter to the editor expressing agreement or disagreement, which we would gladly publish. 

However, to imply that something should not be published because it is not what people want to hear does not align with our values, nor does it follow any code of basic journalistic integrity. We report on what’s out there, not what people wish were out there. 

A newspaper that acts only as comfortable echo chambers is not doing its job. The news is rooted in the idea that well-informed people make well-informed decisions and are well-informed citizens. 

A newspaper contains within it “worlds”: objective news, news analysis, editorials, advocacy, human interest, investigative, long form, local color, culture, film, music, criticism, sports, letters, profiles, humor, cartoons, photography, graphics. Stories. Countless stories about the human condition. It is inherently multi-perspectival and multi-disciplinary. 

Fact and opinion are far too often conflated, and we are just as guilty as any media organization of blurring the lines in our journalism. But we will make a conscious effort to separate the two. 

We are journalists at a “progressive” school–a term which in and of itself has been a battleground since its inception. It’s a theory of education and it’s a way of teaching that attempts to understand and bring out the best in the “whole child.” It’s also a series of assumptions about politics, with a long and proud history of being principled, contentious and hair-splitting in the pursuit of doing good and making things right. Sometimes it gets a little trendy. Sometimes it gets a little self-righteous. Sometimes it runs the risk of being a little rigid, illiberal and intolerant. We strive to do better in the spirit of a true progressive education, not to maintain the image of one. 

Progressivism requires an embrace of new and unpopular voices, neglected, outcast or overlooked voices, however uncomfortable this may be. True progressivism welcomes dissent; it should never silence it. 

And finally, it is important to consider, that before we became a “progressive school” we were an “ethical culture school” that was part of the “ethical culture society.” What exactly does that bring into the mix? It means you learn to listen. It means you ask questions. It means you compare and contrast, construct and deconstruct, discuss and debate; you don’t indoctrinate.