Unbreaking: Journalism and the Ethics of Community Care
My name is Sydnee, and I’m a journalist, or at least I used to be. It could be argued that once you learn the essential tools of journalism — critical thinking, skepticism, research, documentation, meticulousness, stubbornness — they become second nature to you, a skin that you can never take off, no matter how hard you try. When I see a weirdly sentimental, third-person-POV TikTok of a man rescuing a baby animal, I ask, “Who was filming this?” When I see a weirdly sentimental TikTok of someone helping a homeless man shave, I ask, “Why are they filming this?” I’ve been taught to see the world, and especially social media, as a constellation of propaganda: Everyone is selling you something, even if you don’t know what it is or why they’re selling it. This means I’m profoundly distrustful and not a lot of fun at parties.
But I didn’t major in journalism because I wanted to assume the worst of people — I chose journalism because I believed in the power of storytelling to challenge harmful status-quo narratives and engage people at their level. To both inform and entertain. To expand our ability to imagine what’s possible. To promote literacy and civic engagement at a time when both are systematically under attack.
In its infancy, journalism in the US was used to justify lynchings, segregation, and genocide. It was used to sensationalize and demonize marginalized communities. Yet when journalists wax poetic about the field, we don’t evoke the names of Joseph Pulitzer or William Randolph Hearst, whose irresponsible reporting might well have led the US into war with Spain, or Rupert Murdoch, who likely needs no introduction at all. We think of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, of Edward R. Murrow, Upton Sinclair, and — maybe — Ida B. Wells. These reporters documented atrocities with a moral clarity that still resonates decades later, even if journalists today repeatedly fail to live up to their lofty standards.
Choosing traditional journalism means choosing to observe and document the world at a permanent distance for the sake of “objectivity.” It means cutting yourself off from public expressions of emotions like rage or compassion in exchange for the visibility and influence that mainstream media promises you, even if those promises never bear fruit.
News organizations like the New York Times — where I interned in the summer of 2014 — explicitly ban their employees, including freelancers with no labor protection, from all civic participation beyond voting. You can’t donate to or volunteer with political campaigns or causes, sign petitions, run for office, participate in protests, or plant political signs on your own lawn. Unless you’re an op-ed columnist, you cannot espouse political views in public. Of course, these rules can and will be broken if you have the right kind of politics. But for those of us who don’t, being a journalist means existing in a constant state of cognitive dissonance, where we hope our access to the levers of power will eventually compensate for our complicity in the very systems harming our communities.
That summer in 2014, an 18-year-old named Michael Brown was killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Massive protests broke out across the country, including right outside the Times’s headquarters in midtown Manhattan. As tens of thousands of people marched near Times Square, I sat at my desk doomscrolling Twitter and wondered if the concession I’d made — access in exchange for silence — would be worth it.
In the end, it was a moot point: I was laid off from my job as a copy editor at BuzzFeed News in 2023, and I haven’t held a full-time job in journalism since. But all around the country and the world, former journalists are learning how to leverage our skills outside the traditional halls of power, through newsletters and co-ops and mutual aid. We’re demonstrating, over and over, that empathy and urgency are not liabilities, as we’ve been taught, but some of the most powerful and essential tools at our disposal. As education, media, healthcare, the economy, and our government are systematically dismantled, those of us grounded in the ethics of community care are the ones who will be able not only to document what’s happening but also to help imagine what will come next.
I am proud of what Unbreaking has accomplished in such a short and disorienting time, and I hope you’ll join us however you can.
How to help
Unbreaking is run in the spirit of a mutual aid cooperative, with researchers, writers, editors, and community organizers working collaboratively to create and maintain our timelines and explainers. We welcome both experts in government as well as curious and interested observers. You can learn more about our work, make a contribution, or apply to join us.