Jorge Ramos - Take a Stand: Lessons from Rebels

On Rebels, the Powerful and Otherwise

We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

ELIE WIESEL

A LL REBE LS H AVE something in common: they challenge and they confront. They put aside silence and fear.

Their principles are very clear:

I wont shut up.

I wont sit down.

I wont go away.

All rebels take a stand. They decide and they act. Neutrality is not an option.

I dont want to be neutral. Thats not where change takes place. Happiness and love and success arent found in neutrality. On the contrary, they are their own forms of rebellion.

Being neutral isnt enough, whether in journalism or in life.

We all need a little bit of rebelliousness.

I first learned about rebels and rebellion through journalism. In fact, the best journalism rebels against power and the abuse of it. Being objective and neutralsimply professionalisnt enough. Good journalism always antagonizes power.

I love being a journalist. Its the only profession in the world whose description includes being both rebellious and irreverent. In other words, being a journalist keeps you forever young. As the Colombian writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel Garca Mrquez once said, its the best job in the world. But we can and should use the media as a weapon for a higher purpose: social justice.

Life never finds a perfect balance between two points of view. Its not black and white. Its not a bunch of verifiable data. Life doesnt progress in a linear fashion, and it isnt headed to a particular destination. Its not divided between good and evil, rich and poor, the rulers and the ruled. Life isnt fair. It will never meet you halfway. We are never in perfect balance with it.

An argument doesnt always have a moral counterpart. The truth cant necessarily be found between two opposing views. It doesnt lie in the method itself. That would be too easy. The truth exists elsewhere. And in order to find it, we have to bravely take sides. We have to take a stand.

We achieve the most in journalismand in lifewhen we are engaged, when we question those in power, when we confront the politicians who abuse their authority, when we speak up and denounce injustice. The best of what we are is revealed when we side with the victimsthe most vulnerable ones, those whose rights have been neglected or abused. And the best journalism comes, of course, when we stop pretending that we are neutral and recognize our moral obligation to sing the truth to those in power.

Journalism, as Truman Capote wrote in the preface to The Dogs Bark, can never be altogether pure... [P]ersonal perceptions, prejudices, ones sense of selectivity pollute the purity of germless truth.

Life is not pure. Yes, Im advocating for the practicing of journalism with perspective. This means being transparent and acknowledging to the audienceto our readersthat we have opinions, as well as a code of ethics. We dont live in a vacuum. We make moral decisions all the time, whether its before an interview, before an investigation, or before covering a story. Its perfectly acceptable to take a stand, to refuse to be neutral. In fact its an imperative. One of the best interviewers in history thought so.

I do not feel myself to be, nor will I ever succeed in feeling like, a cold recorder of what I see and hear, wrote Oriana Fallaci in her book Interview with History. On every professional experience I leave shreds of my heart and soul; and I participate in what I see or hear as though the matter concerned me personally and were one on which I ought to take a stand (in fact I always take one, based on a specific moral choice). So I did not [write] with the detachment of the anatomist or the imperturbable reporter.

I am arguing here for point-of-view journalism.

We must take a stand when dealing with those in power. Yes, we have to make an ethical decision to side with those who do not hold the reins of authority. If we have to decide between being the friend or the foe of a president, a governor, or a dictator, the decision should be easy: I am a reporter, and Im not here to be your friend.

There are six arenas in which we must always take sides: racism, discrimination, corruption, public lies, human rights, and dictatorships or other authoritarian regimes. You cannot remain neutral when someone attacks a minority, when someone is discriminated against because of gender or sexual orientation, when politicians or business owners use their position to enrich themselves, when a public figure lies, when basic human rights are being violated, when a ruler commits fraud or imposes his will upon the majority.

Not taking sides under these circumstances would, in effect, be condoning unethical behavior and the abuse of power. Silence always helps those on top, never those who are being crushed underneath. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu has pointedly said, If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.

But taking sides does not mean being partisan. That would be promoting propaganda, or something even worse: using the profession to enable others to come to power, and to remain there.