The Palestinians telling their own stories

We no longer have a premium on truth, no longer have a premium on what is on the record, right? Even for example, calling like what's happening in a Gaza war or a conflict, it presupposes like a sort of equal power that's not there, right? And I think that like we have pressure, like because we have been taught that this is what fairness is. Asada Yasin is the editor-in-chief of the key, an online publication that focuses on quote, "analysis, interviews, essays, reviews, and reportage about Palestine." Before launching the key, she worked in audience development at Buzzfeed News, and was the managing editor at the Los Angeles Times. Throughout her time at these outlets, she got a firsthand look at what digitally savvy audiences have in their media diet, and her inaugural essay for the key, "It's not complicated." Sada points out that quote, "Most teens in the US mistrust the veracity of mainstream news coverage, and 43 percent of adults under 30 get their news from TikTok." And as more young people are exposed to the destruction in Gaza outside of traditional news media outlets, Sada wanted to provide a space where Palestinians can speak freely about what's going on around them. Today on the show, Sada joins me to talk about the key, what fairness looks like from mainstream media in this moment, and how power informs framing. Sada, welcome to "It's been a minute." Thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Hello, hello, I'm Brittany Loose, and you're listening to "It's been a minute from NPR," a show about what's going on in culture, and why it doesn't happen by accident. And your inaugural essay for the key, you touch on something that you call "it's complicated journalism," when it comes to reporting about Palestinians. You've spoken to a lot of journalists across American newsrooms, with many of them telling you that they received pushback from their organizations for attempting to apply, quote, "conventional journalistic standards" to stories about Israel's attacks on Gaza and the West Bank. A UN commission's investigation has called what's happening in Gaza a genocide, the international court of justice also found that acts of genocide were plausible, although Israel strongly denies that charge. Talk to me about your conversations with American journalists and what those have been like, and what you're aiming to do differently with the key. I mean, I think the thing of like having to caveat the word "genocide," right? Like I think that was kind of one of the main sort of things that was kind of a breaking point for a lot of people. I mean, including myself, I've been in the room when we've made decisions around using certain language, right? And I think that like, it was very strange to suddenly find that like all the international like mechanisms that are used to call things what they are, are suddenly things that we have to sort of caveat or be careful about, right? I've like interviewed, um, almost like 50 journalists. It's in mostly the US, um, some in Canada and the UK, and I think that like, then a legacy institution, there's a real reluctance to stray from doing things differently from how it's always been done, right? Right, squeeze on resources, squeeze on time, all of the sorts of, you know, possibly layers of management. I mean, a lot of people, I mean, speak for experience, a lot of people are doing their best, but it's not easy. Yeah, totally. I think for managers, sometimes a lot of the decision making is centered around, I can't deal with this right now. And being like, look, this is the way we've always done this. We don't have time to question this. We don't have time to like think about this differently. So there's like, they're sort of like, this kind of like structural way of doing things. And a way of presenting balance and fairness, that in fact, is not balanced or fair, particularly two Palestinians, because what is viewed as like sort of a political position is to be like, hey, maybe you should include a Palestinian or maybe you should include like this perspective. I found in my reporting so far, the thing that was most fascinating to me is that this sort of like unequal way of covering Palestinians is systemic. And there was this one phenomenon that like, I have experienced myself. I don't know if you've also experienced it. I was like, talking to people who were trying to articulate this weird tip for tat thing, where like, I publish this one really good story. So we now have to publish this really bad story, because we don't want a sort of like tallying way of thinking about what constitutes fair coverage. But as journalists, we have to think about power, right? And thinking about, in our calculus of fairness, thinking about power, thinking about, you know, for example, like watching, you know, cable news panels where they will be so intense with, you know, questioning and patronizing like a person from Gaza who has lost their entire family, right? But then they just let the idea of spokesperson like to speak as much as they want, right? And I think there is this like sort of acceptance of this dominant narrative. We have these assaults on the press, and we have these organizations that are trying to push a certain agenda who are like carrying out these like bad faith attacks on journalists and on like newsrooms. And over and over again, news organizations will engage with these actors in good faith, right? Like these organizations that are like supposedly dedicated to like fair and accurate reporting on the Middle East. You're referring to pro-Israel media watchdog groups. They don't care about fair and accurate reporting on the Middle East. They have a certain agenda. That's what they're organizing around. And that's what they're trying to activate around, right? And this sort of like strange inability to like challenge these things adequately because you don't want to be seen as too woke. It's like this thing where like I think it's just so transparent to like force this like weird culture wars conversation when it's just like do your job. You know, I mean, listen, and PR has a wide audience also to people from all except I've listened to this show and we'll hear this conversation, you know, there's definitely to be some people who are listening to this conversation thinking, you know, well, violence has been committed by both Palestinians and Israelis, both sides. So what's so wrong with both sides framing? What would you say to them? Yeah, I mean, I think that's always a natural question, right? And I think it's, again, it goes back to this sort of question of power, right? And also context, right? So I think that there has been a failure, for example, to really accurately capture what life has been like in Gaza, right? Like, Gaza, the kind of disaster of it is pre-October 7, right? And like, I think that a lot of people don't realize, for example, is that most of the people in Gaza are either refugees or descendants of refugees because they were expelled from what is now known as Israel, right? And so I think that it's not that you can't talk about violence in a sort of like broader sense, right? It's not that you can't talk about Palestinians carrying out violence. I think it's kind of creating context around that because I think the perception in the U.S. that I think has changed is that, you know, these are just two neighboring countries that can't get along, right? But like, you have people who've been living under military rule from military occupiers for decades and, you know, being in newsrooms, like, literally, I remember one time I was explaining Palestinian mobility to an editor, right? And I was like, there are four different ideas that you can have as a Palestinian and your movement is restricted based on what your idea is and completely their minds blown by it. So like there's like very basic education that doesn't exist. So it's like when you hear about violence or like, you know, when Hamas is mentioned, we're being told that it's that that is being mentioned as a full picture. But I don't think that's actually the way that it's being used. I think it's being used for like a reason. Well, it's interesting when you're describing also too this idea of two neighboring countries that, you know, can't seem to get along. And going back to what you were saying earlier about sort of how for the past 10 to 15 years, a lot of journalists and newsrooms have been really challenged to think about questions of power. Recently, I went on a road trip with my husband and we drove to Vermont, you know, and I was saying I wasn't thinking about how are we going to get out of New York state? What you're bringing up there is sort of a question of power. What you're getting at is power sort of like if you don't have the power to move freely around. Well, then what are we talking about when we talk about two nations sitting next to each other who can't get along that kind of complicates the idea of these sort of two nations as maybe being on equal footing or having equal international support or having equal monetary resources? Yeah, no. And I agree. Just sort of even being like, hey, this is like occupied territory. And actually what's really wild is to sort of like go back and look at like older coverage and see like for example, you know, there were these huge newsroom fights about words like apartheid and like, you know, occupation and stuff. Like the settlements, these are like engulfing. What is known as Palestinian territory, which like already like people don't have like freedom of movement? And I like think I spent all of November in Palestine last year and like. I went to my family's village. Like literally like one of my aunties, she wanted to come see me. She never met me in her life. What would have been a normal situation if there was just like not an enormous settlement in the middle would have been like a 20 minute drive. Took two hours, two hours. I lived in Los Angeles for three years. If a 10 minute journey takes 30 minutes, people are ready to like, you know, take up arms basically, yeah. Yeah, every single part of life is impossible there. And I think this was the thing for me with the key was, well, all even the best reporters, even the best reporting, they are having to fight tooth and nail to sort of negotiate fairness, right? And I was like, how do we do journalism to a high standard, but the baseline is, I don't have to argue that this group of people is a group of human beings. Because that for me is kind of what I feel like I see implied in a lot of coverage is like, the reporter is having to basically prove this group of people is worth covering and their humanity is worth recognizing. (soft music) We're gonna take a quick break, but first, if you're a longtime listener or brand new to it's been a minute, be sure to come back every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday for brand new episodes. And did you know you can make it even easier to get new episodes by hitting the follow or subscribe button on your favorite podcast app, whether you're a new friend or a loyal bestie, join the team by subscribing today. Coming up after the break, poetry is also an important form of reporting. How do you grasp for words for capturing what you've gone through? Stick around. You also know in your inaugural essay that like a whole lot of young people are skeptical of the news media. I'm big for context for our listeners, like according to a 2025 survey, only a little over half of teens, 56%, believe that journalists and news organizations take journalism standards such as accuracy and fairness seriously in their work. You also mentioned the essay that according to Pew, most Americans under 30 get their news from TikTok. I'm like, some Americans over 30 get their news from TikTok too. Okay. How do you see, how do you see this sort of like, kind of disconnect with younger generations or with a younger news-consuming audience? How do you see this disconnect as related to the conflict within newsrooms today that we just discussed? I think this thing that particularly happened with Gaza where like a lot of people, and I've heard this so much and I'm sure you've heard it too, where people were like, what I'm seeing on my phone and on Instagram and on TikTok is not what I'm seeing in the news and it's not the same thing. And that like there's this like gap in information. I saw that conversation happening a lot online, especially with young people. Yeah, exactly. And I think the problem is that for folks in the news business, I think our response to this is to rightfully recognize it as a crisis, but then to basically be like, we need to increase education and literacy around like news or like around, you know, how journalists work and like how like we sort of verify facts. You've probably also heard this or like, if we just put our heads down and do our jobs, the work will speak for itself. Well, that's what we're told, but like there's this whole conversation happening about journalism that doesn't include us, right? And so then the conclusion that people have is that well objectivity is not real, right? When like, to me, I actually think that striving for objectivity, which to me objectivity means fairness, right? Which is both thinking about my as the person telling the story and how is that influencing the gaps in the story that I'm telling? And what does it mean for me as a journalist to show my reader that that is what I'm doing, right? Because all the tools that we have as journalists, a lot of people have access to them, you know? We no longer have a premium on truth and we have no longer have a premium on what is on the record, right? Even for example, calling like what's happening in a Gaza war or a conflict, it presupposes like a sort of like, you know, equal power that's not there, right? But like fair does not mean the reality, like the reality is the reality. We live in strange times. We live in wild times, you know? We have a lot of cracks and fissures within the American journalism industry. But I mean, the Palestinian journalism industry has been honestly gutted in many ways. I mean, according to reporters without borders, there have been, you know, quote, more than 220 reporters killed in Gaza by the Israeli army since 7 October, 2023, including at least 70 who were likely killed due to their work. That is devastating. At the same time, it seems like there is a greater demand than any time in my recent memory to hear about Palestinian life and culture from Palestinians themselves, as opposed to from other people talking about them. Yeah, I mean, the slaughter of Palestinian journalists, it's, you know, I don't understand how it doesn't chill every single person in our industry, you know? Particularly the targeting of journalists, right? Like we talk a lot about international journalists across the globe being targeted by governments, being targeted by, you know, various entities. And, you know, we cannot stand up and like wholeheartedly support this group of people, you know, who, one, are doing their work in the worst possible conditions. Just, you know, even for me, for example, I have a story coming from a journalist and Southern Lebanon. Why was her filing disrupted? Because she got displaced herself. Jesus. And these are reporters who are fearless, they're dogged in their reporting, and they are fair. So I think that there is a sort of not enough outrage. You know, I have been in so many rooms for these, you know, dinners where we're talking about the bravery of journalists. And I'm like, there is no bigger, like sort of, evidence of what a brave journalist is than the journalists in Gaza, right? Again, it kind of roots, like is rooted in the stee humanization of Palestinians and sort of this kind of like inability to see Palestinian life as being something that is valuable. There, so it's the stee humanization. But then also these journalists are not treated like they are reliable reporters, you know? I think Palestinian journalists have to deal with like sort of being interrogated on whether or not they're like reliable as journalists. And you know, for example, Israel will actively malign these journalists and present them as like, you know, either saying that like they are themselves Hamas, that they are combatants, that they are one, two, three thing, and trying to discredit them, right? And I think that people fall for this. And again, it goes with who we see as a reliable narrator, right? We see like, you know, Mr. Foreign Correspondent as being more reliable than the person who has lived their whole life in this place, right? And so I think that's kind of a really big problem. And I think then like when Palestinians are just saying things as they are and they're not missing words, they're like seen as being like extremists, right? Then that goes back to sort of this question of trust where then people are turning to these voices that are on the ground. That makes me think about something that happened recently. At the time of this conversation, we are still in the middle of the controversy around the Ed Sheeran tour for context. Ed Sheeran's tour of North and South America is kind of up in the air right now, after rapper Maclamore was dropped from the tour for making pro-Palestinian remarks. After Maclamore was dropped, Sheeran's backing band and all of the other supporting artists on the tour announced that they were dropping out. Maclamore said in a statement on Instagram that multiple American venues for the tour wouldn't allow him to perform. Maclamore also claims that this charge was led by Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots who played at Gillette Stadium. Maclamore also claims they issued Sheeran an ultimatum to drop Maclamore or be shut out of those venues, effectively basically ending his tour. Sheeran says that it wasn't his choice to drop Maclamore, that it was his tour promoters who made that decision, Kraft in his own statement said that he decided to ban Maclamore because of his comments and "a broader history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and imagery that we believe has been deeply offensive and hurtful to the Jewish community," end quote. So in some ways, to me, it seems like this conversation is kind of developed until like Stan Wars. Like people are dunking on Ed Sheeran, who said he wanted to be sort of a political or kind of not choose sides in this moment. They're talking about streaming Maclamore while they sleep and tracking who's leaving positive comments. on, you know, Maclamor's initial Instagram posts. To me, that's really far from the focus of Maclamor's original comments and the people that he's referring to, Palestinians. But also, this like public pushback on Ed Sheeran and the corporate forces at play in his tour, I mean, it does feel like a huge shift from where the American public was on this issue 10 years ago, even five years ago. What do you make of all of this? 'Cause this has been like a circus at the time that we're talking about this. What do you make of all this? - Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of layers to it, right? I think that the most important thing to talk about in the context of the story is power, right? So I think that the idea that Ed Sheeran doesn't have any power when it comes to a concert tour that like he is the centerpiece of Ed Sheeran, your filling stadiums, the people are there to see you, you have power in that equation, right? And I think this is the institutional question that keeps coming up, right? Even as managers, right? Or like within administrations, right? Like when it comes to Reza and it comes to Palestine as being like, I don't have the power to deal with that. Or I don't have the power to make that change. That change is above me. Or so I think there is this tendency to be like, this is out of my hands. I think actually Macklemore, the thing that he, that I think was very interesting in his statement was the thing of like, look, like we are rich people. We could take a hit, you know? And I think like we live in a, in a democratic country that I would hope that we all agree that people should not be slaughtered. That like I personally do not believe that like, like coming out against, you know, mass murder, particularly when our tax dollars are paying for it, should be a political position. Now he didn't even say like we should be, you know, pulling funding from Israel, right? Like and I think this is kind of the thing that keeps stalling our like sort of discourses. Is that like the thing that's seen as the most controversial political statement is to say, hey, this group of people deserves to be alive. And so like, I think that has been something for me where it's like, what does it mean when we are saying that it is anti-Semitic to suggest that this group of people should not be murdered? Like that to me is offensive to all of the Jewish people I know in my life who do not believe that Israel is representative of their values or, you know, intertwined with who they are as Jews. Culture is an important sort of litmus test in the way of reading how, I mean, where our society is at and where it's going, right? And that's something that seems like it's a part of your approach with the key. I mean, the key doesn't just publish reporting from around the world. It's a literary magazine that also publishes poetry and cultural criticism and really interesting reported stories about, you know, whether it's a rapper or a psychoanalyst or, or even about Hollywood, right? You know, in newsrooms, I'm sure many of the newsrooms that you've worked in, you see this primacy of heart news and like, you know, war, the economy, government, sometimes health and science. These can often feel like these serious subjects. And oftentimes art, cultural criticism, poetry, literature, you know, these are, thought of as soft topics, human interests, not quote unquote, you know, real journalism. In those environments, you know, these latter topics don't always carry the same kind of gravitas as heart news. Talk to me about the function of these other kinds of stories, the culture, the poetry, the criticism, talk to me about the function that these stories fulfill in the key. Yeah, I spent a lot of time also doing like international news. There's always this sort of mentality of treating people who are live in war zones, like they almost like lose their humanity in that context, but it's like, you're in a war. Everyone around you is getting slaughtered, but you still have to live your life, right? Like I have spoken to some people in Gaza who are like, my student loans are still things that I have to pay, right? We don't think about things like that, right? Or like, for example, there are these tremendously talented Palestinian comedians. What do Palestinian comedians do in this moment, right? Like I think everything kind of always gets filtered through the culture wars. There's always like sort of a kind of predominant like sort of narrative around things. I think that like there is sort of a lack of acceptance that like these things are serious parts of the world that we're living in and that they're not separate to them, that like poetry is also an important form of reporting. Free Palestine is controversial and is like ripping to shreds that like culture sphere. Meanwhile, there is just a kind of like entire universe of like documentation of just how unspeakable like horror is happening in Gaza right now. And it's very suffocating. You're just like, I wanna be able to talk about this and I wanna be able to like see this as like a crisis of humanity and to talk about this in this way. And I do think that like are sort of like desire to separate like, well, this is the serious thing and this is the fun thing. And this is the, everything is together. Everything should come together and I feel like the last decade was about, you know, being like, look, the NFL is political, like, you know, whether you like it or not, it is political. - I really, really, really appreciate this conversation, so thank you so much for coming on the show. I really, really appreciate it. I do too, this was really great. That was editor-in-chief of the key, Sada Yasin. This episode of It's Been A Minute was produced by. - Alexis Williams. - This episode was edited by Nina Patuck. - Our supervising producer is. - Sheriff Vincent. - Our executive producer is. - Barton Gurdwood. - Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. All right, that's all for this episode of It's Been A Minute from NPR. I'm Brittany Luce. Talk soon. [BLANK_AUDIO]