This week, the Trump administration has announced that undocumented immigrants must register or face jail time; introduced a “gold card“ path to citizenship for the wealthy; and implemented changes to the leadership at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Amid rapidly shifting policies and a lack of clarity about which ideas will actually be carried out, local outlets like Borderless Magazine have responded to the moment through nuanced reporting that empowers their audience.
The Institute reached out to Nissa Rhee, executive director at Borderless, for advice on how journalists can improve their coverage of immigrants and immigrant communities.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
Trump’s immigration policy is a huge story impacting millions of Americans across the country. What are your top three tips for journalists to localize and humanize this issue?
Rhee: First, realize that immigration is a local issue; that any community you look at in the U.S., immigration and immigrants touch. And if you’re not used to looking at your community that way, that’s the first step: Look. Look for the immigrants — or the people impacted by immigration policies — in your community, and start talking to them.
Because what we’ve seen in a lot of places that are not used to covering immigration or immigrant communities, they don’t even have those sources. They haven’t developed any relationships. If there are stories, they’ve been one offs. Or crime stories. Or negative stories. So there has to be some source-building and trust-building to start.
Number two, think about how you can center local voices and not just repeat what Trump — or politicians in general — are saying. There is plenty of reporting on what’s happening in D.C., and every new executive order, which there are so many, and that’s important reporting. But on the local level, really thinking about: Okay, what does this mean for the people on the ground who are either new or maybe they’ve been here for decades. Maybe they’ve been on a green card for decades. If you have a local university, I guarantee you’ll have international students. What does this all mean for them? Thinking about the individuals rather than just the politicians.
And third, think about language access. A starting point would be to look at census or American Community Survey data for your region, just to get a grasp on what languages people speak at home and at what level. Then, also have an understanding of your local journalism ecosystem. Maybe the number one language in your area is Polish. Is there a Polish news outlet serving that group? If that’s true, okay, maybe you look at the number two language and realize there’s no news outlet serving that community.
Alternatively, you could look at the news ecosystem and find where the holes are. Think about the people you’re interviewing and always make sure that you know if you’re doing an interview in French, that the story is available in French so the person you interviewed can read it. Language access has to be part of this conversation, because it is so important.
For undocumented immigrants, there is a real risk to speaking with journalists, especially now. How do you balance the safety of your sources with publishing identifying information?
Rhee: I think a lot of it has to do with having candid conversations with sources about what the risks are with talking to us. And not just talking to us, but what are the risks of us printing certain details? That could be their full name. That could be their picture. That could be the fact that they still have a child back in another country. It could include if they’re working with an immigration lawyer. Sometimes the immigration lawyer wants to have a conversation about that too because from their perspective, they don’t want a story to jeopardize the immigration case.
So for journalists, the first step is just themselves having a clear understanding of what could be the potential impact of a news story on someone, and then being able to have that candid conversation with a source.
Also, maybe this is the first time a source has ever talked to a journalist. Maybe journalists in the country they’re coming from are very different from here, and so their understanding of what is a journalist here is not clear. At this moment, there’s so much anti-journalist rhetoric in the world. I’ve had sources say, “Hey, I heard there’s a lot of fake news out there, and journalists are liars. Is that true?” Then there’s a conversation. It’s really about addressing it head on. Not just showing up for the interview, doing the interview, and then publishing. It’s taking the time to have the conversations.
And it’s also about agency — we really let the person we’re interviewing determine some of these things. I don’t want to ever be in a place where I’m like, “If I were you, I wouldn’t talk to me.” Sometimes we’ll use a pseudonym, but often we’ll use their real name because they want to be open and they want to share their story. They want to be completely transparent because there’s such power in that. So I wouldn’t want to deny someone that. But at the same time, I want them to be aware.
It’s also an ongoing conversation. We don’t have this conversation once — we probably have it about three times. Once when we meet someone and interview them. Another as we’re reporting and doing fact checking. And then again right before publishing. Oftentimes, people will change their mind, back and forth throughout that process, and so giving some space for that in the editorial process.
When we take photographs, for example, someone might say, “Oh, of course, I want to show my face. I want to show everything.” But we’re always knowing that they might change their mind. So let’s take some photos of them that are unidentifiable — from the back, their hands, something that we could use in case they want to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym. So thinking about those cases up front will make it a lot easier for the editor and everyone.
The final thing is we offer quote checks for immigrants — specifically people who might be in danger. We don’t offer that for everyone, we don’t offer that for politicians. And there’s almost never any changes, but it’s just good for everyone’s peace of mind to understand what’s actually going to be published.
How do you get sources within immigrant communities to trust you and open up about their experiences?
Rhee: It’s time and commitment, just like every other source building. You can’t expect trust if you’re coming from a news outlet that has never covered immigrants. Or perhaps they’ve covered immigrant individuals as a one off crime story or a rally or protest. If you’re covering them once and you never cover them again — people notice that. If you only care about them when things are national news stories, people know that, and of course, they have every right to mistrust you.
You have to take the time. You have to show up in the spaces, and you have to start building those stories, making sure you’re consistent with it. Maybe it’s starting out doing smaller stories, and then just being a presence and fixture in the community.
Also, if someone is asked to be interviewed, the first thing they’re going to do is Google the news outlet, right? And if what shows up are all these negative stories — or no stories at all — there’s going to be a lot of questions.
What advice do you have for journalists to avoid perpetuating harmful stereotypes and using dehumanizing labels in their immigration coverage?
Rhee: NAHJ put a resource out recently about covering ICE raids. The AP style guide is much better than before, as far as realizing the power of our language. As an industry, we have gotten away from saying things like “illegal alien,” which is great. There’s definitely been improvement.
Just educate yourself about what are the best practices. As far as specific terms — what do all these mean? Legal terms, for example, refugee versus asylum seeker, TPS (temporary protected status), undocumented, or mixed status family. There are so many terms and they are thrown around interchangeably a lot, which is in itself harmful because people are confused. So just make sure that you, as a journalist, understand the definitions of these terms very clearly and are using them in the correct manner.
For journalists or newsrooms looking to improve their coverage of immigrant communities, what advice do you have?
Rhee: News outlets sometimes come to me asking, where do we start? They may not have experience conducting interviews with Spanish speakers or working with translators. I always first encourage people to look around. You might be surprised what skills already exist in your newsroom.
And understand that you can teach someone how to do an interview, but you can’t teach them a new language immediately. So when you’re hiring — and even when it’s hiring freelancers — look for those language skills, as it is important at this moment.
The other thing is more a call to funders. This work is very obvious in its importance, and there’s an opportunity to uplift the work people have been doing for a long time. I’m always scared that when the news cycle moves on to another thing, funders will also move on to that. This is an opportunity for us as an industry to take advantage of this moment where everyone is really looking at immigration, and let’s dig in. Let’s commit as an industry to report on the issues that matter to people in the long term. And also report and cover the people who actually live in our communities. It’s such a great opportunity to leverage this attention to make a long-term shift, rather than just suddenly do some quick stories about this.
As part of the job, journalists are often exposed to traumatic events or situations that can cause long-term emotional distress. What tips do you have for reporters covering difficult topics to take care of their mental health?
Rhee: The mental health crisis in journalism is real and heavy. That’s the first step, acknowledging that it’s even a thing. I’ve been a journalist for 19 years, and I remember in my first job, one of my bosses telling me, “Don’t cry. You have to toughen up.”
And so that was then. In the last month at Borderless, there have been a lot of tears, and that’s okay. Part of what we’re doing here — and what I see at other nonprofit news outlets that we’re close to — is we are all working really hard for a culture shift inside newsrooms to push away from this old school, “toughen up kid” toxicness. We’re all people, and we’re all bringing ourselves to the work, which is great.
At Borderless, we have an extremely diverse staff. Our team speaks about a dozen languages, which is such a superpower. But at the same time, these issues that we’re all reporting on touch everyone — individually or their families. You can’t just ignore that. So it’s real, and everyone really cares deeply about journalism and the work.
Especially at this moment, there are so many threats against journalists — it’s heavy and scary. What we’re trying to do is acknowledge that if it feels heavy and hard, sad and scary, that’s because it is. We’re not imagining this. It is a really heavy moment, and we have to leave room for us to process those feelings. So sometimes we’ll be sad. Sometimes we’ll be angry. And that’s okay. That is a much healthier and safer environment than to just ignore it and burn out.
In our last all staff meeting at the beginning of the month, we went through a list of 10 things, should you talk to your manager if … And it was a list of situations like: if you’re feeling anxious or depressed; if you feel unsafe when you’re out reporting; if a source keeps calling you and threatens you — this whole list. And the answer to everything is “Yes.” But it was a conversation we needed to have because, sometimes, if you have worked at other newsrooms, the answer would be no, don’t talk to your manager about those things. Just suck it up.
So we’re doing nothing short of creating a new culture. There are lots of nonprofit news outlets who are doing this work together. And it’s important to have these conversations openly. One book I recommend on this topic is called “Journalists Break News: Don’t Let it Break You. Normalizing Mental Wellness in News.”