A factory in the middle of New Jersey was one of the last places Billy would have expected to hear his country’s national anthem. Yet there he was, standing proudly as the rhythms of La Dessaliniène blared over the speakers. He looked around at the room filled with some of his colleagues—a fine subset of Trane Technologies’ multinational workforce in Trenton. There were about a hundred of them, standing solemnly and waving their miniature Haitian flags as the night drew to a close. Billy had a smile on his face!

“It was really nice to see people from different backgrounds come together to celebrate Haitian Flag Day with us,” Billy said with a look of satisfaction. It was the first celebration of its kind at the company, and it all happened because of him—Bill Lorcy, nicknamed Billy.

Billy, 46, has been working at Trane Technologies since 2016. It was the first company to hire him after his Temporary Protected Status (TPS) application was approved. Billy moved permanently to Philadelphia in December 2015 after four years of traveling back and forth between the United States and Haiti on a tourist visa. In 2012, young Billy, an eloquent communications major at the State University of Haiti, the country’s most prestigious institution of higher learning, was selected to join a delegation that represented the university at a conference in Queens, New York. He returned every summer after that. As his five-year visa neared its expiration date, Billy faced a difficult decision. Although he personally wanted to complete his studies before considering leaving Haiti, those around him increasingly insisted that he stay in the United States. For good.

“Everyone told me the same thing: ‘With the direction Haiti is going, there is no reason for you to come back. Stay.’ I decided not to be stubborn, and I stayed,” Billy said.

Like many immigrants, Billy had to move past the painful realization that the United States was nothing like what had been portrayed to him in the media or even what he had experienced as a tourist.

“We are presented with an image of life in the United States as luxurious. However, there is nothing luxurious about daily life. You have to work, take care of your family, and pay the bills,” Billy said. Despite the challenges, he is proud of what he has accomplished since moving to Philadelphia. He has been able to take care of himself, of his family, and support those he left behind in Haiti. “I can’t complain, as they say here,” he concluded, after briefly reflecting on his overall experience in the United States.

He still misses his country dearly. He often evokes memories of his youth—the laughter and friendship associated with the first four decades of his life in Haiti.

(Bottom left, Billy during his time in Queens, NY, 2012)

Billy was born in Carrefour, a commune south of the Port-au-Prince metropolitan area with a population of about half a million. However, he spent much of his time in the city center, where most of the educational and service opportunities he sought were located. He was very involved in the Scout Movement and his church, two institutions that played a vital role in his formation.

“I like to make myself available to help others. As a Christian, you should always be there to help others because God says to love your neighbor as yourself,” Billy said, noting how his religious beliefs shaped his personality and continue to inform his life decisions.

Billy speaks with conviction about his faith; it is a core part of who he is. His religious faith led him to the Haitian Red Cross in 1998, where he served as a volunteer for over a decade before joining Oxfam Quebec in 2010. Through his volunteer work, Billy visited all 10 departments of Haiti, which remains his favorite icebreaker fun fact to this day.

It was also through his faith that Billy met his wife, Rebecca, who is perhaps the real reason he stayed in the United States. They connected on Facebook around 2014 at the recommendation of a mutual friend from church. At that time, Rebecca was already living in the United States.

Although they didn’t realize it until much later, Billy and Rebecca had already crossed paths several times at Christian youth activities and summer camps in Port-au-Prince. Billy was even Rebecca’s camp instructor at some point. They stayed in touch throughout Billy’s travels. He tried to meet up with her every time he came to the United States. When he was in Haiti, they spoke via WhatsApp and Facebook, although network issues often made communication difficult.

“Courting her was no easy task, but by God’s grace, we did it,” Billy said with a smile on the corner of his mouth. Rebecca confirmed his side of the story. “I always told Billy that I didn’t believe he was the one God had planned for me, but Billy always promised he would wait for me. And he did.” Rebecca speaks about Billy with passion, her voice radiating confidence as she shares the things she appreciates about their relationship. It’s hard to imagine a time when she did not believe she had a future with him.

“We’re imperfect,” Rebecca says, “but we understand each other in our imperfections. We’re both playful people who never get tired of each other. Some people find it strange, but we never run out of things to say to each other!” Rebecca and Billy have two children together—two boys—one is 8 and the other, 3. Billy also has a 16-year-old child in Haiti from a previous relationship.

When Billy is not at home or church, he is at work. Earlier this year, he hosted a Haitian Flag Day celebration at his company, which was met with praise from everyone, from coworkers to executives. The food, music, and ambiance brought him home for a brief but special moment. The countless logistical challenges he had to overcome were suddenly all worth it.

“It was a beautiful celebration of Haitian heritage,” Billy said.

New exodus looms for Haitian migrants in the United States

During his campaign, Donald Trump promised he would enact a mass deportation scheme – the largest in American history. He vowed that he would start with Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio. Last month, the Biden administration decided not to extend the humanitarian parole for migrants from Haiti (among other nationalities) who had already been admitted to the country through the parole program. Michael Wilner, a correspondent for McClatchy, suggested that this decision was made to give eligible Haitians to find other avenues to remain in the United States, notably Temporary Protected Status (TPS). In fact, with a Trump presidency, it is almost certain that the program will be completely halted, so looking for alternatives makes sense. However, in an interview with NewsNation back in early October, Trump said he would revoke TPS for Haitians and “bring them back to their country”. It would not be the first time Trump tried to revoke TPS. During his first term, Trump had announced the end of TPS, a decision that was ultimately blocked by a judge in New York. Would things be different this time?

Today, over 300,000 Haitians are TPS beneficiaries. Around 200,000 are beneficiaries of the humanitarian parole program. With both programs expected to be suspended by the Trump administration, over half a million Haitians could be in a legal limbo.

In my final project, I would like to investigate how the Haitian community and its allies are preparing for an end to these programs. I intend to interview Haitian families, beneficiaries of both TPS and humanitarian parole, sponsors of the beneficiaries, people in Haiti who are waiting for their cases to be processed and sponsors who are waiting for their families to come over.

I am also interested in how Canada is preparing for a mass Haitian exodus as happened when TPS first ended in 2017. Can we expect the same to happen this time around? I will try to talk to Haitians who moved to Canada during this period to understand how everything happened and what their experience has been like since.

I will also interview immigration lawyers, leaders of nonprofit and advocacy organizations connected to the Haitian community as well as government officials in Canada to see how they are preparing for a potential haitian migration.

Contacts
Ira Kurzban, the Miami immigration attorney who was among the lawyers who successfully argued the class-action lawsuit against the end of TPS back in 2017.
Marleine Bastien from Family Action Movement Network
Gene Hamilton – immigration lawyer supporting the end of TPS for Haitians
Colleen Desiree, Association of Haitian Women in Boston
Mireille Paquet, Associate Professor, Political Science mireille.paquet@concordia.ca
Marjorie Villefranche (director of Maison d’Haiti, a Haitian community organization in Montreal)
Haitian workers at Princeton, other connections who have TPS and connections in Canada.

Links
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-vows-mass-deportation-migrants-springfield-dismisses-threats/story?id=113661663
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/03/politics/trump-revoke-status-ohio-haitian-migrants/index.html
https://thehill.com/latino/4745949-biden-immigration-tps-haiti-mayorkas/
https://www.boundless.com/blog/biden-administration-ends-temporary-stay-program-thousands-of-migrants-from-four-countries/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/08/canada-migrants-trump-mass-deportation-plan
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/10/world/americas/a-surge-of-migrants-crossing-into-quebec-tests-canadas-welcome.html

Peter Hessler’s piece in which he followed a trash collector in Cairo was really interesting in that it showcases a perspective that not many people think about: the collector is able to learn so many intimate details about people’s lives just by collecting their trash. This piece also raised some questions for me regarding the line between the professional relationship between a journalist and a source and the personal relationship which can allow for stronger character building. In the case of the trash collector, it seemed that the author had a close personal relationship which included visiting him in his home many times and having casual conversations in which they asked each other about their kids for instance. He also joined him on his trash collection route. This somewhat blurs the lines between professional and personal relationships, but I think it allowed the writer to gain a much better understanding of the person he is writing about.

The piece about Iraqi-centric clubs in Damascus is another example of how immersing yourself in a setting as a journalist can help you pick up on small details through observation or conversation. It’s also important to recognize that this might mean being in environments in which you stand out or might feel uncomfortable for a variety of reasons (the piece mentioned discomfort due to language skills, but this can apply to other contexts as well). I can only imagine how challenging it is to be in certain places to report a story and to develop a more intimate understanding of the characters you are righting about by immersing yourself into their world and going where they would go.

Lastly, the piece about the Syrian intelligence officer is very interesting, especially when it comes to the level of access that’s required to get some of the information and context presented in the piece. I would be very curious to know how a reporter uncovers something such as someone acting as a double agent for multiple intelligence agencies given the level of secrecy required to maintain an identity like that in the first place. It is also interesting to note that this piece was still successful in painting a picture of the characters and his complexities without the same intimate understanding which comes from accompanying the character or “embedding” as in the previous two pieces.

Donald Trump will be the 47th President of the United States. He won the election on a campaign to crack down on migration. His running mate, JD Vance, has suggested the deportation operation could remove more than a million people a year. NYC has an estimated population of 560,000 undocumented migrants, and Philadelphia has an undocumented population of 170,000. Trump has also promised to end temporary protected status.

How are undocumented migrants and the organizations and advocates that support them in NYC and Philadelphia preparing for the coming Trump presidency?

How will immigration enforcement differ under Trump’s second presidency from immigration enforcement under his first presidency?

I plan to include scenes from the Welcoming Center and The Good Shepherd Church. I might also be able to go and visit New York again. I want to weave in perspectives from people who worked in organizations during the last Trump presidency and then get a sense of what could happen this time. I want to make sure I have a strong legal explanation for what the current situation is and what might change. I also want to include a sufficient account of the anxiety and stress that comes from just worrying about what might happen.

I know I need a more specific angle, but I’m not sure what that should be yet.

Interviews that I have already done / people I have quotes from:

Reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz

Colombian couple who didn’t give me their name at the Lutheran church

Welcoming Center director of community (I lost their name but will find it again)

Welcoming Center woman who is leaving (I lost their name but will find it again)

Migrant at the welcoming center

Giulia at the welcoming center

People I need to contact/am waiting to hear back from:

Julia Preston

Anuj Gupta

Someone from the Legal Aid Society

Someone from The Door

Someone from the New York Immigration Coalition

Vitaliy Bolgar is a regular at the military evacuation hospital, the first stop for Ukrainian soldiers when retreating from the warzone. This sanctuary stands 20 miles out from Donestk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, where armed forces soldiers stand—a line of bodies—defending against Russian troops. “These guys come off the front lines and they’re watching their friends get destroyed. Their eyes are empty like glass, nothing behind them,” says Bolgar.

To the soldiers, Bolgar is a healer. He has become a popular visitor, with many men specifically requesting his treatment. “You could see a kind of life being breathed back into the soldiers,” says Bolgar describing the effects of his care. What Bolgar possesses is not a secret medical antidote: he arrives with a guitar, his voice, and traditional Ukrainian folk songs.

Three years out from the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bolgar’s musicmaking has been a form of lifesaving therapy to process the trauma and grief of the war, not only for the soldiers and victims of military attacks, but also for himself. Bolgar’s musical choices reflect a broader trend of the Ukrainian folk tradition’s postwar revival. Ukrainian folk music has become a uniting cultural marker for Ukrainian identity. Refugees as well as those who stayed unanimously returned to an old and largely forgotten culture, embracing the same songs across national lines.

Since Russia’s attack of Kyiv in February 2022, Bolgar has remained in western Ukraine. Bolgar worked tirelessly with relatives to find a way to transport his wife, Ludmila and son, Julien out of Ukraine to safety, eventually linking up with a Christian Romanian group in May. “In the back of your mind, you think about the huge amounts of human trafficking that takes place of women from Ukraine and from Russia,” Bolgar said. While his family reached refugee settlement camps in Germany, Bolgar was unable to flee and spent over a year alone in Kyiv.

In his solitude, the persistent accompaniment to Bolgar’s life was blaring air raid sirens. His body settled into a state of physical unrest, unable to sleep and constantly on edge for an impending attack. “I used to love putting music on to get moving and to lift myself up. Now, the music that I want to listen to is quiet, it brings peace to your soul,” said Bolgar.

This newfound need for meditative music shaped what he chose to sing to the front-line soldiers at the military hospital. Bolgar was singing traditional Ukrainian folk tunes: patriotic yet spiritual songs that have been rising from the ashes of a shared cultural fabric.

“Since the beginning of the war, people have returned to patriotic music, to traditional Ukrainian folk songs that haven’t been sung for many, many years,” said Stephen Benham, president of Music in World Culture (MIWC) who frequently visits Ukraine for music development projects. “You’re seeing the return to the idea: what does it mean to be a Ukrainian?”

In the folk song tradition, Ukrainians and the diaspora are recognizing the duty to preserve a culture that is threatened by extinction says Simon Morrison, a professor of music at Princeton University who studies the Soviet Union and Russia.

“Now that there’s this monstrous force that’s seeking to erase them as a people, Ukrainians are finding within songs of lament,” Morrison said. “These songs are communal expressions of grief, a wealth of material that people associated with these traumatic events that have occurred over and over again.”

Today, this notion of the Ukrainian identity is also being revived linguistically. Bolgar was raised in the small Russian-speaking village of Bograd, but switched to speaking Ukrainian since the start of the war. His choice reflects trends amongst Ukrainians towards reclaiming the Ukrainian identity and its modern expression, but still being rooted in the traditions of old Ukraine according to Benham.

Now, the Ukrainian language and music are the two main cultural identifiers for Ukrainians who have left. “All of a sudden, they want to sing Ukrainian folk songs, even if they never spoke a word of Ukrainian in their life. That is a big deal for people to say, ‘We’re not Russia,’” Benham said.

However, there has been an increasingly bitter discourse around Ukrainians who fled since the start of the war. A negative sentiment has risen around Ukrainians leaving, labeling them as abandoning those who chose to remain, says ethnomusicologist Maria Sonevytsky.

“For musicians, it’s an ambiguous question: what do you do in the moment of a crisis like this one? Some of course joined the military. Many, especially pop musicians who use commodified platforms, understood that they would have better luck in Western Europe,” said Sonevytsky.

As Ukrainian musicians search for a new audience of listeners outside their country, the sudden burst of international attention towards Ukrainian artists since the start of the war has also brought a sense of global solidarity for these musicians.

“It feels very powerful that Ukrainian music is even in the U.S., that everybody knows about Ukraine now,” said Sonya Zhukova, a Ukrainian singer-songwriter who is a refugee in Poland, about a performance at her music camp in Los Angeles. “In that moment, I just closed my eyes and I thought about the war. I felt this support from my team: that they loved Ukraine, they support us, and everything is okay.”

Bolgar’s current musical project is creating a Ukrainian psalm book with guitar backing tracks, specifically for soldiers based on his performances at the military hospital. The book contains a mix of traditional Ukrainian folk songs as well as spiritual songs aiming to spread peace, calm, and hope during the war.

“Sometimes one of the guys will be a musician and have a guitar in the in the trench with them. Other times, they just don’t have anything,” Bolgar said.

He hopes to meet his fundraising goal of $3,500 to make recording backing tracks a reality, so that soldiers can have the music to listen and sing to while they are in battle.

“Ukraine is not just our territory, but it’s our culture as well. We want Ukrainians to remember who they are when they leave the country. We want there to be a Ukrainian culture that remains, and music is a really important part of it all,” said Bolgar.

“In the midst of this horrible war, music is not only our therapy, but it also lifts us up to go into battle together, so that we know we are fighting for our freedom.”

Both Peter Hessler’s  “What the Garbage Man Knows” and Deborah Amos’s “Dancing for Their Lives” pulled me and other readers into the lives of people doing whatever it takes to survive in tough situations. I was drawn to the author’s ability to pull me into the daily life of the subjects as well as give me an indepth description of who they are without merely listing of features or information but by situating themselves and us into their world.  Hessler follows Sayyid, a garbage collector in Cairo who understands people deeply by sorting through their trash. Meanwhile, Amos explores the lives of Iraqi women in Syria who, as refugees, sometimes have to turn to prostitution to support their families. Both writers dive into worlds far removed from their own, gaining the trust of the people they write about, while also dealing with tough questions about how much they should share and how best to show respect. With issues as big as divorce and traficking, I wonder where the line of journalism is? Are they always okay with the way their life is portrayed? Since Sayyid is illiterate, what are the methods of ensuring that as a reporter you are presenting information correctly? 

Hessler starts with Sayyid’s daily life rather than his personal backstory, letting readers understand him through what he does and what he notices. This approach helped me and  readers see Sayyid as a person with skills and knowledge, rather than just someone who’s “uneducated” or “poor.” For example, even though Sayyid can’t read, he’s learned to pick up on small clues, like how women throw out empty pill packs with days marked on them. This allows for us to know how he views the world rather than merely getting a description of who he is. But Hessler also shows us the challenges Sayyid faces. He doesn’t get paid much, he had to serve longer in the military because he couldn’t read, and there are strict gender roles in his community. By not jumping in with personal facts, Hessler lets us get to know Sayyid through his actions, which builds trust. But this makes you wonder: How can journalists like Hessler build this trust with people who may be hesitant to open up? This piece was written over a long time but what steps and procedures did the author follow to ensure that the relationship had been properly built? How do they gain respect without crossing boundaries?

In Amos’s “Dancing for Their Lives,” she brings us into the world of Iraqi refugee women who sometimes feel they have no other option but to sell their bodies to survive. There was a description of these two young girls about 12 years of age watching the other women dance which showcases how desperation passes from one generation to the next. The idea of dancing is a means of survival that is not only present in the now but in the generations to follow and this description does an amazing job at capturing that.  How does she observe and record without standing out too much or putting herself in danger? And how do reporters handle the tension between wanting to show the real story and respecting the dignity of those involved?Both pieces make us think hard about what journalists should and shouldn’t do when reporting on sensitive issues. How do they respect people’s struggles without making them look like just victims? And when they immerse themselves in these communities, how do they avoid making things worse for the people involved?.

I was particularly interested in your article, Professor Amos. First, I was interested in the temporality of the reporting. You had built a relationship with Um Nour from reporting trips in 2008, but much of the article takes place in one night. My first question is what does building and maintaining a relationship with a source over several years involve and look like? In terms of the night itself, how do you pitch the project to your source? Much like in the Hassler article, your focus on prostitutes is interesting for the way that although the migrant prostitutes are on the margins of society, a deep focus on them actually reveals a lot about the wider society on whose margins they live. For example, by following Ahmed around, Hassler is able to momentarily explain Cairo’s tipping culture, which more vividly elucidates the broader nature of society for a non-Egyptian reader. This technique reminds me of a profile of an RUC police detective in Patrick Radden Keefe’s book Say Nothing. Radden Keefe explains and demonstrates in his own choice of interviewee that the RUC would target people in menial roles who were connected to the IRA, for example, Gerry Adams’ driver, rather than trying to get Adams himself. My next question is how you come to make judgments like the following: “One last look? Enough eyeliner? Another pat of powder? Anxiety also filled the room, because of the deals that would have to be concluded later in the evening.” This quotation describes the bathroom in which the women are doing their makeup. Particularly when there is a language barrier, is this the kind of thing you just have to trust your judgment on or was this made more apparent to you in conversation about the scene with Um Noor?

With regard to the Ben Taub piece, I read it when it first came out in 2021. I remember being blown away at the time by the level of detail. There are many questions the article raises for me. First, how does one decide to set off investigating this kind of thing and then how does one actually go and do it? Did the story come to him or would he have had an inkling doing other reporting? I’m also curious how he would have built trust with people who inhabit a very murky world.

Finally, I was interested in the Goudeau chapter. It’s striking that the US immigration system used to be so explicitly based on race. As Goudeau points out, there were millions of people from around the world in majority non-white countries who could have benefited from coming to the US, but the US was only interested in European immigrants. I was struck by the US sympathy for the student rebels in Hungary and thought the example raised a number of parallels with today. The US is interested in refugees that “deserve” settlement because of some kind of alignment with US foreign policy interests. For example, in recent years both Ukrainians and Afghans have received special access to the US, whereas Syrians have not.

Question:

How are Ukrainian refugees and Ukrainians abroad finding meaning/processing grief using music today?

Differences between those who stayed and left?
Rebranding and sudden attention to Ukrainian artists?

There has been a revival of traditional folk Ukrainian music since the start of the war. This has been a source of healing and processing of grief in a strange turn of events; there is a return of a linguistic and musical tradition that has largely been forgotten before the war.

Or has it? I have conflicting sources. Some people believe that this war truly reignited a tradition that has brought unprecedented attention and linked Ukrainian refugees and those who have stayed. Another that I talked to believes that the folk tradition has been coming back into the light for decades now, and that this revival has been dramatized.

I am still trying to find my angle and would like to root it more to the idea of migration and the refugee experience. This is an approach I hope to take by talking to more Ukrainian refugee organizations.

JRN 449 Final Project Source List

* = musician/performer

People I have interviewed:

Vitaliy Bolgar* – Ukrainian director Music in World Cultures (MIWC), Singer & Guitarist
Stephen Benham – Professor of Music Education at Duquesne University, President of Music in World Cultures (MIWC)
Sonya Zhukova* – Singer-Songwriter, Musika Musika Communications (REACH OUT)
Simon Morrison – Professor of Music at Princeton University, Focus: the musical, cultural, and political histories of the Soviet Union, Russia, the United States
Solomiya Ivakhiv* – Violinist
Maria Sonevytsky – Associate Professor of Anthropology & Music at Bard College

To reach out to:

Jana Strukova, PhD’ 07 Princeton Theological Seminary (leads program at church that welcomes Ukranian refugees)
Interfaith Refugee Resettlement Committee
Princeton For Ukraine (I connected with the Facebook Page)
Ukrainian Institute of America
Nadia Shpachenko, piano (concert at Ukrainian Institute of America on Nov 17 that I was invited to, they said I could speak to her)

These articles have the acute skill of taking astute, specific observations about small quirks or details about a person and drawing it the broader narrative and social phenomena relevant to the story they’re trying to tell. This presents as a literary approach to writing, one where form fits content in the sense that these are deep immersions into personal being. However, upon this personal being the reporters are ultimately seeking to draw attention to the external forces that led this person to their current state of being.

In this case of Tales For Trash by Hessler, there’s an extension to the idea of Egypt’s epidemic of illiteracy. Quite literally, Hessler connects the individual man to a national phenomenon: “For the leaders of the revolution, who are mostly middle and upper class, the experience of a citizen like Sayyid is a perfect example of why radical change is necessary.”

In Dancing For their Lives, Um Nour’s ripe enthusiasm is stretched to this crisis of women in the freelance prostitution market, and an Iraqi political history of corruption: “I could see why this was Um Nour’s favorite club. The system of cost and rewards favored women who wanted some control over their work. It was a freelance market.”

I found this to be a very useful tool in writing and I enjoy pondering about this concept of using the personal to peel back into the larger political issues that may seem more distant to the average reader.

In that vain, in these pieces I noticed an interested theme that was the idea of inserting the author into the world of the individual being profiled. Notably, in Taub’s How a Syrian War Criminal and Double Agent Disappeared in Europe, I found it interesting how there is quite a revealing statement about how deeply this story has infiltrated his mind and his work. The Taub piece on Khaled al-Halabi presented the profile in a form that felt more traditionally “news story”-esque to me, in tone and content at the start, but that changes as you progress thorugh the story.

“Directly above the Austrian woman’s apartment, a man who looked like Khaled al-Halabi sat on his balcony, shielded from the late-morning sun. But I was unable to confirm that it was him.”

This closing paragraph almost feels romantic as he describes the sun falling upon the balcony, reminiscent and deeply reflective of the experience that has been stepping into Halabi’s shoes and committing to his story and life for years.

You can also quite easily hear a distinct tone and humor in the profiles that isn’t present in some of the more fact-based pieces that we’ve covered this semester, which lean into acknowledging the positionality of the reporter themselves. There is an ethnographic perspective that peers through these articles, really painting the scene and the characters so that the reader understands the scene as well as how the journalist fits into it.

I thought that the authors used speech as the foundation to their painting of a person, like using their unusual and fascinating syntax, mannerisms in speech as brushstrokes to really capturing how a person talks and exists.

Frank Langfitt’s article illustrates very well the value of flexibility in journalism: he started out wanting to write a story about Chinese Communist Party dissidents, and ended up uncovering an internationally renowned con man in the process. I was particularly struck by the approach the reporters took to changing course when their suspicions about the stories they were being told began to surface. The turning point was the email Gao allegedly received from the Dutch Immigration and Naturalization Service. I was impressed by the authors’ clear-sightedness in recognizing that something was wrong, and their insight into undertaking their own research to verify the stories they were being fed, especially given how much the story had already been picked up by other outlets without being verified. I appreciate similar illustrations of the role that journalists can play in seeking the truth and not simply reporting what has been said. The authors of this article used their critical thinking and pursued their vocation of objectivity and integrity to investigate, ultimately producing a story that might have gone against their subjective interests, namely, to scrutinize the Chinese government.

This anecdote about how the media picked up the story of the bomb threats when they had not been verified echoes what we read last week when we talked about the value of open source investigations. Time and time again, we have seen how the media can fall victim to its own biases. In our collective consciousness on this side of the world, China is constructed as a country controlled by a very complex, deeply organized, and deeply intrusive state that orchestrates complex operations to suppress dissidents and target the United States. While some of the events that underlie this characterization may have merit, if this is the assumption with which we approach stories as journalists, errors like the one above can easily proliferate. We seek out stories that confirm our biases and are not motivated to investigate further stories that seem to confirm our preconceptions. Repeated over and over again, this lack of rigor can be counterproductive because it erodes trust in the journalism profession as a whole and we run the risk of falling into a post-truth society where we no longer know who to trust. Biases are humane, thus why it is important to design a rigorous system that allows us to maintain objectivity regardless of the subject matter.

I believe this distance is necessary for effective journalism. It is one of the greatest benefits of embedded journalism, because it gives a journalist the time and space to follow a story long enough to identify potential inconsistencies and investigate them thoroughly. This creates a lag that helps create a helpful contrast with the fast-paced environment of traditional journalism, which ends up being more vulnerable to misinformation and manipulation due to the expectations placed on journalists to cover the news quickly and to shock.

Finally, I enjoyed reading Goudeau’s article because she showed us the role of public perception and opinion in shaping the political landscape of refugee resettlement in the United States. The power of public relations campaigns cannot be underestimated, as it defines which groups receive assistance and which have a hard time making their demands heard.