,
6 tweets,
1 min read
Read on Twitter
Is empathy a superpower? Because I don’t see a lot of it out there.
Empathy is a blessing/curse as a journalist, because it drives you to be fair to all sides in a story, and simultaneously increases the odds of you enraging everyone in the process. Which means you do more reporting to make sure you have the story right before you write it...
...which in turn increases the number of people you will likely piss off when you publish. I see the better angels in people all the time, and struggle with the fundamental lack of reality sharing that creates conflicts in (fill in the blank) because of this inability in people.
Being a good journalist means you have to be empathetic but not necessarily sympathetic, and you have to be prepared for people to not like you because you challenges their world view.
Being a good journalist does not mean you have to be a (pejorative for confrontational and unfeeling person here), but there’s a high probability that someone is going to call you that when their feelings get hurt. So you have to armor yourself with the preponderance of evidence.
I try to remind myself of this every day. I am perhaps more empathetic than is good for my own mental health at times, but I try to use that to guide me to a truth rather than a fetal position in the corner. 😬
