Covering the current protests during the middle of a pandemic is both a challenge and an opportunity for education reporters.

There’s no shortage of education reporters out there among the journalists covering the protests that have swept the nation these past few days.

The Washington Post’s Perry Stein and Hannah Natanson have been out covering protests in the District of Columbia. The Boston Globe’s Dan McGowan was out on the streets of Providence. Among the others: Courier Journal education reporter Mandy McLaren and the Bethesda Beat’s Caitlynn Peetz.

By all accounts, covering protests is an intense experience, all the more so in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it can also be harrowing. Already, a couple of education reporters have been arrested.

“Today, I covered the protests,” tweeted the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Kristen Graham. “Tonight, I was arrested for walking to my car past curfew.”

“Yes, I was just arrested,” tweeted WHYY Philadelphia’s Avi Wolfman-Arent, who described his experience in a video here.

And, in what is probably the scariest experience so far for an education reporter, KPCC education reporter Adolfo Guzman-Lopez was covering the protests over the weekend when he was hit in the neck by a rubber bullet.

Above: Just after finishing a street interview, Guzman-Lopez reported, “a police officer aimed and shot me in the throat.”

This isn’t the first time education reporters have taken on this important, difficult task.

Three years ago, Patrick Delaney was among those who covered protests in St. Louis for the public radio station there.

Five years ago, then Baltimore Sun reporter Erica Green covered the protests in her hometown.  “In those situations,” Green told me, “the city is your beat. Your job title doesn’t matter.”

Situations like these are all hands on deck, and education reporters are a brave and devoted lot.

“This is such an important story,” the Inquirer’s Kristen Graham told me via Twitter. “I want very much to bear witness in whatever I can.”

Above: Protest coverage from Erica Green in 2015, when she was with the Baltimore Sun. Click here to view. 

However, covering protests is a sharp contrast to the work most education reporters have been doing the past several weeks during the pandemic, during which little if any field reporting has been done.

And covering a live, sometimes chaotic event is a far cry from what most reporters are generally used to doing: talking to kids and parents and teachers in schools or district administration buildings, doing phone interviews, and reading reports.

“I studied social movements, race relations and civil rights some in college, so I am familiar with the issues,” the Courier Journal’s Olivia Krauth told me about covering the protests. “But I don’t cover them regularly… Plus, tear gas is not common in school board meetings.”

Indeed, some education reporters have experience with this kind of work. Others are covering their first protests. But few are expert at it. And the current protests have seemed particularly scary because of the mix of people involved, disinformation, and erratic police response.

“Usually in these protests, you have some sense of when they are about to turn and police will use more forceful tactics,” tweeted the Post’s Stein. “Yesterday, it was still daylight, young kids were out protesting with their parents, joggers were running through when gasses and explosions were deployed.”

“This was different,” said Wolfman-Arent, who has covered protests in the past. This was a “different level of chaos.”

Above: “Tear gas, then handcuffs,” wrote the Inquirer’s Kristen Graham. “I did my job as a @PhillyInquirer reporter, and then got arrested.” 

What are some of the lessons that education reporters are learning from the experience?

PROTECT YOURSELF

The first and most immediate priority is self-protection in a potentially dangerous situation.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Ryan P. Delaney shared some practical advice including to “set your own personal threshold before you go in as to what you will tolerate when it comes to threats” and “always stay away from the agitators.”

These measures are necessary in part because police have been targeting journalists, according to Vox and other outlets – and the journalists themselves.

There have been 160 incidents in recent days, according to Scott Nover’s Pressing newsletter, including arrests, police beatings, pepper spraying, and shootings with rubber bullets or other projectiles.

Protect your byline, too, against amplifying misinformation or misperceptions about the nature of the protests. “Don’t underestimate the power of your tweets,” advises the Times’ Green. “Those are now sometimes the first draft of history.”

CONTEXTUALIZE CRIME

The New York Times’ Nikole Hannah-Jones has been pointing out the danger of media accounts of the protests over-emphasizing the violence – especially on cable news:

“The amount of coverage of looting on cable news right now — even as hosts say it is *not* representative of *most* of what is happening during the protests — is highly problematic,” she tweeted. “YOU are changing the narrative from police violence to property damage, not the looters.”

There’s the obvious danger of education reporters doing the same, without at all intending to do so.

KEEP THE FOCUS ON OTHERS’ EXPERIENCES

There’s also a danger that reporters make themselves the center of the story, not the protesters and the affected communities.

“Acting shocked about police violence means we haven’t listened well enough to black members of our communities who have experienced this for generations,” tweeted KUT education reporter Claire McInerny in a thread about reporters who had been injured covering the protests. “If you get pepper sprayed because you’re in a group, it’s not about you,” according to McInerny. “Find another person pepper sprayed to talk to.”

Journalists may have special legal protections and responsibilities in our society, but as individuals our experiences aren’t special.

BUILD ON YOUR STRENGTHS

The experience of covering a protest can help education reporters deepen their preexisting understanding of the communities they cover.

“I think ed reporters, particularly those covering large districts, are among the best equipped to be thrown into protest coverage,” said the Courier Journal’s Krauth. “They often cover racial inequities in the classroom, know how to amplify youth voices, and may have covered teacher activism. Those skills translate to a degree, and I recommend ed reporters lean on those skills.”

Covering a protest can help them “learn more about the students they cover,” according to Krauth, giving them “a closer, more intimate look at the issues facing kids.”

Ideally, education reporters can bring their preexisting knowledge of school communities into their coverage of the events unfolding on the street.

“As education reporters, we have a front row seat to how this country treats marginalized people, starting from just a few short years after they’re born,” the Times’ Green wrote me via Twitter. Education reporters need to “infuse that into coverage to the best of our ability,” advises Green, who incorporated protest coverage into this story.

“Report what you see— but also what you know.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.

Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/