What Journalism Is Really Meant To Do
My take on listening to Mark Simon's interview with Salvadoran-American journalist Daniel Alvarenga
Recent The Journalism Salute guest Daniel Alvarenga is a Salvadoran-American journalist and translator based in Washington DC. He has worked for AJ+, a branch of Al Jazeera, and Telemundo, where he reported and produced their first English language show, Radar 2021. Alvarenga currently works as content manager for Unidos, the largest Latino civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States.
Alvarenga narrated the English version of the podcast, HUMO: Murder and Silence in El Salvador, journalist Bryan Avelar’s gripping account of uncovering corruption by the Salvadoran government (which Avelar voiced in Spanish).
“Bryan Avelar, the Spanish-language host, the original reporter on [HUMO] really goes into painstaking detail to gain people's trust because it's hard. Everyday people in El Salvador might not have the recourse to take on the government or call them out on anything. And so he really sat with these people and sat with their pain.”
— Daniel Alvarenga on The Journalism Salute
On his website (and Substack), Alvarenga writes that hopes to cover Latin American issues with “depth and nuance.” In his conversation with Mark, he also touches on the concept of “parachuting”, a form of extractive journalism where a reporter briefly goes into foreign country without doing enough research on how things work and what the people need. Sensationalist headlines are written, and deep questions are left unasked.
In HUMO (which means ‘smoke’ in Spanish), Alvarenga keeps it real. The job of the journalist is to “seek truth and report it,” not act as PR mouthpieces for any group, cause, or interest. Journalists should not be sugarcoating information to make it more palatable. At the same time, they also need to be mindful of their audience and the tendency for people to run with one part of the story and unfairly generalize groups of people who are already marginalized.
The people in the field that I respect strike this balance, not by purposely curating information; but rather, holding difficult conversations with a variety of ordinary, everyday people — not just institutions claiming to represent them. It also demonstrates the need to collectively increase our attention spans so that a clickbait headline isn’t “needed” for engagement.
As both consumer and creator of online content, I see both the positive and negative effects of the 24-hour news cycle. I think what we are struggling to cope with isn’t that we don’t have enough information but that we have so much, and not enough time to make sense of it all. Inundated by the sea of conflicting information, many of us have resorted to either outsourcing our critical thinking (”Do you believe in X? Congratulations, we also subscribed you for Y and Z”), or not caring about others because #SelfCare.
The worst thing that has happened to the media, in my opinion, is the bastardization of words like “nuance,” alongside “dialogue” and “diversity of viewpoints.” Both critics and advocates have equated these concepts with, at best, a lazy appeal to moderation, and at worst, bad-faith, concern trolling, typical "debate bro" behavior.
We are used to seeing university leaders trying to “Kumbaya” their way out of the consequences of their own corruption and lies. Or people on Fox News rambling on about academic freedom while endorsing book bans. When I think of “nuance” or “dialogue” or “diversity of viewpoints” in respect to current events, I envision a process of checking for clarification — my timeline is full of people screaming at each other, only to realize after 10+ hours they are using different words to refer to same ideas, or referring to different ideas using the same words — setting a few ground rules, and leaving room for strategic variations (which has always existed even among people affected by the same issues fighting for the same causes). A girl can only dream.
These days I sometimes hesitate to call myself a journalist, even though I love studying it and will be graduating with that major. My expertise sits firmly in “soft news” and creative nonfiction (I’m currently deep at work on a revised micro-memoir series about the limits of disability identities, called #TechnicallyAutistic: Dispatches from the Periphery, which feels like such a silly title with everything going on), and hearing from people in the field who risk their lives every day in order to report on the violence, greed, and suffering in the world is humbling.
And even if you’re not on the front lines, there are always people who send horrible threats when you write about anything related to politics.
“When things get too overwhelming I shut off my social media. That doesn't mean I'm not consuming news; I'm still consuming news. I'm still watching news programs. I'm subscribed to newsletters. But I'm not in the thick of Internet drama.”
— Daniel Alvarenga on The Journalism Salute
Like many other people, I have been trying to keep up with what is happening in Palestine and Israel. Just yesterday, I learned about +972 magazine, a site ran by Palestinian and Israeli journalists reporting directly from Gaza and nearby areas. Many of the staff writers are Israelis who have seen the devastation with their own two eyes and are advocating to end the occupation, which I respect (they also have a sister magazine in Hebrew language, Local Call). Firsthand witnesses play a crucial role in uncovering information and encouraging all of us to recognize injustices perpetuated by our own leadership, whether we’re from the United States or elsewhere.
I look forward to gaining more clarity in ways to ensure all civilians are safe, reunited with their families, treated equally regardless of the color of their skin, and allowed to practice their religions, because at the end of the day, the only systems worth fighting for are ones that serve human beings, not the other way around.
Even though I am just one person, I strive to be ethical about what I promote online or offline, and avoid spreading misinformation, though I realize that mistakes may occur. As of now, I’m using this spreadsheet by Operation Olive Branch to donate to families in need, and urging Congress to prioritize ceasefire and humanitarian guidelines set by international groups such as the U.N. and Human Rights Watch.
Like many other Journalism Salute guests, Daniel Alvarenga brings a global lens, touching common themes, such as navigating language barriers, exposing the dark reality of imperialism, and different struggles immigrants face over the course of their journey.
In this episode, I learned about how El Salvador was the first country to make Bitcoin or any cryptocurrency a legal tender. There was a catch in that human rights violations were being ignored, which Alvarenga pointed out in Rolling Stone.
When I heard about tragic consequences of U.S. imperialism, I’ve always heard of Vietnam War and the Gulf War but not the Salvadoran Civil War. This was the first time I heard about it, though it could very well be that I wasn’t paying attention in history class.
One of the things I appreciate about writing for The Journalism Salute is the opportunity (and challenge!) to engage critically with information I normally wouldn’t seek out when I’m creating my own content, which leans more towards infotainment.
“I think when you have Salvadoran parents who lived through something like a civil war, you have the parents who want to hide or want to get away and never unearth those things. My parents were the opposite. They overshared and they told me things that I, maybe, was too young to hear about it, but that always piqued my interest.”
— Daniel Alvarenga for The Journalism Salute
In Episode 4 of HUMO, I learned how gangs “took advantage” of the cities left in shambles from the civil war and the government made a truce with them by putting members in low-security prisons, effectively allowing them to run those prisons
In HUMO, Alvarenga noted that street gangs were “so entrenched in day to day life that they acted as a shadow to the government.” Homicides fell by 80%, making El Salvador look more appealing to the outside world. But disappearances, not counted in homicide rates, jumped significantly.
“It’s more involved than just three bullets to the head,” explains investigative journalist Juan Martinez: “But if there’s no body, there’s no murder.”
This was not something I had thought about when wondering about the ways in which crime rates can be manipulated. But Daniel’s story and comments got me thinking.
“The best part of being a journalist is shifting perspectives. A lot of people want to talk about the awards and the accolades and the prestige and that's elusive, but it's really changing people's minds or bringing them a perspective that they never ever thought about or helping them make sense of the world in a way that they didn't have access to before.”
— Daniel Alvarenga for The Journalism Salute
Check out Daniel Alvarenga’s interview on The Journalism Salute to hear about his process and tune into HUMO: Murder and Silence in El Salvador to find out more about what happened in El Salvador.
Asaka Park is a student at The College of New Jersey whose work can be found on her Substack.