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| A Letter to Parents, from RJI Founder Mark Turner | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
"It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart. "It’s utterly impossible for me to build my life on a foundation of chaos, suffering and death. I see the world being slowly transformed into a wilderness, I hear the approaching thunder that, one day, will destroy us too, I feel the suffering of millions. And yet, when I look up at the sky, I somehow feel that everything will change for the better, that this cruelty too shall end, that peace and tranquility will return once more." Anne Frank - July 15, 1944 Her voice was uncontainable. From an attic, as the lights of her captive world flickered and conceded darkness, she preserved her single, beautiful perspective. Its worth is irrefutable, though simple, told through the trembling hand of a fourteen-year-old girl. We would not deny that though her journal lacked the insights of scholars or the repudiation of the Gestapo, it remains in fact an invaluable window into her era. In our era, we often walk with trepidation into understanding the confusing and heartbreaking world. We shy from topics that challenge our beliefs and burden our confidence. Our sources must be objective, our teachers non-committal, our news balanced. We grasp for “both sides of the story” during minute segments afforded in clipped articles and Katie Couric’s nightly world debriefing. If a young Rwandan had penned Anne’s diary during that country’s genocide, would her words not possess the same merit? If it had been written by Yolanda King, would we demand of those pages the white voices of Jim Crowe’s South lest her journal be deemed unbalanced and her point of view tainted? Anne Frank offered the perspective she was capable of providing, her own. Through her words we are gifted the history, love and hope of an individual person. We do not search for “the other side” because her poetry inspires in us the understanding that there were in fact millions of perspectives all around her, striving, struggling, being extinguished. Her life could not be inscribed upon a side of a coin, flipped over to reveal the faces of her tormentors, or those who stood by as her essence was stolen. During a talk I recently gave to a group of high school students, I asked them to identify someone they know for certain to be biased. “Ok,” I began, “How about Osama bin Laden?” “Definitely,” they agreed. “Can you prove it?” “He hates America, he’s responsible for 9/11.” “How do you know that?” “It’s common fact,” they scoffed, “Everyone knows that.” “Have you ever met him?” I asked, “How did you discover it was him?” “Watch the news,” someone chided. “Ok, fair and balanced. We’re looking for evidence. Let’s say we get all our information about Osama from Bill O’Reilly on Fox News. Is Bill biased? “Yea,” a few young Democrats laughed, “He loves Bush.” Thoughtfully, a boy added, “It’s clear what he believes about things - abortion, the war in Iraq, terrorism…” “And that helps you to identify his bias?” “Sure.” “So you know things about him, what he thinks, how he feels…What did O’Reilly have for breakfast this morning?” I asked. “I had two cups of coffee, by the way. Can you think of someone else’s bias you might have more evidence of?” “How about you?” a young Republican erupted. I winked. “You’re so right and you’re almost there.” “You’re saying I’m biased?!” he grimaced, his discovery not relieving his frustration. “I’m saying you know more about yourself than anyone else,” I encouraged. “You have more evidence of your own bias than any other source of information you could ever find. It’s your eyes and your ears you are learning through, and a lifetime worth of experience is how you integrate what you encounter. But that means you’re also the most qualified person in the world to evaluate that bias. Your’s is the only voice on the planet for which you have everything you need to critically analyze. You know where you spent Christmas Eve three years ago and you know what you’re going to do Friday night. Can you tell me the same about Wolf Blitzer?” Bias need not be a four-letter word. Bias is simply the culmination of our experiences and a pre-consolidation of our understanding. No politician, reporter or teacher is exempt from their perspective, and rightly so. Be wary of the person who claims to possess a coin with the world engraved into opposing halves. Listen with caution when a reporter tells the story of another’s life without giving pause to reconcile you to his own. As educators, we retain a remarkable possibility, an exercise in honesty, to teach not facts to be remembered, but perspectives to be questioned. If we are to bestow anything, let it be the facility of our students to doubt us, to disagree with what we know and to discover their own truths. Our endeavor is a risky one. Our method seems absurd and impractical. Our discoveries will be wrought with the discomfort of allowing our beliefs to be challenged and limited by the constraints of our own senses. Rightly so. Sincerely, mark turner |
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| Organizational History | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Research Journalism Initiative was founded in 2002 by Mark Turner, an American human rights observer working in the West Bank. Using human rights activism as a platform for journalism, Turner accompanied emergency relief volunteers providing medicine, food, supplies and other services to Palestinian civilians during periods of military-imposed curfew within the city of Nablus, its nearby refugee camps and villages within the region. Upon returning to the United States, Turner was active in educational efforts including multimedia presentations to high school students about the situation within Nablus and other areas of the West Bank. These regular presentations evolved into a formal cooperation with several secondary schools. In December 2007, Turner returned to the West Bank. His goals were to produce a series of educational documentary video and radio newsreels about the conditions in the West Bank and to conduct live videoconferences between Palestinian university students and American high school students. To provide access to its expanding archive of educational material, RJI developed an interactive website for teachers and students. In February 2007, RJI volunteers filmed and produced a series of short documentary films concerning the Israeli operation, dubbed“Hot Winter,” in the West Bank city of Nablus. During the days-long operation, RJI completed five short films, including an interview with Jihan Tahedush, an eleven-year-old girl used by the Israeli military as a human shield. Several months later, RJI footage of Israeli soldiers again using Palestinian youths as human shields was featured by the Associated Press, Reuters, BBC, al Jazeera, ABC and several other news organizations. New international attention spurred investigations into this illegal practice human rights organizations B’Tselem and Human Rights Watch, as well as an official Israeli military inquiry that resulted in the suspension of an Israeli Defence Forces commander. In April 2007, RJI began a partnership with An Najah National University in Nablus. Through a series of workshops, RJI volunteers began helping Palestinian journalism students present their work and ideas in English and communicate their perspectives directly to Western audiences. The Palestinian group was comprised of twenty students with an equal number of male and female participants who met in regular sessions three times a week. The valuable experience and lessons learned throughout this pilot period helped RJI tailor its strategy to facilitate the development of Palestinian student media. As noted by then Director of the Department of Journalism at An Najah National University, Dr. Samar Shunnar, “RJI’s series of workshops and videoconferences give our students a valuable opportunity to gain work experience, communicate directly with American students and express themselves about their reality.”
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| The Nablus Open Media Center | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Research Journalism Initiative provides tools to teachers and students who are learning about socio-economic, religious and geopolitical conflict by establishing a direct link between students in the United States and students in a region of conflict abroad. The program exposes American youths to elements of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict not usually discussed as a part of the formal educational system and allows them to process their fears, anger and suspicions in an open environment. RJI staff living in the West Bank work with Palestinian students to produce film, radio, photographic and print media. Establishing the Nablus Open Media Center (NOMC) is RJI’s next step in its effort to develop a sustainable, permanent media training and production facility in the West Bank. At the Nablus Open Media Center, experienced Palestinian and international media professionals will facilitate workshops in advanced film, radio and photography production and post-production techniques. Palestinian students at the NOMC will produce documentary films, radio broadcasts and photographic exhibitions that are archived and made available to US educators online. Teachers will be able to download content and discuss themes with their students in an educational, critical environment. American students who have viewed RJI’s educational media commonly encounter questions they had not yet considered. The NOMC will provide them a forum to engage the subjects and producers of these media directly via live, Internet videoconferencing. These dialogues give students the opportunity to evaluate perspectives and bias in an environment where critical thinking, honest connections and personal relationships contribute compassion to global awareness in ways not available through traditional broadcast media. In addition, staff at the NOMC work to improve Palestinian university students’ employment opportunities in an international media environment by providing production equipment, career development resources and assistance to students expanding their portfolios of internationally published media. |
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| National Tour | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
RJI Director of Educational Development, Jennifer Klein, has recently returned from a five week stay in the West Bank city of Nablus. Jennifer spent the summer in Nablus, working with Liz Schnaitter, Mark Turner, Chris Black, Michael Kennedy and Saed Abu-Hijleh on the development of RJI and the Nablus Open Media Center. She taught an exceptionally successful workshop on Poetry of Witness at An-Najah University and had the great pleasure of spending five weeks in this vibrant and poetic community, capped by a widely attended poetry reading. She got to know Mohammad Faraj and Falastine Dwikat, the students whose work has already changed so many students' lives in the U.S., and has returned to the U.S. all the more committed to RJI. If you are interested in her writing from the trip, please see her blog, RJIJennifer.blogspot.com. For more information about Jennifer's work with the Research Journalism Initiative, or to invite Jennifer to speak in your area, please contact: Jennifer Klein , RJI Director of Educational Development |
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| Frequently Asked Questions | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Research Journalism Initiative
