It's almost impossible to understand the significance of most news events without having a grasp of history. Whether you are trying to understand what it means to have military troops patrolling American cities or what the implications are of the federal government shutdown, historical context is important. One of NPR's strengths is embedding historical context in the news of the day. History also shows up as a main character in NPR's journalism, like in the Throughline podcast and a dedicated history section on NPR's website.
When news stories ignore the past, the audience sometimes struggles to fully understand the issue. Because of this, history professors stress the importance of incorporating historical context into news coverage of current events. Doing so enables journalists to bring forth a more complete and informed story, which benefits the audience.
For this installment of the News Literacy Edition of the NPR Public Editor newsletter, we spoke with several NPR journalists and editors to examine the role of history in NPR's journalism. Read on to find out what we learned. — Amaris Castillo
As a reporter on NPR's general assignment desk, Rachel Treisman spends a lot of time connecting history to current events. She studied American history in college and loves to pore over history books and archives. Treisman has revisited past government shutdowns, gathered lessons from past natural disasters, and traced how a dog show became a Thanksgiving tradition. Her specialties are politics, pop culture and what's in the zeitgeist. She often starts her reporting by looking to the past. "I know not everyone thinks that way," she said. "But for me it feels like a pretty natural instinct of, 'Is there a precedent for this, or a parallel? Or is this really so different and unusual that there's nothing we can learn from the past?'"
Some of Treisman's stories use history to answer audience questions about what might happen next. After President Donald Trump announced that he was deploying the D.C. National Guard and taking over the city's police department, Treisman dove into the history behind home rule, the limited self-governance Congress granted to D.C., which allowed Trump to assume emergency control over the Metropolitan Police Department. In an article for All Things Considered, she tracked down both a historian and an author who enriched the audience's understanding of how D.C. has fared under home rule in the past.
"It's definitely the case that D.C. has gone through phases of federal control," she said. "But none of the phases that we've seen so far look like what's happening today."
Carol Ritchie, senior editor for NPR's general assignment desk, told us that the inclusion of historical context helps the NPR audience understand where today's events come from. She pointed to Treisman's recent primer on Bari Weiss, CBS' new editor-in-chief. "If you've never heard of Bari Weiss, we're going to tell you all about her so you can fit her into context with everything that's going on in the world," Ritchie explained. "And you can see why it might matter to you, and why you might care about it."
Anniversaries of big events give reporters a chance to revisit the past, while looking at the current state of affairs. "As reporters, you're always alert to possible anniversary stories, like the landing on the moon," said NPR science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce. "Anniversaries are just an opportunity to pause and reflect. You can review what happens to get you to this point and then where it might go in the future."
Greenfieldboyce and Scott Neuman, a correspondent for NPR's general assignment desk, teamed up this summer for a story about the 100th anniversary of the Scopes trial, a high-profile legal case about a teacher accused of teaching human evolution — against the law — in Tennessee. The segment aired in July on All Things Considered and explored how the trial, orchestrated to be a media spectacle, still resonates today. A biologist quoted in the segment reported that human evolution is taught and mostly accepted in today's schools.
"I think it's useful sometimes to remind people that challenges we face today often have precedence, and that people living a long time ago were grappling with some of the same issues," Greenfieldboyce said. "It just gives us perspective on the whole thing."
Melita Garza, an American journalism historian and associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, stressed the importance of including current events within the context of historical background. In her research, she has seen journalists declare something "unprecedented" when what they reported on was not, in fact, unprecedented. "When journalists don't have access to historical tools, and don't have that impetus to go and check out things," she said, "they are presenting news that is really not informing the public. And nobody wants to do that."
As an NPR general assignment correspondent, Neuman said he does a lot of explainers, many drawing on history. "It's a little bit cliché, but I don't think you can really understand what's going on without understanding what came before," he said. "So in that sense, I think that we do try as much as possible to bring in history."
After ABC suspended Jimmy Kimmel Live last month, NPR cultural correspondent Chloe Veltman did a story that aired on Weekend Edition Sunday tying the fate of Kimmel and Stephen Colbert (whose own late-night show was canceled by CBS) to that of comedians in ancient Greece and Rome. With the help of a professor of classics at Cornell University, Veltman described the history of comedians paying a price for displeasing heads of state. She told us the story idea came from a pitch from a public relations person at Cornell, and it stopped her in her tracks. NPR "may not always be breaking news and the first people to tell the story, but we're very good at providing nuance and context and juicy background on things, and helping people to see things in new ways," she said. "That's one of the reasons I love this job so much."
She then brought the idea to Matteen Mokalla, deputy chief of the Culture Hub. "When she pitched it, I said, 'That sounds really interesting. It sounds very NPR, but in the best possible way,'" he recalled.
It was important for Veltman and Mokalla to connect the dots between Kimmel and Colbert and ancient comedy, but they also thought it was crucial to mention that the founding fathers of the United States thought very highly of ancient thinkers, including Marcus Tullius Cicero, a Roman comedian who died after taking aim at Rome's strongman leader Mark Antony.
"There are always patterns. There are always cycles to look at. It doesn't surprise me, in a sense, that there was something to say about ancient Greek and Roman comedy that would relate to our own moment," Veltman said. "So maybe we can get through this, too. Or watch out, this happened in the past. Let's pay attention, because this is happening now."
Determining the audience's historical knowledge
NPR has to balance providing the right amount of historical context without boring the audience with common information that most people already know.
"That seems to be an issue with journalism writ large," Mokalla said. "We try not to make assumptions. We try to at least have a reference to the historical events or, if it's a written piece, maybe a paragraph or two explaining things. In my sense, we live in a world where people can Google and look things up. That can always be dangerous, of course. I would always prefer someone read something carefully edited."
Both Mokalla and Ritchie told us they include the historical facts they personally find interesting.
Treisman said she generally errs on the side of including more context. When it comes to stories that dive deep into history, Treisman said they seem to land well with members of the NPR audience.
"I think if people are curious, the historical angle might appeal to them if they're trying to really get their hands around a topic that might be hard to digest all at once. This is one way of hopefully doing that." — Amaris Castillo
The Office of the Public Editor is a team. Reporters Amaris Castillo and Nicole Slaughter Graham and copy editor Merrill Perlman make this newsletter possible. Illustrations are by Carlos Carmonamedina. We are still reading all of your messages on social media and from our inbox. As always, keep them coming.
Kelly McBride
NPR Public Editor
Chair, Craig Newmark Center for Ethics & Leadership at the Poynter Institute
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