C HRONICLE the harvard-westlake
Editors-in-Chief: Tammer Bagdasarian, Lindsay Wu Digital Managing Editors: Luke Casola, Jessa Glassman Print Managing Editors: Kyra Hudson, Casey Kim, William Seymour
Opinion The Chronicle • Aug. 28, 2019
Los Angeles • Volume 29• Issue 1 • Aug. 28, 2019 • hwchronicle.com
editorial
Presentation Editors: Spencer Klink, Keila McCabe Executive Editors: Jeanine Kim, Will Mallory Multimedia Editor: Annie Beckman News Editor: Luke Schneider Assistant News Editors: Crystal Baik, Hannah Han, Siobhan Harms, Tanisha Gunby, Frank Jiang Opinion Editors: Emma Shapiro, Amelie Zilber Assistant Opinion Editors: Ethan Lachman, Austin Lee Features Editors: Joanna Im, Lauren Nehorai Assistant Features Editors: Lauren Cho, Ruoshan Dong, Marina Nascimento, Chloe Schaeffer A&E Editors: Jordan Murray, Sarah Reiff Assistant A&E Editors: Emma Limor, Celine Park, Khyra Stiner Sports Editors: Zack Schwartz, Eugene Wyman Assistant Sports Editors: Eugean Choi, Lucas Lee, Jaidev Pant, Kyle Reims, Charlie Wang Broadcast Producers: Coleman Katz, Yoohan Ko, Alex Mork Business Manager: Zack Schwartz Community News Engagement Editors: Sarah Healy, Zoe Redlich Events Engagement Editors: Madison Huggins, Anusha Mathur Assistant Business Managers: Lucas Lee, Emma Limor Assistant Broadcast Editors: Alex Amster, Alice He, Kyle Reims Junior Art Director: Evie de Rubertis Senior Staff Writer: Lee Nichols Freelance Artist: Hannah Mittleman Freelance Writer: Allie Landecker Layout Assistants and Staff Writers: Tessa Augsberger, Julian Andreone, Milla Ben-Ezra, Katherine Burry, Elise Chen, Marine Degryse, Quincey Dern, Ava Fattahi, Mia Feizbaksh, Sydney Fener, Justin Goldstein, Jane Hamilton, Benjamin Jacoby, Caroline Jacoby, Keira Jameson, Sandra Koretz, Marissa Lee, Jenna Lewis, Gemma Lippman, Sarah Mittleman, Caitlin Munoz, Jason Morganbesser, Sophia Musante, Liam Razmjoo, Ryan Razmjoo, Andrew Reiter, Amelia Scharff, Joshua Silbermann, Katharine Steers, Melody Tang, Adrienne Usher, Mary White, Maxine Zuriff Broadcast Assistants: Alexis Clancy, Dylan Giovine, Martin Kaplan, Julian Medina, William Moon, Zachary Berg, John Coleman, Ely Dickson, Benjamin Jacoby, Michael Schwartz, Oliver Wyman Advisers: Alexis Arinsburg. Brittany Brahn, Jim Burns, Max Tash The Chronicle is the student newspaper of Harvard-Westlake School. It is published eight times per year. Unsigned editorials represent the majority opinion of the seniors on the Editorial Board. Letters to the editor may be submitted to chronicle@ hw.com or mailed to 3700 Coldwater Canyon, Studio City, CA 91604. Letters must be signed and may be edited for space and to conform to Chronicle style and format. Advertising questions may be directed to Zack Schwartz at zschwartz1@hwemail.com. Publication of an advertisement does not imply endorsement of the product or service by the newspaper or school.
Prioritizing important issues
ILLUSTRATION BY ELISE CHEN
We live in a time when fewer and fewer people wake up Sunday morning to rolledup newspapers, still damp from their sprinklers and delicately folded up on their driveways. Seemingly, technology brings the entire world to our fingertips with Apple News alerts pinging our phones regularly and trivial Daily Mail stories appearing on Snapchat. Though we are constantly connected, it seems as though the general public has become increasingly unaware of what is happening around them, or more specifically, of the non-tabloid fluff: important occurrences worldwide. Recently, a picture of a burning forest circulated the Instagram stories of members in our community. When we first saw this post, many of us thought it was another fire terrorizing our flame-prone state, but the caption that followed shocked us all: the Amazon was burning, and nobody knew. Given that the ecosystem enables the majority of species on earth to live by providing oxygen and acting as a habitat to many animals. In addition, because it is close in proximity to Brazilian cities, it was disconcerting to see that the fire was not receiving any media coverage. After researching further, we discovered that the Brazilian rainforest has been burning at a record rate for over three weeks, according to NASA. It would be an understatement to say we were shocked, and we believe that the rest of the world should be too. The majority of us knew more about the latest update in Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth’s break-up drama than even the basic information about this ecological tragedy, revealing a sad truth about the direction journalism in the contemporary world is headed: the media prioritizes crowd-pleasing articles that maximize clicks over hard-hitting news stories.
The Amazon fire is not the only time a significant story has not received the media coverage it deserves. Last year’s Hurricane Maria proved the deadliest natural disaster on U.S. soil, according to a study published in the “New England Journal of Medicine.” During the same week, ABC canceled their highly advertised reboot of “Roseanne,” due to racist remarks from its lead actress. The fact that this hurricane, which, according to the same study, caused around 4,600 deaths, hid in the shadows of a story about a canceled TV show proves that journalism is drifting further and further away from its core tenets. As students journalists, our duty is to ethically report the truth and bring awareness to issues impacting global communities, not just the things we think will attract readers. Since so many media forums fight to stay alive by pleasing the public, they follow their ratings, which reveal a stronger interest in the newest addition to the Kardashians’ car collection than mass genocides or political protests. Because of our outrage at what we consider to be unjust media coverage of such a pressing issue, our mission this year is to focus on reporting the most important stories in our local community, which we believe our readers deserve to be informed about. We are committed to representing the voices of all of our students in each section, whether that means including more diverse perspectives in our feature articles, printing more guest editorials from members of the community or running more raw opinion stories. We will let nothing stand in the way of earning our audience’s respect by doing what we believe all journalists should: covering the topics people need to hear.