The line between activism and journalism breaks

 Via Neiman Labs

By Hafsa Maqsood

December 10, 2025

“When journalists around the world are being killed for practicing their freedom of press, journalists have no choice but to become activists.”

There is a growing frustration in the pit of the global journalism industry’s stomach. A frustration that comes from witnessing an entire year of devastating war in the Middle East, massive bloodshed, and ongoing conflicts across the globe where nothing seems to be working. A sickening frustration fed by the reeking hypocrisy of trying to “holding truth to power” in a post-truth world simultaneously bowing to power.

This frustration was born long ago in the stomachs of marginalized members of various diasporas, like myself, coming from histories of ancestral displacement and ravaging colonialism, and it is in part what has motivated them to join media and journalism industries only to be met with walls of supposed objectivity. An “impartiality” that leads to donning a hollow mask of white neutrality discordant with their lived realities.

That frustration will come to a breaking point in 2025 and translate into tearing down the line between activism and journalism that has already been breached, particularly since the 2020 rise of the Black Lives Matter movement.

When democracies are in peril, when international laws meant to hold humanity accountable are being disregarded, when people charged with criminal offenses are leading governments, when journalists around the world are being killed for practicing their freedom of press, journalists have no choice but to become activists.

In 2025, journalists will no longer be told that coming in to work with a “Free Palestine” sticker on their laptops or water bottles is controversial and against guidelines while a “Stand With Ukraine” sticker is praised. Massive refugee and humanitarian displacements that occurred in 2024 will also impact news audiences. As journalists respond to audience demands, this shift will encourage a journalistic focus on human interest and global perspective stories that amplify refugee and diaspora narratives. Diaspora communities will play a crucial role in shaping these narratives through activism and storytelling that will bloom in the 2025 media and journalism industry.

When giving a lecture on media framing at the University of British Columbia in 2022, I held a roundtable attended by many members of Palestinian diaspora in Canada. Every one of them expressed turning away from legacy media in favor of citizen journalism and treating activists as sources for news. What if journalists with training and established platforms could tap into these audiences who are rejecting them in favor of unofficial news sources? What does this rejection mean for the decline of legacy media and journalistic ethics of “truth-telling?”

The answers to these questions, I predict, will come to fruition in 2025. We, as an industry, will have to reevaluate the meaning of “journalistic independence” if we want that sickening pit of frustration to heal. And the demands of a growing diaspora born out of conflict, war, and displacement will be one exceedingly difficult to ignore.

Hafsa Maqsood is a journalist and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Calgary.

Oklahoma State University Museum of Art Exhibit “How We Rebuild” Includes Gallery Photographer Nina Berman

 Via Oklahoma State University Museum of Art

September 23, 2024

The Oklahoma State University Museum of Art presents “How We Rebuild,” opening Sept. 24, 2024. This selection of photographs examines the aftermath of conflict, focusing on what it takes to recover the heartbeat of humanity.

The exhibition draws from 12 years of work created by grant winners and finalists from The Aftermath Project, a nonprofit organization committed to telling the other half of war stories after the conflicts have ended — what it takes for individuals to rebuild destroyed lives and homes, to restore civil societies, and to address the lingering wounds of war while struggling to create new avenues for peace.

Documentary photographer Sara Terry founded The Aftermath Project to impart the importance of “aftermath photography,” yearning for a society that doesn’t forget the people and places that conflict photography covers.

“The end of war does not mean peace. It is simply the end of death and destruction. Every story of war includes a chapter that almost always goes untold — the story of the aftermath, which day by day becomes a prologue of the future,” Terry said.

The photos selected for “How We Rebuild” center and reflect on the human stories and memories that define us. The assembly of images features moments of hope, agency and resilience.

“These photographs serve as a powerful reminder that rebuilding isn’t just physical — it’s emotional and communal, requiring empathy, patience, and shared understanding,” said Liz Roth, OSU Museum of Art interim director.

This exhibition invites audiences to engage with the visual narratives and reflect on the role of the photographs in helping communities heal. “How We Rebuild” is organized by ExhibitsUSA, a program of Mid-America Arts Alliance.

Artists included in the exhibition are Rodrigo Abd, Juan Arredond, Fatemeh Behboudi, Nina Berman, Pep Bonet, Andrea Bruce, Monika Bulaj, Kathryn Cook, Jeremy Dennis, Gwenn Dubourthoumieu, Michelle Frankfurter, Alessandro Gandolfi, Glenna Gordon, Ron Haviv, Jessica Hines, Olga Ingurazova, Andrew Lichtenstein, Luca Locatelli, Davide Monteleone, Saiful Huq Omi, Javad Parsa, Adam Patterson, Joseph Sywenkyj, Sara Terry and Donald Weber.

“How We Rebuild” is on view Sept. 24 through Dec. 20 at the OSU Museum of Art. Learn more at the website.

For more information about The Aftermath Project, visit theaftermathproject.org.

'I became a photographer and not a person'

In case you missed this, a must read, via The Guardian:


'I was gutted that I'd been such a coward': photographers who didn't step in to help

What's it like to witness a mob attack, a starving child or the aftermath of a bomb, and take a photograph instead of stopping to help? As two journalists are under fire for recording rather than intervening in a sex attack in India, we ask people who know


In pictures: the photographers who stood by (contains some graphic images)


One view: "I became a photographer and not a person" ~ Photojournalism as Morally Troubling?


Bill Eppridge, on photographing Robert F. Kenedy after being shot: In 1968 while five feet in front of his subject and friend, Robert F. Kennedy lay on the floor of the kitchen of Los Angeles's Ambassador Hotel, mortally wounded by a bullet fired by Sirhan B. Sirhan. Eppridge went into the crowd and began holding people back, but every once in a while, he would reach down and click his camera. “Everything I saw and everything I heard, it's still there inside my head, like a slow-motion movie," photojournalist Bill Eppridge has said of that night—June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. “When the gunshots went off in that kitchen...I realized what it was. I had been in riots and wars and revolutions, and I knew the sound of gunfire, especially the sound of gunfire coming at me. There were eight shots, I counted them. It went through my mind not to take the picture, but this was history…I made three frames: the first one was totally out of focus; the second was in focus, it was pretty good, the busboy is looking down at him; and the third one, with the busboy looking up as if he were saying, 'Somebody help".


Eddie Adams, on the Vietnam Execution photograph:  'I just followed the three of them as they walked towards us, making an occasional picture. When they were close - maybe five feet away - the soldiers stopped and backed away. I saw a man walk into my camera viewfinder from the left. He took a pistol out of his holster and raised it. I had no idea he would shoot. It was common to hold a pistol to the head of prisoners during questioning. So I prepared to make that picture - the threat, the interrogation. But it didn't happen. The man just pulled a pistol out of his holster, raised it to the VC's head and shot him in the temple. I made a picture at the same time. The prisoner fell to the pavement, blood gushing." "