Sophia University Junior College Division Faculty Journal
第 45 号, 2024, 55-67

Empathy in Journalism: A Prescriptive
Construct Takes Shape
Chris Oliver
Abstract
This article looks at the manner in which empathy has been taken up in recent
years as an explicit focus of journalistic discourse and practice. I consider how empathy
is defined in journalism, how it is invested with value in journalistic circles, and how
it is being used to shape journalistic practice. My concern is with how empathy serves
as a prescriptive construct in journalism, serving to guide discussions about the natureof journalistic work and how best to carry it out. Toward this end, I examine a range of
publications aimed primarily at professional journalists and journalists in training. My
review of this material suggests that while there is a diversity of views about why andhow empathy is important in journalistic work, advocates of empathy tend to emphasize
the value of empathy in terms of eliciting information from sources and the potential
influences on audiences of journalistic work, and much less so the precise craft of writingor otherwise producing journalistic reports or stories.

Introduction
Empathy is one of the greatest gifts a journalist can have. If you come by itnaturally, you can actually feel what your subject is feeling, and that can bea painful burden sometimes. But even if you have to develop the empathetic
wavelength, it not only makes the person you’re interviewing feel understood,
it elevates your writing. (Howard, 2017)
The above words, appearing in an article on empathy and journalism at Nieman
Storyboard, a website hosted by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard
University, encapsulate many of the key stands of thought about the place of empathy
in contemporary journalism: in apparent contrast to the longstanding ethic ofjournalistic objectivity, empathy is now regarded as a professional virtue for journalists;
it is something that can be learned and cultivated; it brings journalists closer to theindividuals they interview as sources; and it has a positive impact on their works that─ 55 ─

Chris Oliver

are shared with audiences.
This appears to represent a fairly recent turn in journalistic thinking. Just a little
over a decade ago, it could be said that empathy has “little place in the familiar rhetoric
about journalism” (Schudson, 2013, p. 37), and a few years later, that “empathy has
been a neglected concept. It has been neither addressed in journalistic work practice nor
in relation to the debate about emotions in journalism” (Glück, 2016, p. 894). But fromaround the time when these very views were published, there has been a significant
upswelling of interest in and discourse about empathy in journalism, with a growing
number of professional journalists and teachers of journalism ruminating about theplace of empathy. In a published discussion between two editors at a small regional
newspaper, for instance, one stated: “We’re kind of at a crossroads where journalists
are really figuring out what it means to be a modern journalist and redefining andredeveloping that concept. And, empathetic journalism is … a big part of the overall
conversation of what it means to be a journalist” (Grace & Neville, 2023). Many in thefield have been advocating a more explicitly central role for empathy in journalistic
practice.
This movement within journalism is perhaps not surprising given the more
broadly societal attention paid to empathy over roughly the last two decades as well asan accompanying uptick in scholarly research on empathy. Research on empathy has
been multidisciplinary, spanning disciplines ranging from psychology to philosophy toanthropology to biology. Empathy has likewise become a focal point in a wide rangeof spheres of activity including early childhood education, business management,
healthcare, and even museum management. In online publications aimed at generalaudiences in recent years, empathy has typically been characterized as a societal
good and its lack as a moral failing (C. Oliver, 2018). Seen in this broader context,
the increasing attention to empathy in journalistic circles would appear to be one
contributing element of the way in which empathy—the term and concept itself, and anarray of practices surrounding it—has risen in importance more generally.
In the present article, my aim is to elucidate the key contours of the recent
journalistic concern with empathy, including how empathy is defined in journalism, how
it is invested with value, and how it informs journalistic practice. Most of all, I am here
concerned with how empathy serves as a prescriptive construct in journalism, working
not merely as a vehicle with which journalists may reflect upon or scrutinize publishedarticles or other journalistic output, but as an ideational device that orients journalistic
practice in a number of ways. Toward this end, I examine a range of publications

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Empathy in Journalism: A Prescriptive Construct Takes Shape

aimed primarily at professional journalists and journalists in training, and to a lesser
extent scholars of journalism. My review of this material suggests that while there
is a diversity of views about why and how empathy is important in journalistic work,
advocates of empathy overall emphasize the value of empathy in terms of approachingand eliciting information from sources, and much less so address the precise craft ofwriting or otherwise producing journalistic works.
Given that the journalistic discourse examined herein is, by and large, in fact not
focused on the nitty-gritty details of what empathetic journalistic works actually look
like in their published or broadcast forms, the discussion that follows is likewise notaimed at analyzing specific examples of empathetic journalistic writing or reporting(for such analysis, see C. Oliver, 2022). While journalistic work is of course ultimately
geared toward getting reports or stories out to audiences, journalistic practice involves
the perspectives from which journalists envision a story even before setting out to collectinformation on it, identifying the kinds of individuals to seek out as sources, and how
to approach and talk with those people so as to elicit insightful or otherwise valuable
responses from them. Much of the journalistic discourse on empathy is concerned withsuch facets of practice that precede the actual writing or producing of a report or story.

Conceptual orientation
As noted above, in this article I take up empathy as a prescriptive construct, in
this case a term and concept that has come to be invested with significance and notionsof utility that go beyond the more “neutral” academic definitions of the term. The
relatively reader-friendly APA Dictionary of Psychology, for instance, defines empathy
as “understanding a person from their frame of reference rather than one’s own, or
vicariously experiencing that person’s feelings, perceptions, and thoughts. Empathy does
not, of itself, entail motivation to be of assistance, although it may turn into sympathy
or personal distress, which may result in action” (Empathy, 2023). The Encyclopediaof Human Behavior notes that in the academic psychological literature, empathy
has been taken to “encompass processes that are responsible for, or that result from,(1) understanding what another person is thinking and feeling; (2) a broad range ofperceptual, cognitive, and affective responses to negative and positive events in the livesof others; or (3) both” (Stocks & Lishner, 2012, p. 32).
While journalistic discourse on empathy sometimes draws upon such definitions,
it typically uses them in service to ascribed valuations of an empathetic approach tojournalism, thereby loading empathy with additional meaning. In the process, empathy─ 57 ─

Chris Oliver

becomes not merely a descriptive term but a prescriptive one as well. It is similar
to what has been discussed in anthropological literature as linguistic ideology orideology of language, whereby features of a given language—such as English gendered
pronouns (Silverstein, 1985) or Japanese “women’s language” (Inoue, 2006)—come to beideologically invested with meanings, making them focal points of societal discourse, andin some cases leading to the transformation or even regimentation of linguistic practice.
Explicit talk about the place of empathy in journalism likewise has the capacity to takeon a metadiscursive role, helping to galvanize views in journalistic circles about what
empathy is, why it is important, and how it should figure into the conduct of journalistic
practice.

Methodological issues
For this article, I examined several dozen English-language publications addressing
empathy in journalism or closely related matters, such as the place of emotion injournalistic reporting. The vast majority of these materials are aimed at a target
readership consisting of professional journalists, students and teachers of journalism,
and to an extent scholars of journalism. These include articles and essays posted on
websites geared toward journalists such as the aforementioned Nieman Storyboard andColumbia Journalism Review, announcements of and reports on workshops and otherprofessional-development events hosted by organizations such as the Poynter Institutefor Media Studies, blog-style postings written by professional journalists, articles inacademic journals devoted to journalism, and books on journalism put out by academic
publishers.
These materials were identified primarily through online searches, and while it
was not the author’s intent to locate materials originating specifically from the U.S., themajority of the materials used ended up being from journalists or organizations locatedin the U.S. There are various reasons why this might be the case, with one possibility
being that the fairly recent concern with empathy—and by extension emotion—in
journalism may be a particularly American one. Just as the centrality assigned toobjectivity in journalism can be characterized as “the norm that historically and still
today distinguishes U.S. journalism from the dominant model of continental European
journalism” (Schudson, 2001, p. 149), it could likewise be true that against the backdropof objectivity, the concern with empathy in journalism varies regionally rather thanbeing common globally among journalists working in English. It is beyond the scope of
this article to address this issue more fully, and the conclusions drawn herein must be─ 58 ─

Empathy in Journalism: A Prescriptive Construct Takes Shaperead with that limitation in mind.

Definitions of empathy
In the journalistic literature on empathy, empathy is defined in different ways,
and in some cases there are conflicting views on what kinds or aspects of empathy aresuitable for journalistic work. Harland (2008) offers a general, straightforward view of
empathy as “the understanding and recognition of another’s feelings,” a definition thatframes empathy in terms of emotional sensitivity. Glück (2016, p. 894) provides a morenuanced view: “Empathy is generally seen not as an emotion per se, but closely tied toemotions. It contributes essentially to the perception of emotions in others while notnecessarily leading to a sharing of those emotional states.” Glück, like some others, goeson to note that empathy is to be differentiated from related concepts such as sympathy,
pity, and compassion, all of which suggest an attitudinal stance toward another person
whereas empathy by itself does not involve such judgment. Mendonsa (2017) puts it
more bluntly in stating that empathy, for journalists, “doesn’t mean getting sucked inor becoming an activist. Empathy is a tool that allows for connection with other humanbeings. It is a portal for experience ... not for absorption.”
Some make a further distinction between different types of aspects of empathy.
Bradshaw, for instance, draws upon a distinction often made in the psychologicalliterature between cognitive empathy and affective empathy: “Empathy—specificallycognitive empathy—is the ability to imagine what it is like to be in someone else’s shoes”(Bradshaw, 2020, italics in original). The difference between these two types of empathy
is important, he states, because “it is possible to imagine what it is like to be a particularperson (cognitive empathy), including criminals and corrupt officials, without feelingsorry for them (sympathy) or feeling the same way (emotional empathy)” (Bradshaw,2020). Along similar lines, Kessler (2022) is careful to point out that empathy does
not mean softness, or agreeing with someone, or feeling an emotional bond with them;instead, it is “the ability—or I would say the ongoing challenge—to try to understandanother person’s point of view,” adding that, for journalists, it is “more helpful to ourwork to think of empathy as either a cognitive response or an emotional response.”
Bui (2018c) utilizes a tripartite view of empathy, consisting of cognitive empathy,“the ability to see the world through another person’s perspective;” affective empathy,“physically and emotionally experiencing another person’s emotions;” and behavioral
empathy, “the verbal and nonverbal communication that indicates someone understands
another person or her perspective” (see also Archer & Finger, 2018). Whereas Bradshaw,─ 59 ─

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as noted above, sees cognitive empathy as the essence of what it is to imagine being
in someone else’s shoes, and Kessler puts cognitive and affective empathy on an equal
footing, Bui suggests that affective empathy is likely to make journalists uncomfortable
as it may be a sign that they have gotten too emotionally close to their subjects (Bui,
2018c).

The value and enactment of empathy
That such definitions of empathy have been so carefully articulated in journalistic
discourse, particularly in non-academic publications, suggests the backdrop against
which journalists have been advocating a more central place for empathy in journalistic
work. At least in the American context, this may be best understood in terms of thelongstanding value of objectivity in journalism and its eschewal of emotion. The
privileging of objectivity, says Schudson, “guides journalists to separate facts fromvalues and to report only the facts. Objective reporting is supposed to be cool, rather
than emotional, in tone” (2001, p. 150), lest journalists suggest that their reporting isslanted or commentary-laden. Thomas likewise states, “Emotion is rarely seen as apositive thing in journalism; it has tended to be associated with sensationalism andpandering, threatening the impartiality norm to which many journalists feel beholden”(Thomas, 2021, p. 80). Calling for empathy in journalism is thus a fraught proposition,says Smith-Rodden, as “some suggest it flies in the face of revered values of objectivity”(Smith-Rodden, 2019, p. 77). While the proscription against emotion in journalism
certainly may not be universal (see Glück, 2016), those advocating a more empathetic
approach to journalism have treaded carefully in delineating what empathy does, anddoes not, mean.
What is empathetic journalism, then? For some, it represents a commitment torecognizing the humanity of the people affected by the stories that they report on. As
one journalism professor put it:“I’m a good journalist when I can empathize, when I can truly grasp thepredicament of my subjects. And if I’m blind to that, then I’m failing in some
way as a journalist,” he says. “It’s critical for journalists never to lose sightof their own humanity and that means understanding and empathizing andconnecting on a human level, not just as instruments of stories.” (Patrick Lee
Plaisance, quoted in Harland, 2008)─ 60 ─

Empathy in Journalism: A Prescriptive Construct Takes Shape

While connecting with others “on a human level” is perhaps something that people fromall walks of life, regardless of their occupation, might do well to aspire to, the materials
I examined suggest a number of specific ways in which empathy is thought to be of value
to journalism in particular.
One is that, at the stage where a journalist is acquiring information for a story they
are working on, an empathetic stance can help a journalist approach sources to elicit
talk from them. This is especially true with sources whose background or life condition isvery different from that of the journalist— in relation to factors such as race, ethnicity,social class, gender, and combinations thereof—and when the journalist has little orno first-hand experience of the problems faced by the very people whom the journalist
would like to interview. In the U.S., a middle-class, white journalist, for instance, may
have a hard time connecting with Black, lower-class people and may even be viewed bythem with suspicion. Smith-Rodden recounts one such case, where a budding journalist
was met with “hours of rejection, evasion, and door-slams” before finally finding someone
who would talk with her (Smith-Rodden, 2019, p. 76). While the slamming of doors
is rather extreme, in other cases journalists may find sources—particularly those inpositions of vulnerability—to be on guard and reluctant to talk openly.
Empathy is thus envisioned as an important tool to help journalists deal with the
problem of disconnect between journalists and their sources. In this sense, rather thanlooking at empathy as a fundamental human capacity, it is regarded more as somethingthat “needs to be performed to accomplish a work task” (Glück, 2016, p. 895). In thisvein, a webinar conducted by a Washington Post journalist offered participants practicaladvice about how to use empathy “to connect with sources whose life experiences might
differ from yours” (“Bring Empathy to Your Reporting to Cultivate Sources,” 2020).
According to Bradshaw, an empathetic approach can help prod a journalist to try tounderstand the suspicions that a person may hold toward the journalist, not the least ofwhich being that the journalist may act morally detached and end up twisting whatever
the person says in order “to fit a story that’s already written in his or her mind”(Bradshaw, 2020). Utilizing empathy at this information-gathering stage of journalistic
work thus involves demonstrating sensitivity and establishing trust (cf. Marta, 2019).
During an interview, an empathetic approach can involve simple behavioral
techniques “like putting your pen down to let someone cry or looking into his eyes as hespeaks” (Bui, 2018c) or purposely “using verbal and nonverbal communication—noddingor leaning in, restating what people say—that shows they’re working to understand theother person’s perspective” (Keith Woods cited in Bui, 2018b, see also 2018a). Beyond─ 61 ─

Chris Oliver

such simple performative displays of empathetic behavior, Kessler (2022) emphasizes
above all else listening. While journalists of course conduct their own research before
going out to meet and talk with sources, an empathetic approach to listening, says
Kessler, means looking at those individuals as the experts about what it is they are
discussing and, in conjunction with this recognition, relinquishing control over where
the conversation goes:
But, perhaps more important, our understanding, our cognitive empathy, restson the often ignored skill of listening, on giving others the opportunity to takethe conversation where they want to take it, not where we want to direct it. We
can, in short, shut up. Silence is a very powerful tool—not stony silence, nota temporary and uncomfortable pause, but inquisitive and inviting silence, asilence that beckons. (Kessler, 2022)
Such listening, as portrayed by Kessler, allows the person to say, from their own
perspective, what they think is important and how they themselves frame their thinking
about the issue at hand, rather than merely responding in a much more restrictive
manner to questions posed by the journalist and framed by the journalist’s perspective(see also Rummler, 2021).
A second value attributed to empathy lies in the ability of empathetic journalism
to influence audiences. In the simplest sense, journalism that embraces an empathetic
approach not only in the gathering of information from sources but also in representing
those individuals in news articles or other journalistic works can, if done well, contributeto audience engagement. Journalistic works that include rich, nuanced depictions ofindividuals can at times vicariously transport readers or viewers into the story, whereby
one becomes “so engaged in a story that it feels as if you inhabit that space and time,and feeling so connected to the characters that their joys and sorrows spark a physicalreaction in you” (M. B. Oliver et al., 2012; see also Sillesen et al., 2015). In reportingon tragedy, says Mendonsa, “the best journalists I know try to climb down into thatsituation and use their gifts of empathy to allow raw emotion to channel throughthem. It’s not easy and not always pleasant but it leads to the type of understanding
and soulful storytelling that not only draws viewers in but keeps them there with you,soaking in the information as they invest in the story” (Mendonsa, 2017).
Beyond drawing in and perhaps building up an audience, empathetic journalistic
works are also seen as having the ability to draw audiences closer to the people depicted.

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Empathy in Journalism: A Prescriptive Construct Takes Shape

Empathetic journalism, it is said, can help journalists move past judgmental cliches andstereotypes associated with certain segments of the population (e.g., “welfare cheats,”“apathetic youth,” and “illegal immigrants”), resulting in a deeper understandingof an issue and more nuanced representations of the people involved in or affectedby it (see Bradshaw, 2020). Empathy in journalism thus serves as “a path to propercomprehension of human events” (Smith-Rodden, 2019, p. 74). Particularly when it
comes to marginalized groups in society, empathetic journalism works to humanize
members of those groups, making it easier for others in society to identify with them,and in effect inviting the audiences of journalistic works to empathize with them (Varma,2020). In a discussion of the place of social empathy in journalistic accounts of poverty,
Thomas states that socially empathetic journalism works to “reduce the emotional
distance between people of different social circumstances” and to thereby expand
people’s capacity to imagine the lives of those in circumstances different from their own(Thomas, 2021, p. 79).
Thus, rather than empathy in journalism being seen solely as a tool for journalists
to utilize for obtaining information from sources, it is also envisioned as a vehicle fordrawing different segments of society closer to one another. And this, in turn, is linked
to various potential benefits for society: changing societal attitudes toward stigmatizedgroups (M. B. Oliver et al., 2012), fostering a stronger sense of shared humanity and amore compassionate citizenry (Thomas, 2021), and helping ensure that people recognize
those unlike themselves as fellow members of a democratic society (Schudson, 2013).
Even while definitions of empathy in the journalistic literature explicitly mark it off
as distinct from notions such as sympathy and compassion, which suggest feelings andconcern for others, the idea of journalistic empathy at the same time would appear to beinfused with a strong sense of social morality.

Conclusion
One surprising finding from my examination of the various journalistic materials
I collected for this article is that while, overall, they devote significant attention to thedefinition of empathy, the place of empathy in journalism with respect to collecting
information, and the value of empathetic works in terms of how they may influenceaudiences, very few addressed the matter of exactly how journalists should craft
empathetic works using the information collected or what those works should actually
look like. It is obvious that some subject matter is more suited to empathetic reporting
than other subject matter: e.g., there is little room for empathy in a routine report on the─ 63 ─

Chris Oliver

financial markets (Glück, 2016). Blank-Libra (2017) astutely analyzes some examplesof empathetic and non-empathetic literary journalism, a genre of journalistic writingthat goes beyond the straightforward, generic telling of facts and allows for creativity
in telling a news “story.” Schudson (2013) hints that good empathetic journalism,
unlike the type of “human interest” stories where a profile of an interesting or unusual
individual would stand by itself as the story (e.g. Lopez & Orr, 2017), should show how
the person’s experiences are connected to a broader issue. But beyond this, the articles
I reviewed had little specific to say about how empathy is to be manifest in publishedor aired journalistic work. This could well be, in part, because such discussion may bebetter suited to hands-on instructional settings such as journalism school classes andprofessional workshops. Such venues certainly exist, such as a “Journalism of Empathy”
class taught at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University (Journalismof Empathy, 2023), but were beyond the scope of the present article.
A related issue, finally, is whether the emergence of empathy as a prescriptive
construct in journalism is heading in the direction of a kind of standardization, withcertain notions of and beliefs related to empathy, and well as sets of practices related
to the enactment of empathy, over time becoming predominant, taught and followedwith a high degree of uniformity by journalists in a wide variety of contexts. Similar
movements regarding empathy appear to be taking shape in other spheres of practice.
The Roots of Empathy program, for instance, which got its start in Canada in the 1990s,
follows what is now a well-established method to teach empathy skills to children
aged 5-13; today, the program is being used in schools and other institutions in a
number of other countries as well (Roots of Empathy, n.d.). Likewise, empathy skills
are increasingly being taught to doctors and others in patient-oriented positions in thehealthcare industry (e.g., Wündrich et al., 2017). Whether journalism will move further
in this direction, and what implications this may have for journalism itself and society
more generally, remains to be seen.

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