- [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.

(upbeat music) (crowd chatting) (bell ringing) - Well, good afternoon everybody.

My name is Tom Lucchesi.

I'm a partner at the law firm of Baker and Hostetler and people say I look better in a mask, but I'm taking it off.

(crowd chuckling) We are pleased to be here today to support the City Club and to sponsor this annual high school debate in honor of our late partner, Pat Jordan.

I'm gonna talk a little bit about Pat in a minute, but I just wanted to thank everybody for attending.

It's great to be back in person.

This is like my third big lunch event since the restrictions have been lifted.

We've got two podiums here and I've now contaminated this podium.

So I'll move over here and just make sure everything's equal and I'm not showing any favorites, I'm gonna contaminate Jeremy's podium as well.

COVID free, COVID free.

So Baker has been involved with the City Club since the City Club's inception in 1912.

In fact, our founding partner, Newton D. Baker, served on the very first, or spoke at the very first forum of the City Club.

Pat Jordan was a partner at Baker and Hostetler.

He grew up in Cleveland, an Irish Westside family.

He died in 1995 at the age of 37, leaving behind his wife, who I personally believe was one of the most beautiful people in the world, Sharon Sobel Jordan, she's here with us.

(crowd applauds) And a young daughter, his daughter Ann, who couldn't be with us today.

I'd like Pat's brother, who's here with us today, Tom Jordan to stand up and just everybody take a look at Tom, that's kind of what Pat would look like.

(crowd applauds) The difference is that that Pat had about 60 pounds on Tom and he had a gap in his teeth, which was actually very endearing.

Pat was a championship debater.

In addition, you know, before he became a lawyer, he was a championship debater from San Ignatius High School.

He was truly larger than life.

Although he has been dead since 1995, I don't think for those of us that knew Pat, I can honestly say not a day goes by when we don't have some memory of Pat.

He was an incredible person to be around.

He was charismatic, he was funny.

He was mean, I mean, he could be mean, but it was all in good humor.

He loved to argue and we would argue endlessly.

There was a group of us, his best friend, Jim Wooley is here, John Parker, one of my partners, all good friends.

Our families grew up together over the years.

Pat would argue about everything.

And for you high school students in here, arguing was different back in the eighties, we didn't have a source to go to to resolve arguments.

We couldn't call Siri or ask Google.

So we just debated and it was really just force of personality and endurance.

And Pat had more or endurance than most.

You could love him, you could hate him during the negotiations, but at the end of the day, you loved him, and that's something that I think is an important lesson for today.

It's always been an important lesson and I've always stressed it, but, and I don't wanna get political, but since the Trump era, and since, you know, the world events over the last five or six years, people have lost the ability to meet in the middle.

They've lost the ability to talk to each other, to listen to the other side's argument and to respond appropriately.

People are very much into name calling and villainizing the other side.

And you guys, hopefully we won't have any name calling up here, but at the end of the day, you you're gonna have different points of view.

You're gonna listen to the other side, you're gonna respond logically, and you're going to, you know, try to try to convince everyone that you're right.

And that's what a debate should be, and these are very life altering skills.

These are skills you will take with you the rest of your life.

And these are skills that frankly are essential to a democracy: freedom of speech, freedom of expression, being free to express your ideas and having the press record it all are the hallmarks and the very foundation of a democracy.

And whenever a dictator takes over, those are the first three or four things they try to eliminate, so that just shows you how essential they are.

So while you guys promote democracy today, they're doing more than just arguing.

You're promoting the American way of life.

So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Max Zuckerman from Solon High School, who will introduce the debaters and the topic.

Right?

Are you Max?

Come on up Max.

(crowd applauds) - On behalf of everyone here today, I would like to extend my warmest thanks to the City Club of Cleveland for hosting today's debate.

I would also like to thank BakerHostetler for their continued support of this round every year, and for allowing us debaters to show what we do every week.

I think I speak for pretty much everyone in this room when I say that it really gives me hope for the future when we know that there are still organizations out there that support such an educational activity.

Today, we'll be watching a Lincoln Douglas debate, a debate format in which two debaters argue over two opposing sides of a specific resolution.

This style of debate focuses on not just real world issues, but also their philosophical impact.

Each debater will offer a value, something that they argue is the most important thing we ought to consider.

Then both debaters will offer a value criterion, metrics used to determine when we meet said value.

Finally, each debater will bring it all back down to the real world with their contentions, arguments that explain how real world implications relate to the philosophical values that they bring up.

Today, each debater to my right and left will be debating over the following topic: resolved in a democracy, a free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy.

Judging today's debate are Mr. Haig from Hathaway Brown, Mrs. Lashley from Chagrin Falls and Mr. Artis Arnold from the City Club board of directors.

I would like to thank each of you here for coming and spending your time today to help make this debate possible.

Today, we have the pleasure of seeing Jeremy Battle from University School debate Ella Jewell from Hawken School.

both of these debaters have to qualify to the national level tournament to get here.

Having debated both of them, I can confidently say that not only are they both excellent debaters, but they're also excellent people.

I don't think I've ever met high schoolers as humble, and frankly, as successful as these two individuals.

It's people like Jeremy and Ella, Mr. Haig and Mrs. Lashley that make this activity so great.

Looking at the specific rules of Lincoln Douglas, each debater has the same total speaking time, 13 minutes.

The affirmative, however, has the advantage of speaking both first and last while the negative has the advantage of having longer individual speech times.

Additionally, each debater will cross-examine the other, asking questions about their case.

Finally, I would like to thank the debate community at large.

Competitors, thank you for making this activity so valuable.

Judges, thank you for making this activity happen.

And coaches, thank you for making this activity as educational as it is.

With that, I wish both debaters the best of luck.

Thank you.

(crowd applauds) - Hello and welcome to the City Club of Cleveland for the High School Debate Championship.

We are about to get underway with the debate.

Our debaters are now taking their places and the debate is about to begin.

- All right, is everyone ready?

All right.

Then in that case, I have six minutes and I will begin now.

I affirm the resolution resolved.

In a democracy, a free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy.

If a country has a free press, it goes the media are free to report the news without being controlled by governments.

To clarify the round, I provide the following definitions.

First is prioritized defined by Cambridge University as to decide which group of things are most important, you denote them first.

Second is objective, which is defined as not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and presenting facts.

Third is advocacy, defined as public support for idea, plan or way of doing something.

The value of the round will be democracy.

All democracies hold two key values, freedom and equality.

The value of equality is present to the principle of which have the ability to influence governance.

When these two come into conflict in a democratic society, equality must be prioritized above oligarchy.

Liberty without equality devalues the freedoms of those who lack resources such as adequate income or healthcare.

Without equality of liberty, freedom becomes of privilege of a few rather a right of the whole, antithetical to principles of broad distributed power and democracy.

Thus, my position is promoting equal opportunity.

This links of democracy for two reasons.

First we value democracy because it gives every person equal share and power, regardless of position at birth.

Second, because of positive liberties.

My freedom to act as I wish, is useless for lack the resources to choose my actions.

The impoverished may lack, for example, the resources to publish journalism, making their right to freedom press worthless.

Liberty, therefore, is useless without the equal opportunities and resources to pursue one's choices.

Connection one is under reporting marginalized communities.

It's the job way free press to make sure citizens are aware of current affairs and events so they can participate in the communities by engaging with democratic systems.

When advocacy is emphasized over objectivity in the media, it threatens the integrity of journalism.

According to Ezra Klein of the New York Times, "focusing advocacy doesn't encourage those who seek to improve function of democracy, but instead incentivizes advocacy for the wrong reasons."

Leo Pharaohs of the Data Science Institute in Chile explains that outlets mainly can be see as a business.

Thus they target sectors of population with a higher purchasing power.

Advertising is a prominent source of income for news outlets, playing an important role in maintaining the hegemony of top news companies in the free markets.

By target those with the highest income, advocacy in journalism fails to inform the marginalized, abandoning one of the primary functions of the free press.

Christine Schmidt of Neman Lab explains that certain than other communities do.

And this is only getting worse.

A good example is parenting.

Despite plentiful information on parenting, it's aimed primarily at people with economic resources.

This leads out poor families who need this information the most.

Stephanie McKee of the University of Richmond finds that individuals with lower socioeconomic status are less engaged than others because they often lack the resources, free time or civic skills to participate at the same degree.

Erin Reed of McMaster University explains that journalism is an inherently difficult and grueling field to enter, requiring strange work hours and general job instability.

Partisan news perpetuates this by worsening the education divide, failing to employ the marginalized.

Low socioeconomic status makes an already demanding industry impossible to access, as lack of education entrenches these barriers and poverty dissuades those with education from joining an industry with low job insecurity, sorry, high job insecurity.

As the news industry consolidates, attention to frivolous issues and luxury products increases.

John Howard explains that crime accounts for more media stories than any other kind of news, because of the low cost of production and high public interest.

This media coverage overlooks discussion of social context that contributes to criminal actions.

Because this news accounts for a disproportionate amount of coverage to the least well off, the negative stigmatizes the oppressed as violence and criminal.

It is inconsistent with democratic values for only a few people to have input in a democracy.

Without prioritizing objectivity, advocacy ignores the least well off, spreading harmful narratives about minorities and failing to give them the information necessary to participate in democratic systems like the free press.

Connection two is biased coverage of war.

Recently in the midst of the Russian and Ukrainian conflict, a senior correspondent for CBS news said that Ukraine isn't a place like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades, instead calling it "a relatively civilized, relatively European city, where you wouldn't expect that or hope that it's going to happen."

Another reporter of BBC News explained that the conflict of Russia and Ukraine was very emotional because of the fact that it involved European people with blue eyes and blonde hair being killed.

As explained by a Janice Jesaria Forbes, this language makes viewers believe that war and conflicts are permissible for people in the global south.

Prioritizing objectivity in reporting forces the media to acknowledge the many conflicts concerning diverse people around the world.

Amidst the ongoing war in Ukraine, There's been a lack of coverage highlighting the conflict between the government to Ethiopia and the forces in the Tigray region.

This conflict has continued in November 2020, and thousands of people have died, and more than 3000 living in famine.

In the west African country of Cameroon, there is currently a civil war taking place that has displaced over a million people.

The Anglophone crisis has been ongoing since 2016 and has displaced over a million people and Simon Distal of the Guardian further explains that these situations are far from unique, as Nigeria, Chad and the South African Republic are all home to numerous other under reported conflicts.

The rhetoric that does exist about these conflicts ultimately serves to other these people.

Professor Stephen Graham of the Newcastle University provides the example of the US invasion of Iraq, where a Marine Colonel Brandle told the BBC before the second assault that the enemy has got a face.

He's called Satan and he lives in Fallujah.

And again it empowers journalists to justify and perpetuate these conflicts.

Graham furthers "this construction of people as inhuman barbarians, that who understand nothing but force and the cities that reside in as labyrinths demanding massive military assaults, leads to the othering of these people and ultimately to these cities and their inhabitants being cast out beyond any philosophical, legal or humanitarian definitions of mankind."

Civilian inhabitants in cities are thus denied the protection of international law.

Their piling up bodies remain unworthy, largely invisible, unrecorded and unrecounted.

Thus, negating not only ignores the lives of these people, but also perpetuates violence against them.

So if you care at all about marginalized people or people in the global south, you ought to affirm, and for these reasons I affirm.

I stand ready for cross, thank you.

- If everyone is ready for cross?

Then let's begin.

Would you say that the end goal of a democracy is focused on the people?

- [Jeremy] Sure.

- Would you say that because we're in a democracy and because people deserve human rights that the democratic government ought to protect them?

- Protect people's rights?

- Yes.

- Sure.

- All right.

So when we look to help people, especially in a democratic society, should we look to the middle class, or like you said, the least well off?

- I mean, ultimately we should look to everyone, but with the least well off, like they need to be prioritized is what I'm saying.

- All right.

So would you say that a lot of news media is online nowadays or television?

- Sure.

- All right.

Are you making media nonprofit or removing media advertising in your world?

- No, but what I'm saying is that essentially, obviously in either world, there's going to be some level of profit incentive, but in the negative you allow this profit incentive to manifest in a very harmful way that ultimately caters like exclusively to high income individuals.

- Okay.

But would you say that advertisements such as those for products are part of the news cycle or that's just an add on of the capitalist system of media?

- Well, my case isn't just about advertisements for profits it's specifically about like advertising for news, like specifically where it is being sent, who's it's being sent to.

- Could you clarify, are you talking about the reach of media to people or what the media is focusing on?

- Okay, so they're tied, right?

So ultimately a ton of news outlets are specifically going out of their way to give news to people who are like high income or more well off than they're also writing articles specifically about these high income individuals and leaving marginalized people behind.

- All right, well, you talk about parenting specifically.

- Sure.

- Are you talking about media focusing on how like we're painting people as bad parents because they're poor or are we talking about advertising?

Okay, can you explain?

- So specifically when articles are about like guiding, like guiding parents, for instance, like what you should do as a parent, a lot of them are targeted specifically at these high income individuals and they don't have information that's like for marginalized individuals.

- Sure, but how are you solving that by removing advocacy in the media?

- Because ultimately like advocacy manifests in this, because it's like specifically spreading messages about parenting, right?

The media only tells you that... - If you want to portray more facts and less advocacy or planning for something, why would we have this parenting advice in the first place if it's prescribing action?

- Again, like the key here is that essentially what the media is doing in the parenting example is it's spreading this narrative that like a good parent is like upper middle class and they do all these things and they buy all of these things and make these things for their kids.

- So would you agree that Russia and America have had a tense relationship ever since the Cold War?

- Sure.

- What percentage of American GDP or trade does Cameroon, Nigeria or any of the other countries you mentioned make up?

- I don't have that statistic on hand.

- All right, that's marginal time left for cross examination.

I'm going to run about two minutes of prep and then we can continue.

- Time starts when I start working.

Now.

- This is the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland.

Thank you all for being here.

I'm Nick Castele.

I am a senior reporter at Ideastream Public Media.

I am joined here by Ryan Si, a junior at Hawken School.

And while the debaters are taking prep time, we'll be talking here about the activity of debate and what it means for students here in Northeast, Ohio.

You know, Ryan, one thing that people in this room I know are aware of, I don't know if the listening public is, is that we have three judges in the audience here, listening to this debate.

In your experience, what are judges looking for?

What do they want to hear from the debaters?

- Well, it often depends on what, who the judge is, what their background in debate is.

I know some judges put a lot of value on presentation, for example, and other ones like example smart argumentation and being witty, for example.

It all really depends like on the person's self and their experience in debate.

- And our debaters here, the resolution they're debating is in a democracy, a free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy.

So, you know, when you're making an argument in this style of debate Lincoln Douglas, what's a good argument?

Like how do you put a good argument together?

- Well, if you're talking about individual arguments, there are generally two parts.

The first one is gonna be the warranting, which is saying why an argument is true.

It's not enough to say the argument because you have to like warrant as to why like that actually matters.

But then second part is the impact, which is just saying, here's why this argument matters in the first place.

It's not, not to just say to claim.

- You know, one topic or one term I've heard debaters used in the past is value criterion, where they try to tie everything back to some sort of universal value.

Why is that an important part of debate?

- Right, so what separates Lincoln Douglas debate from other forms of high school debate is basically it's more on philosophy and like the ethical questions of what the resolution is.

So what both debaters will present is a value.

So in Jeremy's case, it would be democracy.

And the value criterion is a way to achieve that value, like democracy, justice, morality, things like that.

- And again, our debaters today are Jeremy Battle of University School arguing the affirmative and Ella Jewel of Kenston High School arguing the negative.

Is this the first time that debaters have debated this question in particular?

- No, like just last weekend we had the state tournament, which was on this topic, but other than that, they have not debated this topic.

- I see, okay, so there's a little bit of experience here and it looks like we are about ready to return to the debate.

- All right, what I'm going to be doing right now is talking out what the negative has to say on this side of the debate.

But my speech is split in two, because I only get two speeches.

I'm going to have to address what Jeremy said in his last speech when I finish with my case.

So if everyone is already, then let's begin.

I negate, advocacy in the context of the press is recommending a cause, policy, action or solution to a problem, as opposed to solely informing upon it, according to Selby 21.

My value is justice, giving each their due, and my value criterion is upholding the difference principle.

John Rolls describes the difference principle in 1996, as "social and economic inequalities are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society."

If it is possible to raise the absolute position of the least advantaged further by having some inequalities, then the difference principle prescribes the inequalities up to that point at which they're maximally advantaged.

In order to have a just democracy, the least advantage must have their say prioritized."

I observe that advocacy is the presentation of issues through a perspective that recommends a policy or a change to a problem.

That is what I have to defend.

Purely inaccurate or fictional information is not advocacy, nor is blatant hate speech or harassment.

Contention one today, and my sole contention, is that advocacy is essential for policy making that uplifts the oppressed and helps society.

Sub point a, objectivity inhibits social justice and policy.

According to Winthrop 20, journalists need to be advocates for social justice, which is hard to do under the constraint of objectivity.

As a result, Dorphin 14 concluded that media advocacy is about raising voices in democratic processes, using policy systems to change conditions.

Media advocates target policy makers to harness the power of the media applying political pressure for policy changes.

Media advocacy helps people understand the importance and reach of the news they consume.

Advocacy is a crucial tool to pressure politicians into enacting positive social justice policies to better our society.

Subpoint B, advocacy journalism is superior for creating empathy and change.

Prioritizing advocacy allows for the telling of people-centered stories in addition to fact checking.

According to Gunderson 20, advocacy is to tell impactful, contextual, people-centered stories and collaboration with communities, not only informing people that an unjust system exists, but creating media that helps those most impacted by the unjust systems better navigate and overcome them.

Advocacy journalism is simply journalism.

All sources and authorities are subject to fact checking.

Make sure to always have the community perspective and the input of the disenfranchised.

Subjectivity leads to better reporting and builds more empathy in media consumers.

Dohackey 22 elaborates, "Bias is everywhere.

News outlets who offer the most objective news are lying.

Subjectivity is necessary in order for consumers to understand and relate to the news that they consume.

Subjectivity leads to empathy.

If journalism is a vital part of a well-informed democracy, it is important that that journalism reflect the democracy it is informing.

Subpoint C, advocacy journalism is the cornerstone of social movements.

Royal 21 explained a tradition of alternative media that seeks to advance social movements goes back to 1827 where free African-Americans in New York founded the newspaper Freedoms Journal.

Movement journalism also has it's roots in Hispanic emancipation movements, indigenous struggles and labor movements.

Traditional approaches to journalism fail to recognize the context of oppression.

Objectivity is the ideology of the status quo.

Ethnic media advocates for the most vulnerable communities and they ought to be prioritized and brought into the mainstream.

The American Press Institute 17 explains "when immigrant communities are in political crosshairs and hate crimes are on the rise, collaborations between mainstream and ethnic publications are going to change the stories told by the media."

About a quarter of US residents turn to more than 3000 ethnic news media outlets for their news.

Ethnic outlets are more connected to hard to reach and vulnerable communities of color.

Ethnic publications tap into perspectives that are not in the mainstream news.

Ethnic media outlets advocate for their respective communities.

One of the first ethnic mainstream media collaborations between the San Francisco Examiner and the India West Paper paired reporters on a story that took them from California to India tracing the roots of two teenage girls who had been kept as slaves by a well known restaurant entrepreneur in Berkeley.

The India West reporter knew the Indian community in East Bay, as well as the dialect that they spoke.

The stories were published in both publications, in both languages and contributed to legislation that imposed longer prison sentences for human trafficking.

Minority concerns and effective policies are best voiced through advocacy.

The only way to uphold justice in a democracy, which is why negate and move on to my opponent's side of the flow.

The first thing on framework: justice is preferable to democracy, because the end goal of democracy is one, to help the people, but I say the people are due a voice.

A democracy basically gives people votes, but if we don't give them their due of a free press, a due of a voice, then we're not going to be helping them in the long term.

People, especially marginalized communities, are due more care than just a pure a equalitarian democracy would prescribe by their votes.

I say that we need to focus on these oppressed, focus on these minorities more than just the majority in our democracy, I'd say on the value criterion debate that we need to prefer the difference principle because my opponent conceded in cross examination that we need to look to the least well off first.

And that comes before equal opportunities.

We need to ensure that those on the bottom are lifted up before we start equalizing things for everyone.

Now on my opponent's contention matter, on his first contention about under reporting minority concerns, cross supply my subpoint C. We have over 3000 ethnic news media outlets.

We need to prioritize these outlets instead of the objective New York Times, CNN or other media outlets that my opponent would be proposing in order to further these community interests and report on the issues that matters to these marginalized communities.

My opponent talks about advertising being targeted at high income people, and that's just the way of the world.

He doesn't change advertising.

He said he's not removing advertisements.

And at the end of the day, if we're at least having advertising material inserted into that which advocates for minority interests, then that's a net win or is my opponent would just give you straight up facts, interspersed with advertisements.

My opponent talks about parenting advice being for the rich.

But I say that if we advocate for poor parents to have more of a say in things, then they're going to be better off and more empowered.

And like I told you, advocacy is calling for solutions to a problem.

If we prioritize that, we're prioritizing solving the problems of the poor parents, but also my opponent talks about how journalism is a hard field to enter.

I don't disagree with that, but he doesn't solve that issue.

Whether it's objective or advocative of journalism, we're going to be seeing the same level of education required.

And there are structural barriers to those marginalized communities who don't have access to education that he cannot and will not solve, but I do.

If we call for education to minorities, if we advocate for education to minorities, then we better solve this problem of journalism being hard to access.

Moving on, my opponent talks about how frivolous media and crime coverage paint people in a bad light.

But I say that only by having backlash advocacy media against this do we ever end the problem.

And finally on can point about the Ukraine, Russia and America have a longer history than America and any of these African countries he mentioned.

And also remember judges, there are news media outlets in all these other countries that would be portraying those conflicts as well.

For all these reasons, I negate today.

Thank you.

I'm ready for cross.

- Okay, then I will start the three minutes now.

So can you just briefly explain the difference principle?

- The difference principle is that we need to prioritize the least well off in society, the poorest, the least advantaged, et cetera.

- Okay, so what do you say a democracy is?

- A democracy is a country where people are allowed to vote and have certain constitutional rights.

- Okay, what are those constitutional rights?

- Well, there's quite a lot, but I'd say, you know, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, those kinds of things.

- So ideally in a democracy, people would have some level of equality?

- Yes, of course.

- Okay, so why do we prefer justice over democracy, if it ultimately allows for us to uphold the difference principle?

- So justice is specifically linked to the difference principle because it's elaborating what people are due.

People are due when they're disenfranchised to be lifted up first before the rest of the community.

Democracy just sort of blankets over that and says, "Well, no, we need to look to everyone, all the constituents."

But I say that in particular, if we want to achieve the best society possible, we need to prioritize the least well off.

- Do you think that a democracy is just votes and that's it?

- No, I don't believe that's all for democracy, but if we look at the guiding majority policies proposed by democracy, if we look to how the voting system works, then we're going to be seeing a majority rule as opposed to the lifting up of minorities specifically.

- Okay, so let's talk about your contentions.

First, when you talk about, on your subpoint A, what kinds of, like what examples are there of objectivity inhibiting action?

- So when you can't call for change, when you can't say explicitly, this is wrong, we need to stop this, whether it be, you know, a racially aggressive policy or a policy that disenfranchises women's healthcare, if you can only report the facts on that, then we're not gonna be seeing any actual change being encouraged or being enforced.

- Okay, but do you have any examples?

- Well, I would say probably healthcare rights.

If we're only reporting on statistics of people that don't have healthcare, then don't call for change, then we're not gonna be seeing any change happen in that long term.

- Okay.

So on your subpoint when you talk about empathy... - Mmhmm?

- Would you agree that the truth is something that people care about on some level?

- I would say of course.

- Okay.

So why is like prioritizing the truth antithetical to actually allowing empathy to happen?

- So the truth in straight up fact form is not going to enrich empathy in people's hearts.

When we have advocacy journalism that contextualizes oppression, that contextualizes the circumstances of people, then we're gonna be seeing more empathy developed in our media consumers.

- [Jeremy] Why is there no context in the affirmative world?

- Well, when we're only reporting the facts and not reporting "We should do this because it's harmful to people," then we're not going to be seeing the empathy being truly rooted in our society.

- Okay, and lastly, when you talk about these social movements, would you agree that advocacy exists outside of journalism and that these movements can still exist without it?

- I would say that, yes, these movements do exist without journalism, but journalism is an important facet in spreading them.

- Okay.

All right.

I'm going to start with my prep time now.

- This is the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland, thank you for joining us.

I'm Nick Castele, senior reporter at Ideastream Public Media.

We've just heard Jeremy Battle of University School crossexamining Ella Jewell of Kenston High School.

With me here today is Hawken Junior Ryan Si.

You know, Ryan, we've just been hearing this cross examination.

What, what's the point of this part of the debate?

What are the debaters trying to achieve in this exercise?

- Well, I think the strategy of cross depends on the debater itself, but primarily, for example, when Ella's crossing Jeremy, they're looking to like poke holes into their arguments and like, for example, find contradictions or find weaknesses in their arguments and like basically push them on that.

- And so you're trying to sort of pick apart little holes to show that, oh, this argument doesn't really hold up or it's not consistent?

- Mmhmm, yeah.

- Well, you know, one thing that we heard debated was this idea of, I believe, it was the difference principle, and I'm interested in this, the fact that, you know, our debaters are incorporating these philosophical ideas.

There are references to philosophers.

How much preparation do you do to have sort of a good grounding in how to make these arguments?

- Well, I mean, debaters, all debaters do a lot of prep before tournaments.

Like they just go and research on Google, they're like reading articles or like, "Here's a part that I want to cite."

And then for example, you hear them citing authors.

That's evidence, that's research they've done.

Obviously some debaters don't do as much research as other debaters, but like in general, debaters have to do research in order to be successful.

- Well, what are you looking for in your research?

Like where do you even begin?

- Well, I think a quick Google search will get you, well, if the topic is good, if you do a quick Google search, it'll find like resource that'll like basically say it, and then you can go down the rabbit hole of like, "I want this argument and like specifically focus on that and find evidence on that."

- So when you go to debate tournaments, typically I believe they're on weekends.

You spend, you know, the whole weekend really, in a school somewhere debating these topics.

How much advanced notice do you have of what the topic is so you can prepare for it?

- I think the NSDA releases the topics at least a few weeks before tournaments.

So you do have a significant amount of time to prep for that, and... - NSDA, and what does that stand for?

- Oh, sorry, the National Speech and Debate Association.

- Got it.

My boss would be very angry at me if I didn't bust that acronym.

Well, you know, as we get now to the next section of this debate, what will our debaters be trying to do here?

How do they bring their arguments home?

- Well, ideally they want to defend their arguments from the attacks their opponents made and near the very end, they should probably try to wrap up the debate, perhaps on the most important argument and explain why that links to the winning framework.

- So, you know, I wanna go back to a question I'd asked earlier, which is, what are the judges looking for?

Are they looking for an emotionally persuasive argument?

Is this all about, you know, does it hold up logically?

Like what are you trying to leave the judges with?

- Well, the debates inherently a subjective activity, so I can't speak for all judges, of course, but generally, if like they're looking at how LD was made, they should look at the winning framework in their opinion, and then evaluate the arguments under that and say, here the aff or the negative best upholds the winning framework, thus, they should win the debate.

- Right, and again, the resolution that's being debated today is in a democracy, a free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy.

We have an affirmative side, we have a negative side.

What is the negative trying to do?

Do they need to have their own argument or do they just need to defeat the opponent's argument and perhaps hold that thought because we are right about to return to the debate.

- Okay, so everyone ready?

Okay.

So just as a brief off talking about first, I'm gonna be going over the framework then the negative side and then the affirmative, so in that case, I have four minutes and I will begin now.

So let's talk about the framework.

My opponents value is justice and mine is democracy.

What you're going to wanna see is that democracy in and of itself is a just system, and we ultimately achieve the same thing with either value, right?

Because democracy inherently is based around giving everyone a voice like my opponent talks about, right?

It's not just votes.

It's also free press.

That is a fundamental part of what makes a democracy what it is.

And so when so far as we promote things like that, we can ultimately achieve my opponent's value of democracy.

Sorry, justice.

The value criterion is different.

We see that my opponent's about a criterion of the difference principle ultimately is about giving the marginalized like some level of voice again, and ultimately putting them on the same level.

And my argument is specifically about equality so insofar as we see that we want the same thing, again, equality for marginalized people, right?

It's ultimately a wash, we have the same framework.

Whoever promotes some level of equality is gonna be the winner in today's round.

Let's talk about my opponents connection.

One specifically the subpoint A.

My opponent talks about how objectivity inhibits a lot of these like legislation from actually going through.

This is actually very important because it goes like into my opponent subpoint B as well, which is talking about like creating empathy, right?

Because the only reason why a lot of this empathy matters is because it ultimately gets people to care about these things.

And what Huber tells you is that essentially partisan news will ultimately worsen the divide between a lot of people and ultimately decrease the empathy that my opponent is talking about.

Further Gen 16 tells you that ultimately, based on a study from the US, UK, Brazil, and India, ultimately a lot of this whole idea of trust and empathy is based on a bunch of vague metrics, right?

It's not just based on like things like actually appealing to emotions, but it's also based on just brand recognition and things like that.

So ultimately like when we talk about ultimately creating empathy, this thing, it's a little bit vaguer.

Whereas we see as Gen 16 tells you, we can ultimately increase empathy by giving people the truth, the facts.

And there's lots of examples of this.

On the subpoint C about the cornerstone of social movements, look to an example of IB Wells, right?

Who by today's standards would be seen as an objective reporter, right?

Most of what she did was just supporting statistics about lynching and the types of people who are being lynched and why, right?

So ultimately that led to a lot of legislative changes and ultimately like movements that ultimately was just facts.

Like most of it was just facts.

And then Medal 21 tells you a study of 167 journalists find that even the ones who care more than anything about activism ultimately look to the truth above all else.

They acknowledge that the truth is one of the most important tenants of the free press.

So at the end of the day, like, yes, activism is important.

And when we talk about these grassroots communities like movement journalists, like at the end of the day, those are very important, but it's important to note that we're talking about prioritization.

What we're prioritizing is objectivity.

And so insofar as we're talking about like these movement journalists, sure, they're fine, but in the United States, we see that the news is controlled by six major companies.

We want the majority of them to try to be objective, right?

Because when we talk about these movement journalists, right, they're not the problem.

The big problems are the ones like at the top who ultimately perpetuate these sorts of narratives.

Moving on my side of the flow, on the intention about under reporting marginalized people, I want to clarify.

First, all my opponent says, just sort of cross applies the subpoint C. But again, I already gave you the IB Well's example.

Again, just stating the facts can be very sufficient in terms of actually making people care about a movement and can ultimately bolster the types of empathy my opponents talking about.

Second, when my opponent talks about how advertising is not unique.

Sure, advertising is gonna happen in either world, but it's far worse in the negative world where ultimately these news outlets are using advertising and catering to specific like high income people and types of people and types of news that applies to them specifically.

When you talk about the example of parenting, my opponent says that essentially, like we can advocate for these people in the negative world, but this sort of misses the point here because we see that by doing that, you're essentially solving the problem, trying to solve the problem with the source of the problem.

Ultimately, the source of the problem is advocacy.

And then on the subpoint C, or sorry, contention two, my opponent talks about essentially how the US has this history with Russia, but this misses the point here, right?

We're talking about how ultimately by negating, you are othering people, you are saying that Satan lives in Fallujah, you are saying that ultimately like it's a terrible thing that all these deaths are happening in Europe specifically.

So for these reasons I affirm, thank you.

- This is the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm Nick Castele from Ideastream Public Media.

We've just heard Jeremy Battle of University School delivering the affirmative argument to the resolution, in a democracy, a free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy rather.

And I'm here with Ryan Si of Hawken School.

And I was asking right before we went to this section of the debate, what is the negative side of the argument really trying to do here?

- Well, in this case, a negative would advocate for advocacy, but I think you brought up earlier about whether or not they have to win their case or just disprove the affirmative.

I argue that necessarily you don't have to rebut all the affirmative's arguments, as long as you can prove that your argument is more important through things like weighing and saying, like for example, we link better to the winning framework.

- I see, so, you know, in a criminal case, for instance, when lawyers are arguing in court, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone is guilty.

The defense doesn't have to prove that someone's innocent.

They just have to show that the prosecution didn't make their case.

Is that kind of what we're talking about here?

- That's one part of debate, but I argue that in order to win a debate, you still have to win some sort of offense and some reason to negate, you can't just say "they are wrong," but not provide a reason why you are right.

- So you've gotta offer something too that says, you know, this is my case, this is my interpretation.

And this holds up to scrutiny.

- Right.

- Well, you know, can you tell me a little bit about the community of debate?

You know, we heard, I think before we went on the air, our debater is thanking some of their classmates, people they know, how well do you get to know debaters from other schools when you go to these tournaments?

- Well, oftentimes you go every single Saturday, you basically spend your entire day talking to the same group of people.

So generally you do form like a pretty like nice group of friends that are outside of your school within the debate community.

- And these are friends that you don't just hang out with.

These are friends that you are arguing with, sometimes very fervently, I imagine.

- Right, yeah, you do have to debate them sometimes, but those runs are mostly fun.

They're not really as aggressive.

Like it's always nice to debate your friends.

- Well, and you know, one element of debate that's interesting to me is that you don't just get used to arguing one inside of a question, right?

You gotta know the good arguments on, on both sides of it.

- Right.

- What's that do for you?

Maybe hold that thought, because we're about to return to the debate.

- All right, so just as clarification, I'm going to be going over what Jeremy said about his case, what he said about the affirmative.

I'm going to be talking about how he attacked or worked against my case.

And I'm also going to close with what are called key voting issues, which is basically the points that I want the judges to reflect on when they're making a decision about the round.

Is everyone ready?

All right, then let's begin.

At the end of the day, our framework is extremely similar.

So it's kind of pointless to argue against it.

As long as we can better help people, better help the least well off, then we'll consider it a win.

Now, moving on to what he said about my subpoint A, he says that empathy gets people to care, but that partisan news increases empathy.

All right, so partisan news sources can decrease empathy by saying, he said, she said, and portraying this really badly.

But again, there's another side of advocacy, another side that needs to be reflected on.

When we have advocacy saying, "We need to help people, we need to help these people because they are suffering, but because they deserve help intrinsically because they're human.

That breeds more empathy than saying, "Oh, there's a hundred thousand people suffering."

While I'd hope that all of us have enough compassion within us to say, "Oh, a hundred thousand people suffering is terrible," we need to call for action instead of just reporting only on the facts.

Now, moving on, my opponent says that this empathy is based on vague metrics and that we can increase empathy by giving the truth.

All right, again I say that advocacy doesn't mean lies.

He completely neglected my observation at the beginning of the round that fictitious or blatantly harmful harassment speech is not advocacy.

Advocacy is calling for change.

We can increase empathy by calling for change.

As Gunderson 20 explained to us, "When we have of impactful contextual people-centered stories in collaborations with community, then we are creating media that helps not only inform people that an unjust system exists, but also creates media to help the people most impacted by this bad system and help them better navigate it and move beyond it."

When we're empowering people to take the down this unjust system or move around it, move above it, move away from it, then we're creating a better society overall.

If we're only giving the facts, then we're not giving the least well off the empowerment to stop the system or get rid of it.

Now moving on, my opponent talks about Ida B Wells reporting statistics about lynching, and I say that yes of course, that's important.

And yes, of course we need these facts about certain social issues.

But the point is that if we didn't call for action about this, then we didn't see Civil Rights movements.

If we don't have people calling for the emancipation of slaves during the Civil War, if we don't have people advocating for suffragettes and women's voting rights, if we don't have people advocating for Civil Rights in general, then we don't have the Civil Rights at all.

If we don't call for action, then we won't have it.

Moving on, my opponent says that we need the truth above all else, but again, I've told you advocacy is not false.

It's a call to action.

My opponent says that six companies should be objective.

I say that again, if we're portraying truth, but also calling for positive social change, then and only then are we going to have the most successful form of society.

Moving on, my opponent says that just stating facts is sufficient.

I say just because something is sufficient doesn't mean it's the best possible thing.

Advocacy today is the best possible thing because it finally empowers people to one, learn information that will help them get out of an unjust system, but two call for others to help them do the same.

Moving on my opponent says that there's catering and advertisements to the high class.

Welcome to capitalism.

This isn't going to change in his world.

If we're only reporting the objective commercials, I'm sorry, it's still going to be luxury products.

He's not going to be changing this as a fact.

The point is that if we have advocacy at least interspersed with these commercials, people can care about social issues in their community, and sure, find the latest car online as well.

Moreover, my opponent says that we need to solve for parenting advice that's very skewed.

He misses the point that advocacy calls for solutions to problems.

Any form of advice is a form of advocacy.

If we want any parenting advice for the middle class, upper middle class, or even the poor parents, we're going to want to prefer advocacy being prioritized and also again, if we advocate for poor parents' interests, then we're going be seeing more solvency than just saying, "Oh, there's X percent of poor parents in the world today."

Moving on, my opponent says that we're othering people with our reporting, but he misses the key point of my attack.

When we have proximity to a conflict, IE the United States and Russia have been in tension, in conflict ever since the Cold War, then we're gonna be seeing more reporting on that than conflicts in Cameroon.

He totally dropped the point that conflicts in Nigeria, in Cameroon, in Ethiopia, they all have their own news sources in their area that will report on this conflict.

And hopefully, I hopefully state that these people will advocate to end the conflict and end these atrocities.

Now moving into some key points on the negative.

First is that we better uphold democracy.

Dorfen 14 explained at the beginning of my case that advocacy is raising voices in a democracy for political change.

If we're best empowering voices for political change in our democracy and listening to our constituents, whether they're disenfranchised or not, then we're better fulfilling advocacy and giving them their due of a voice in a free press.

Now, moving on to the second key voting issue is that journalism ought to reflect the democracy it is centered on.

That's Dulhockey 22.

When we have this advocacy of ethnic media outlets being prioritized, over 3000 judge, that's far more than the six companies he referenced.

When we're prioritizing these outlets, as opposed to the other mainstream ones, then we're gonna be seeing better interests being pushed through and we're going to be better minority representation in our media and our policy making.

Next, my next key voting issue is that subjectivity creates empathy.

Only when we contextualize, when we focus on people's experiences and when we call for help because of those things do we see action actually taking place.

My final key voting issue today is that I'm the only side who presents an example of our side actually working.

When we had advocacy in ethnic media, in the press in California, we imposed longer sentences on human traffickers.

My opponent hasn't given you an example of an objective press that is solve any problems, but I've given you advocacy that leads to a safer, stronger, healthier community.

For these reasons and a flourishing democracy, I stand in negation, thank you.

- This is the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm Nick Castele with Ideastream Public Media.

Here with me is Ryan Si, a junior at Hawken School.

The debate we're listening to is over over the resolution, in a democracy of free press ought to prioritize objectivity over advocacy.

And before the last segment of this debate, we were talking about the fact that debaters have got to be familiar with both the affirmative and the negative.

How does that, how does that help you as a debater?

- Well, obviously if you know both sides, you would also know the response to the other side when you're negating.

So it always helps and know both sides of the argument and also just increases the amount of research you do, which will increase your overall, like background knowledge of the topic.

- Do you end up with a preferred side when you're preparing an argument, maybe like one more than the other?

- Often I separate my emotions from debate.

So like my personal beliefs don't influence how I debate either side.

But oftentimes like I prefer the negative in general.

- Got it, okay.

Well, thank you very much.

We're about to return to the debate, hearing from Jeremy Battle of University School.

- Okay.

Just so you all know this is the last speech of the round, so is everyone ready?

Okay.

Then just as a brief off, first, I'm going to give a couple clarifications, touch on the framework briefly, and then I'm going to get into my key voting issues.

So if everyone's ready, I have three minutes and I will begin now.

I wanna touch on just a general point, right?

Ultimately in this round both me and my opponent acknowledge that biases exist, and this is important.

What prioritizing objectivity allows us to do is address these biases and ultimately strive for objectivity by ultimately like taking away, like lessening the impact of certain harmful biases that I outline in my case.

And this is very important.

There's a few important examples that my opponent ignores throughout the round.

One is the crime example.

While parenting is important, the crime one is especially important because it's not just reporting on statistics.

It's specifically going out of their way to find the statistics and point to the crimes that ultimately help to villainize marginalized people.

And this is very important.

Obviously this isn't objective reporting.

It's not objective to criminalize, to demonize minorities and to frame them like they're always going to be criminal and violent, so ultimately like things like this, that is the impact of harmful advocacy.

And this is why we need objectivity in reporting to make sure that we're just talking about like the types of crimes that happened.

And possibly even like the reasons why they happened and the statistics and things like that.

Second, my opponent talks about like on the connection too, how essentially we are like, we are in closer proximity to Russia, right?

But this is ultimately going to result in one of my first key voting issues, which is that essentially we are contributing to a lot of these conflicts.

We talk about things like what I tell you with Graham, right?

For example, where the US invasion of Iraq happened, we were directly contributing to this conflict and directly killing these people.

And then Colonel Brando talked about how Satan lives in Fallujah.

You can't argue that we weren't in close proximity when things like that happen.

Ultimately, we are contributing to those conflicts.

We were killing those people.

We were causing those things to happen.

And so ultimately like we are, by having advocacy in the media at the forefront, it allows the media to ultimately perpetuate these narratives that other these people and allow the governments and allow the military to get away with killing these people and ultimately making their homes a battleground.

And this is not a just thing to do.

This is not a democratic thing to do.

Ultimately we're want to see that ultimately by othering these people who live in the states like other elsewhere, right, like every Iraqi person, every Afghani person that we other, right, it ultimately others the diverse people who live right here, right?

Every person who we say is like a demon, like elsewhere on other soil is ultimately going to be demonized here as well, and we can't let that have happen.

My second key voting issue is under reporting marginalized communities.

My opponent tells you that essentially, like this is going to happen in either world because of the way that advertising works.

But this is very important so we're going to go back to things like crime, right?

Because we see that even if you say that there's going to be targeting in either world, ultimately in the negative world, there's specifically news that demonizes certain types of people, ultimately reports them and tries to frame like they're going to be like criminals and violent and ultimately doesn't give them the information necessary to participate in democratic systems like the free press or just to vote in general 'cause they don't have that kind of information or education.

So for these reasons, I affirm, thank you.

Good round.

(crowd applauds) - This is the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland.

Rather, this has been the High School Debate Championship at the City Club of Cleveland.

I'm Nick Castele with Ideastream Public Media here, with Ryan Si, a junior at Hawkens School.

Well, as this debate wraps up and as we're waiting for the judges to tabulate the results, could you gimme a sense of what did you think of the debate?

Did you think that the debaters hit the points, you know, that you would've expected?

- Yeah, I think it was an excellent debate.

Both debaters did a really great job.

And they presented one of the strongest arguments on the topic, at least that I know of.

- This is Ryan Si, junior at Hawken school.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And thank you also to our debaters.

I'm turning it over to City Club CEO, Dan Walter - Thank you, Nick.

And could we get another round of applause for Ella Jewell and Jeremy Battle?

(crowd applauding) I'd like to invite you both to come back to the podiums, not for additional cross examination or anything like that, but more think of this as like the, you know, the courtside interview after the contest.

But so Jeremy, I wanna start with you and ask a little bit about what you did during the debate.

You were connecting this to world events and things that are happening, you know, in the news today.

Is that something you're able to do with a lot of other topics or was this topic sort of unique in that way that it was, that it presented itself so readily for that kind of a case to be made?

- Well, the last topic that we had before this one was about the private appropriation of space, you know, things like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

So I'd say we can talk about current events pretty often, but in this case in particular, yeah.

- Yeah, Ella, I wanted to ask you, you won the coin toss.

You didn't really say that before and you, and you took the negative pretty affirmatively if you will, but why were you, why were you so quick and so sure that the negative was where you wanted to be?

- Well consensus across the debate community is that the affirmative is the harder side, sorry, Jeremy.

(crowd laughing) It's just more difficult to defend objectivity in terms of the press when we have so many social movements going on and advocacy for change being portrayed as a more positive thing in the news today, it's easier to find sources and it's easier to construct arguments, which is why I prefer the negative.

- I see, okay.

I think we have a we're ready with the winners to announce.

So before we announce the winners, though, another round of applause, please, for these great competitors.

(crowd applauding) We've invited Tom Lucchesi of BakerHostetler, who's our great sponsor, to help us present and we have the announcements here.

So Tom, do you want, I'm gonna let you do it.

Who's our runner up?

- Well, our runner up is Mr. Battle from University School.

- Round of applause, please.

(crowd cheering) And our winner?

- Well, I think we can figure that out.

But Ella, you are our winner from Kenston High School.

- Ella Jewell, ladies and gentlemen, come on, go ahead.

(crowd applauding) And that brings us to the end of the High School Debate Championship.

We've been, we're able to do this every year thanks to generous partnership from BakerHostetler in memory of Pat Jordan.

And Ella, if you'll do me a favor and just ring that gong, we can say that the forum is now adjourned.

(gong rings) (crowd applauds) - [Announcer] For information on upcoming speakers or for podcasts of the City Club, go to cityclub.org.

(bright music) - [Announcer] Production and distribution of City Club Forums on Ideastream Public Media are made possible by PNC and the United Black Fund of Greater Cleveland Incorporated.