(upbeat music) - I wanna thank the Atlanta Press Club and my guests for their valuable time today.

Wanna do a quick round of introductions and just get right to it.

I wanna welcome Natasha Chen, National Correspondent for CNN.

Sophia Choi, Anchor Reporter for WSB-TV Channel 2 Action News.

Chenue Her, Reporter 11 Alive WXIA-TV.

Michelle Lee, National President of the Asian American Journalists Association.

Janice Yu, Reporter for Fox 5 Atlanta.

And Georgia State Representative, Bee Nguyen, who represents House District 89 in the Atlanta area.

Welcome everybody.

Let's just talk with this very basic questions whether it's inside our news organizations or our audiences.

Can Asian American journalists or should Asian American journalists cover stories that directly affect our communities?

So Natasha, that question's for you, 'cause you and me were at the State Capitol on Saturday.

But talk about this question about Asian Americans covering stories that affect our community.

- Sure.

So I think that with any story, you have to ask, "Which team of people is going to be the most effective at getting the entirety of the story?"

And in this case, it's very obvious that you need to have Asian American journalists in the mix at the very least, because of cultural background understanding as well as language expertise.

I speak Mandarin and was able to communicate on a deeper level with the family of Xiaojie Tan who owned the Acworth spa.

And there is some personal experience that really helps as far as growing up Asian in America to connect with the people who are expressing their anxieties and their fears.

So I think that is absolutely necessary.

I think that we often get the question of whether sending an Asian American reporter to cover Asian Americans perhaps suggests or could open the door for bias.

And then the question I would have is, so what is then the default?

What is unbiased?

We don't really ask that question of white journalists covering white people, or fill in the blank with other examples as well.

I think that you have to do a very careful job in our position of making our own background and understanding of cultural context and the language skills to really boost the story to get all of the nuances and angles of it without compromising the integrity of the facts in the case.

And I think all of us try very hard to do that.

One example of, I think in my case of being able to kind of connect on another level.

I remember doing the interview with Tan's family and her daughter telling me that she would really, if she could right now would say, "I love you," to her mom and give her a big hug.

And I noticed, I just took a guess and I said, "I'm suspecting that you maybe didn't do that a lot."

And she confirmed that that's correct.

That culturally and personality-wise, they were too shy to do that.

And that really hit me personally because a lot of more traditional Asian families might share their love through acts of service rather than verbalizing, I love you.

And that's just a small detail that might've been missed if it were somebody who didn't share the same cultural connection.

So I think that it's really important.

In our case I'm really glad actually, that the CNN team covering this included Amara Walker who is of Korean descent.

I am of Chinese descent and we had Ryan Young with incredible police sources.

So we had like the right mix, I think, of covering this story from different angles.

- I wanna head over to Janice, one of the moments.

I mean, it was a blur covering all of this, but Janice I don't even, I don't know if it was Facebook or Twitter, I think you put out a tweet or something, it was like putting your hand up like, "Yo all I speak Korean."

So talk about, you know.

First of all, what happened in your newsroom when this broke?

Did you go say, "Hey, by the way, y'all I speak Korean."

Take us inside what happened with you and your coverage of this story.

- Yeah.

So when the news broke like many other news rooms, it was kind of like, "Okay, we're gonna assign these two crews to go."

I don't know if that was a conscious decision because we had heard off the record at the time that this did involve Asian American victims.

But, got to the scene that was day one, it's all a blur.

It was just kind of, "What do we know from police?"

Day two was the day that was kind of interesting.

Understanding newsrooms, there are stories that need to be covered on a day-to-day basis.

I already had a story that was kind of, that I had to finish up from the day before.

So there were two of my other colleagues who were assigned.

But I did bring up the point in our afternoon meeting that, regardless of whether or not I am officially assigned to the story that day, I will be going to the site where these shootings happened because how else are we going to get information?

This is not a, "Let's see what we can find on social media.

Let's create profiles and try to find..." Because as we know, some of these victims were a little bit older.

They're not posting on Facebook.

How are we gonna find people if we don't have people actually on the ground?

And I also knew that their Korean might be or their English might be not their first language.

So you need someone who can understand these things.

And even if it isn't an on-camera interview per se it's being able to have those conversations.

And whether or not we have an actual face on the news saying things, it's more about, "This is what I learned from them.

This is the vibe that I got from them as I talked to them."

And a lot of what Natasha said too, it's important that, it's easy to look at this and say, "Well, why does it matter who covers it because facts are facts?"

But again, like Natasha said, there are so many little things within our cultures.

The way we were raised.

When I look at these victims I see my mom, my grandma, my aunt.

Just little things that make you understand on a different level.

And I think maybe the struggle was conveying that without saying, "No, this is my story."

It's me more being communicating in a way that this needs to be covered by an Asian American because there are just some things that others won't pick up at the end of the day.

So it was kind of striking that balance between asserting dominance, per se, over a story versus me saying, "From a professional standpoint it makes sense that we go this route."

- Speaking as an Indian American, even though I'm Asian, as an Indian American, I look to you all on proper spelling some names and pronunciations which were kind of botched on that first day.

And you did a wonderful video for Asian journalists to help us journalists.

Chenue take us inside what was happening at 11 Alive with you and then in general.

- Yeah, unlike Natasha and Janice, I don't speak Mandarin or Korean.

And so, just wanna give a big shout out to Michelle and AAJA for putting out that video because I refer to that video just as much as probably someone who isn't Asian American because I wanted to get the pronunciation of all the names right.

And, I think in our newsroom, I think one thing that I really appreciated was the fact that I'm the only Asian American on air at 11 Alive but we do have one of my colleagues behind the scenes.

She is Asian American as well.

And I think having someone else like that in my newsroom that I could connect with on a personal level to just kind of check in on each other was great.

And I had managers who really came to me and was asking me how I was doing.

First of all, how I was doing.

And then also just using me in a way that we were going to effectively tell the story to get the facts right.

But also like Natasha mentioned, knowing the ins and outs of the Asian American culture and picking up on things that not necessarily everyone was going to pick up on.

So it was kind of crazy because on Tuesday I wasn't even working.

Actually wasn't feeling good on Tuesday.

So I didn't work on Tuesday, but when this all happened I was at home and it was all hands on deck.

I was in touch with people at the station.

I was reaching out to any sources and connections I had, because I think as an Asian American journalist, we care a lot because we see that what's going on impacted the community that we're all a part of.

And because we're a part of the community and we understand what's going on, we want to cover this story as well as we can.

And we have a lot of care for it.

And so, I don't think that my newsroom ever saw me or my other colleague as having any sort of bias in having us covering the story.

But more so, that we had a lot of care in covering the story.

And that we were gonna do the best job that we could.

And I hope that like other journalists, Asian American journalists who've covered this really feel that way, that they were going to do a really good job and put a lot of love and care into this story and to the victims and doing the best job that we could.

- Sophia take us inside WSB Channel 2.

In your case, they look to you, they look to you to help almost lead with this story but there were also still challenges for you guys.

Take us inside to WSB.

- Right.

Like Janice said, day two was great for WSB.

I think we hit the ground running.

We touched the story with sensitivity.

Remember at that point, all we knew were there were six Asian women who were dead amongst the eight and that four were Korean in Atlanta.

After my last live shot, I got an email from a colleague who said, "Hey, we're already hearing from the community saying what about sex crimes or trafficking at these Asian spots?

I spoke to my photographer who is white.

And I work with him all the time.

And he said, "Not now Sophia, it's way too soon.

Way too soon.

These women will forever be linked to that then.

And we don't know that that was really going on at these particular spots."

And I agreed.

I said, "That's exactly how I feel."

So day three was the toughest day I believe for WSB.

Day three is when I learned that while they were including me and having me sort of lead coverage along with Chris Jose they excluded me when it came to discussions about investigating sex crimes at Asian spas along with the AJC.

When Chris and I found out about that it really more than anything hurt our feelings because we had just gone through this one year of wokeness, right?

One year of diversity training, inclusivity.

My managers led the charge on that, discussions, hours upon discussions through BLM.

But when it came to this Asian crisis, this Asian community crisis, they cut us out a very important conversations.

And I told my managers, "We are always told to keep our heads down, work hard, and don't complain.

And we, because of that, many times remain invisible."

We were overlooked.

And once again, what I felt was no matter how profile we get, we are still invisible.

That is the message I got.

Immediately upon hearing my complaints, Chris's outcry, and not just us.

I mean, we had Black colleagues, white colleagues standing amongst us, Hispanic.

Everybody said it's not the right time.

And immediately, we started discussing and we decided to step away from that story.

As a team, we decided maybe there's merit to this story down the line to look at true trafficking in these situations.

And it's not just Asian spas, in spas in general.

But not right now.

Right now is not the right time.

And when I saw that AJC article, I felt like what I said to my managers came true.

The damage that article, the damage those kinds of pieces would do to a community is far outweighed by any curiosity you're quenching by these people calling and saying, "I bet that was one of those spots."

So that is what we've been going through in our newsroom.

And we have had enormous discussions and I thank my managers.

They have led the charge once I brought it to their attention for these, I'm talking hour-long discussions first thing in the morning about our coverage, about how we're feeling, and people have ended up in those meetings, white colleagues, Black colleagues, bawling, wailing.

We have really delved deep into this because it's serious and we're taking it seriously.

- I wanna continue that conversations about what we did and didn't do right, and media failures with Michelle Lee, who is the National President of the Asian American Journalists Association.

She's on the ground here in Atlanta covering the story for her organization.

But she's here representing AAJA.

Let's start just with that AJC story, and what the national organization and leadership feels like was a failure there.

- Sure.

Let me first just thank the AAJA members and AAPI journalists who are toiling away during this time.

You're doing really great work.

I know you're often doing it in very quiet and unseen ways, but we see you and we thank you.

And I also wanna thank the Atlanta Chapter of AAJA who's just been incredible all the time but especially during this time, we stand with you.

I think what you guys are talking about is the invisibility of our experience.

And the more that we can talk about who we are, our experience, what we're doing in our jobs, and how that reflects for our community and in media, the better.

So I'm really glad we're having this conversation.

Regarding the AJC article, I'd like to zoom out a little bit because it's not just a AJC.

I know that these are conversations are happening in newsrooms across the country in many cities.

In one way it's understandable because everyone's looking for that next story, right?

We're looking for a followup story.

There is no information coming out from police, still very limited information about the victims.

So I understand the impulse of newsrooms to look into some sort of story around potential sex trafficking or potential sex work.

This is a very sensitive topic and I might risk misspeaking here, but I'm gonna try.

There is no sex work or sex trafficking verified at these places.

Let's just lay that out there.

And it may never be verifiable.

We have to accept that.

And we're seeing newsrooms across the country grapple with how to write about previous police things at these spas, any issues employees may have had with law enforcement, how, and whether to use unverified reviews on roadmaps as a source.

And this is especially the case because we're all looking for that next door, how to move this along.

And I would say law enforcement anti-trafficking efforts definitely deserve more scrutiny by media and more investigation.

But like Sophia said to those working on that as a followup story at this moment, I would ask a couple of things.

And this is what we're kind of working on at AAJA as a next iteration of our guidance.

What unchecked assumptions are you bringing to your coverage?

What is the relevance of the police things from nearly a decade ago?

And the relevance of the employee's record to the fact that they were killed in a mass shooting?

Do we ever ask about the criminal backgrounds of victims of other shootings or where they were shot?

In the Pulse shooting, would we have investigated whether the club had a history of exceeding crowd control limits?

In the Charleston Church shooting, would we have investigated whether the church had a history of locking its doors to protect congregants?

By focusing on the salacious aspect of this moment and this history, and tying it to the lives of these victims we risk as newsrooms of framing the story as, what did police fail to do?

How did these businesses grit the law in order for these women to be allowed to get shot?

Which obviously is a very problematic framing for news coverage for many reasons.

And we're really working on this right now.

We wanna provide guidance for newsrooms because we know that many people are struggling with this and wanting to talk about it.

But I would really ask those questions of your newsrooms.

And I would say there are many other failures that we've seen from media.

Obviously, the very glaring one is failing to consider the victims in the initial coverage as we rushed to report what the police said that the suspect told them.

Obviously quoting the police response based on the suspect saying that it wasn't racially motivated, that it was just his sex addiction on a really bad day.

Rushing to cover that, pair it with the police said really did huge harm to our communities, to the victims, and to our journalism.

And that's why AAJA stepped in really quickly, because as Asians we know when you hear that, racism goes hand in hand with sexualization and sexual violence against Asian women.

We know that.

What our news managers did not know is that.

And it showed us that there are not enough AAPIs in newsrooms and certainly not enough AAPIs in news leadership or people in leadership who are familiar and well-versed with the history and experience of Asian Americans in this country.

And that's a problem.

So when AAJA issued a guidance around this, how to talk about it, and recommended that newsrooms rely on AAPI sources and expertise in their coverage, our website crashed for the first time in 10 years.

We had so much traffic because it was clear newsrooms needed some help.

They were still struggling how to frame this coverage.

And they were not equipped to do it in the way that was responsible for our journalism and for our communities.

And so we stepped in and we remain committed to helping newsrooms through this.

Huge kudos to Janice Yu who stepped in with the Korean pronunciation guide and Francis Weng who did so with Chinese names.

We're all stepping up and we're here to help.

- I definitely wanna talk more about what was said in that press conference, the Cherokee County Press Conference.

But before I get to that, I do wanna get to state Representative Bee Nguyen, who I covered down at the State Capitol for Georgia Public Broadcasting.

You have been a leading national voice, a leading state voice on this story.

I'd love to hear your thoughts from your point of view what you saw with the media coverage and reporting, both good and bad.

- Thanks, Rahul.

And thank you for all of the comments everybody has made so far.

There's just such a connection hearing from other AAPI folks because it is real that those nuances that we're talking about.

And I think I do have a harder time emotionally because it's harder to detach when we're talking about things that are so prevalent in our lives.

And that do remind me of my mother, my father, my aunties.

And so, I wanna thank you all because I think at this particular moment in time, we as Asian Americans have a responsibility and a burden to ensure that this particular story as well as our history and our experiences are being uplifted in a way that reflects our truth.

And that doesn't allow for us to process things in the way in which other people are able to process it emotionally.

And it requires detachment from anger, and grief, and pain, and rage.

And it's just, I know it has been a tremendous burden because there are so few of us too and that's something, Rahul that I've experienced in my time at the Capitol.

Because up until this year, I was the only Asian American woman out of 236 elected officials in our General Assembly.

And any time there is a story that has to do with the Asian community as a whole, I'm the person that, I'm one of the people along with Representative Sam Park, who's really had to support our community, uplift our community.

And it goes beyond the story.

One of those things that has been frustrating is the assumption that I and Representative Park have been responsible for all of the Asian people living in the entire state of Georgia.

Though my district is majority Black and white.

And when it comes to campaigns, it is the two of us who have had to carry that burden for statewide candidates, for our Senate candidates, all of those things.

We are expected to do that work.

And so, this was no different though I am grateful that we have a bigger AAPI delegation.

And between the five of us plus Representative Park who has spoken up we've been able to share some of those things.

But my experience with media as a whole, I had a conversation with a journalist last week and this particular journalist I've spoken to before.

And for some reason, she is always surprised when I tell her I was born and raised here.

And the fact that when I am talking to journalists who are not AAPI, I have to spend a lot of time explaining myself, explaining who I am, and then have them react to me in some way because for some reason, they can't wrap their head around the fact that I'm American.

In this particular case, I think many of us have felt tremendous anger at the way in which media has covered this story.

The centering of the perpetrator, which is not new.

We've seen that in the past where the perpetrator is humanized.

And then the idea that we take the perpetrator's word over the stories of the victim's families and that for many days, we were exclusively only talking about the suspect in custody.

And it was really hard to digest all of the information because there are so many layers to this particular story.

And I had at one point during a press conference at the Capitol in response to some of the questions being asked, I at one point had said something to the effect of, we're talking about women who are vulnerable, who are invisible, overlooked, and all of those things are important to this story.

But in framing that, I had also said something like "This young man characterized them as a problem he had to eliminate because they were sex workers."

And what I should have said is, "He believed them to be," because here I was in this moment also repeating the words that we have seen covered all over the country.

The assumptions and using that language, and how it's so unconscious sometimes.

And I had to really step back and think, "I really need to be more conscientious of the words that I use, and how I'm pushing these messages forward and not accidentally doing something that reinforces these narratives."

But what I also wanna say is when we finally did hear from some of the victim's families the fact that one of the sons, Randy Park went to Korea Media first speaks volumes.

The two stories he did were with The Daily Beast and Korea Media.

And that says a lot.

And I know that the world of journalism is competitive.

It is fast-moving.

People have to get the stories.

But just the overwhelming, just so many people trying to get to the victim's families without really understanding or acknowledging that for many Asian families, for many immigrant families, there are very nuanced things that make us more reticent to go to the media.

It's privacy.

It is cultural shame.

My parents always wanted us to kind of keep our family and the things that were happening very close to us and there's distrust of media, distrust of law enforcement, language barriers, and concerns around whether or not we can communicate in the right ways.

And I do wanna uplift this important thing.

One of the sons of the victims unequivocally said, "My mother was not as sex worker and stopped saying those things."

And we think about the grief and the pain that these families are going through and their children are watching this media coverage, horrified, is horrifying.

And then the last thing I will say is I've gotten responses and I'm not sure if this is reflective across the board but when I am talking about this from and when I'm talking about the crime, in terms of the lens of it being an intersection of racism, xenophobia, gender based violence and misogyny, I've gotten some incredibly cruel responses from white Americans who want me to shut up, who are just barraging the women who were victims.

And I am having a hard time wrapping my brain around the fact that a 21-year-old man committed a brutal, brutal act and the way in which he killed these women three out of four in the Atlanta spas at close range, execution style in the head, and all you can garner out of this is insulting the women who died.

I just don't have any words for that.

- I wanna talk more about what Michelle and the Representative just said.

And that was, "I don't know if it was a turning point but it was one of those moments in this story that the Cherokee County Press Conference both with the Spokesman and the Sheriff.

This whole idea of what he said because my first thought when I heard it was "We're just saying what the suspect said to you."

And then the whole bad idea thing.

I know Natasha, you took a closer look at that and I wanna start with you about everything around, almost everything around those press conferences.

- Yeah.

So I did one piece on one of those days for Anderson Cooper's show specifically about Captain Baker.

And it's interesting.

I was at that press conference, as many of us were.

And I think for some of us, I can speak for myself.

We're so focused on getting the meat and potatoes of the facts of the case, that when that phrase was uttered, I didn't even register.

I'm trying to write down who, what, when, where, why?

And it took a few hours after people had sifted through the video in more detail for me to realize, to go over that particular part of the statement.

- He claims that these, and as the chief said, whether it's still early, but he does claim that it was not racially motivated.

He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction and sees these locations as something that allows him to go to these places.

And it's a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.

When I spoke to the investigators they interviewed him this morning and they got that impression that yes, he understood the gravity of it.

And he was pretty much fed up.

And it then kind of at the end of his rope, and yes, that was a really bad day for him.

And this is what he did.

- And when it was flagged to me, my jaw dropped a little.

I felt that immediate visceral reaction.

And I was asked within 30 seconds of seeing that statement in front of me to talk about it on the air.

And we have to be really careful because we're not here to offer our opinions.

But I think in that first live shot, I characterize that as saying, there is criticism now of that statement for being at minimum oversimplifying what happened that day.

Because it's very clear based on our interviews with former roommates of the suspect that there were issues going far back and not just one day.

And at maximum seeming like an excuse.

Now, as we continue to do this story, we talked to some people who came to the Acworth spa location who are residents of Cherokee County where the Sheriff's office would respond to their areas.

And I spoke to these two women who identified as Muslim.

One of them said to me, "If the suspect had looked like us, he would have been called a terrorist.

If the suspect was Black and was speeding away from police and being chased, he would have been shot.

Instead he is being described as having a bad day."

The other woman said, "I'm raising a child of color.

How am I supposed to explain that to him?"

I found those responses to be similar to the others that were walking up to the spa.

And when I went into the Cherokee Sheriff's office really openly asking to have a conversation about this, because look, a lot of people say things in a tough moment.

And I wanna allow the space for someone to have a discussion with me about where those thoughts came from.

I don't wanna assume anything about Captain Baker at all.

And I was offered a statement from the Sheriff himself saying that Captain Baker's words were not intended to disrespect the victims or the gravity of the tragedy.

That in 28 years of Captain Baker's service in the department, that there hasn't been a day like this.

They don't get a lot of homicide cases like this.

And it was very tough.

And that the Sheriff's Office has a deep understanding and respect for the Asian American community.

And the Sheriff himself showed up to a vigil that night at the Acworth location.

Obviously as we know, Captain Baker was removed from the spokesperson role for this particular case.

And I asked one of the women who walked up to the vigil whether that was enough in her view.

And she said, "No, it's not enough."

And of course, we're expecting, and some people have said like, "You should resign, or he should be fired."

Whatever the case may be, however they feel.

But this woman said, "No, it's not enough.

I actually want to see more sensitivity training for all law enforcement.

Because even if this was said in a moment of somebody just not thinking, the fact that he wasn't thinking is an indication that there is a disconnect with the diversity of the community that he serves."

And so, that's a bigger picture, zoom out issue that I think is being looked at by a lot of people who are upset by those words.

And not to mention, also talking about the alleged Facebook post that he put up last April, that we believe he put up last April of COVID-19 T-shirts, custom made shirts that said, "I believe COVID-19 imported virus from Chy-na."

Spelled C-H-Y-N-A.

Kind of mimicking some of the language that we've seen blaming Chinese or Asian people for the pandemic.

So those are just some of the responses that I saw from the community.

- I wanna get to questions.

I know we've got some questions here being asked by some of our audience.

I wanna ask more of a wide open question to both our journalists, our Representative, and to Michelle.

What could we do differently?

What can we learn?

Give me one or two things.

Does it become more obvious that our organizations come to us as a starting point or maybe come to Asian journalists, if necessary?

Give us an idea and we can start with any of the reporters of what could change or should change coming out of this?

- You know, if I can chime in, I think the big thing is, and I know it's not an overnight fix.

We need more diversity in newsrooms.

The fact that I was on my way to vacation.

We drove all night to get to Florida on Friday.

And when the names came out from the Fulton County Medical Examiner's office, I was the one who had to call them early in the morning to say like, "Hey, you didn't release the full names of these Korean victims in the Atlanta shootings."

If we had more diversity in newsrooms, there would be more people to catch little things like this.

And not to hate on anyone, but really to create awareness.

And it's an education thing, right?

But it's so much to take on as one person, one AAPI journalist in a newsroom, when something big like this happens.

We need other people to support us and to catch little things like this.

To say to our coworkers, "Hey, you know, maybe we should phrase this differently."

Or, "Hey, this is a mistake."

And I think that was the big learning thing for me.

I've been in news for quite some time now and I think this experience has just really taught me.

we don't have enough representation in newsrooms.

So I think that's a big point for us moving forward.

- Janice, I wanna follow up with you real quick because I know we have newsroom managers.

We have fellow journalists listening.

Explain the significance of leaving the middle name out on a Korean name.

- Yeah.

And so this goes back to me as a Korean American, Janice is not my legal name.

So in my legal documents, everything, my Korean name is on there.

Mine is hyphenated.

There's always first part, second part, that's your full first name.

And then your last name.

The fact that you left out the second part of their first name is the equivalent of someone saying Jan Yu.

That is not your full name.

And I hate to use the word irritated but when I saw that it's like this rush of like, "This is what I deal with all the time.

And now these poor women who were just shot and killed cannot even get their full names out properly."

So that was kind of the thing for me.

And it took some explaining.

I didn't wanna come off rude.

I called them up and said, "Hey, I just wanna let you guys know that if at all possible barring any legal problems, can we get that second part because we are missing their full name here."

So I think that was a really important step that we needed to take.

- If any of our fellow journalists take anything from that remember that's not a middle name, that's part of their full name.

So if there's one thing you take away from this great, Michelle, I see you wanna say something.

- Yeah.

I wanna build on what Janice said.

It is a diversity issue.

It is also a diversity and leadership issue.

And it's also a culture where diversity is, it's an issue of whether your newsroom has a culture where diversity is appreciated, leaned on, and celebrated.

It's clear that our newsrooms need year-round cultural competency training.

We do ethics training for our journalists.

We do Nexus training to help people background people.

We need cultural competency training for all journalists so that it's not on one journalist in a breaking news situation to make the call.

It is unfair to put it on Natasha Chen 30 seconds before going on air to say the exact right thing for the entire world.

That is completely unfair.

And it's also unfair for Janice to be the only person to say, "Hey, hello, I'm on vacation but here are things that you need to know."

We need to create newsrooms where diversity is integrated into every conversation and where feedback can go up and down.

Because too many Asians are right now in the lower ranks where they don't have the ability to raise these issues to the higher up management without fear.

And without knowing whether or not they're gonna be heard.

We can't do these things on the fly.

We have seen this time, the huge consequences of messing up on deadline.

But what we need is training for all of our journalists not just our Asian journalists, but everyone in the newsroom up and down the management chain to know how to respond in these moments, how to ask the right questions, and if they're worried or scared about getting it wrong, how to lean on the person with the right expertise.

And then not to put the weight of the coverage of this, on that one person.

What we need is an entire shift in thinking of newsroom management and culture creation.

And if there's anything that news managers on this call could take away, I would say it's that.

Take the time to care, take the time to give your newsroom the resources it desperately needs to get this right because we can't let this happen again.

- Sophia, you said that there were hours of conversation at WSB.

- There were hours.

Yeah.

Hours of conversation.

A lot of surprising things came out of those discussions.

And I think you asked what do you hope mainstream media takes away from our discussions here and elsewhere is the hypersexualization of Asian women.

I think any Asian woman in the public eye will tell you, we get emails, and videos, and things from our constituents or our viewers that no other race seems to.

I mean, I get porn sent my way quite often.

And when I block somebody, they very often find another way to contact me and they're very confused as to why I blocked them.

Because they thought I'd like that kind of stuff.

So I think that has been very, I have really never discussed that it's happened throughout my career but I think that was eyeopening for a lot of people including coworkers, other female anchors, and reporters who've always noticed, "Sophia the men on your site."

I hope that is what mainstream media comes away with.

And also, that we are Americans.

When this happened I talked to my mom and I said, you know, she lives in California.

So she's been witnessing all of the rising violence against Asians.

It comes across her local news.

She lives in those communities.

So she watches that in between her Korean soap opera if we could get her away from that.

From time to time, she watches news.

And she said to me, "Sophia."

I said, "What do you think about what happened in Atlanta?"

And immediately, she said, "That's race.

That's hate, that's race."

And I said, "Mama, why do you think that?"

And she said, "Well, they don't see us as Americans.

They don't see us as Americans still.

So when something happens in China, they go after all Asians.

Maybe it is the first generation broken English.

I don't know what it is but for some reason the general population identifies us differently."

- Chenue, take us on what you think is the next step for newsrooms.

Let's stay within our newsrooms.

And for us as journalists, I always had a challenge working in the ethnic media and ethnic community.

Take us what we should be doing next, Chenue.

- You know, I think as far as a newsroom goes, I think I really wanna reiterate what Michelle and Janice were saying where, I think in many newsrooms, if you are Asian, you're oftentimes the only one or if not one of two.

If you're very lucky, one of three.

And I think in newsrooms that sort of thinking has, has sort of created this unofficial quota in newsrooms where if I walk into a newsroom and there's already an Asian reporter, well, chances of me getting this job is significantly out the door.

And I think moving forward from this and covering this, I think we are greatly doing our communities a favor by getting rid of that sort of thinking.

I think there are so many capable Asian journalists who have lost out on jobs simply because there is another Asian person in the newsroom.

And we'd need to get rid of that thinking.

And this sort of culture doesn't change if it doesn't start from the top.

Michelle mentioned lots of Asian Americans in newsrooms were there.

And oftentimes, unfortunately we're talented, but there's this unofficial quota that we've met then we sort of stay at the bottom, and you wonder why Asian Americans you wonder why they don't move up.

Why we move laterally a lot, but never really up.

And that needs to change because we will be better for that change.

Because if we have people higher up in newsrooms who have influential voices, it's going to improve our editorial decisions, it's going to approve how we approach breaking news.

And it doesn't put a lot of pressure on your Asian journalists in your newsroom because I am not the gatekeeper of all things Asian.

Representative Nguyen is not a gatekeeper of all things Asian in Georgia.

And so we need the representation and we need to have that sort of support from our organizations so that we can move up and have influential voices versus just being a foot soldier who you're gonna be sending to anything Asian-related.

I mean, again, I refer to that AAJA name pronunciation video probably just as much as someone who wasn't Asian because I don't speak Mandarin or Korean.

And I think moving forward, I hope that newsrooms realize the importance of having the diversity in their newsrooms and not just having it because, it might be the hip thing to do now, but really have it, value it, and see how we can help improve the communities we serve.

Because even if your viewership or your readership, your Asian viewership and readership might not be the majority of that group, but they are still Asian viewers and Asian readers, and that community still needs to be served.

You can't brush them aside just because it didn't make up the majority of your viewership.

So I think what we take away from this is, how do we provide the resources to support Asian American journalists in the communities and how do we help them move up in our newsrooms to better reflect the editorial decisions we make to better serve our community?

- Representative Nguyen I want to bring you back your voice into this conversation.

- There should also be the recognition that not all Asian Americans are the same.

We have different migration stories and that is critically important.

And when we are not doing things like deaggregating data it doesn't tell the full story of who we are in this country.

So I think one, people have to take it upon themselves to learn the history both here in the United States, but also abroad.

My family's story is complicated by a war and in Vietnam and hundreds of years of colonialism.

And that is going to change the narrative that I have and the experiences that I have.

And the fact that we, because there are so few of us living in this country from just a numerical standpoint, we do have to organize together.

But the realities are many of us don't even speak the same language and our histories are different.

We are bonded together in a lot of ways, but there are distinct differences that are critically important.

And those are not told.

I would also say in addition to diversifying newsrooms we have to diversify everything.

The other day, I was going to the Capitol for an 8:00 AM committee meeting.

And there was the agriculture, the cattle business was doing something on the sidewalk and I felt very triggered walking through a crowd of all-white lobbyists.

And this is the lobbyists at the Georgia State Capitol.

I've been there.

This is my fourth year.

They still think I represent Gwinnett County in Georgia because for some reason, people cannot conceive that an Asian American woman can represent an area that doesn't have a significant Asian population.

So I constantly have to tell everybody, "I'm in Atlanta DeKalb."

And two, they cannot tell the difference between me and Senator Michelle Au, or me and Representative Zulma Lopez, or previously me and Representative Brenda Lopez.

Both Representative Zulma Lopez and Brenda Lopez, we are not even the same race.

Senator Michelle Au is Chinese American.

I am Vietnamese American.

There are only two of us.

One of us wears glasses.

The other one doesn't.

The fact that they won't even take the time to learn that shows exactly how unimportant we are to them.

And I do wanna talk about just the legislation that we did introduce this week because it does address some of the complexities around this.

And specifically, I do wanna talk about the language and cultural competency pieces as it pertains to law enforcement.

So there is one bill that would require law enforcement agencies to be trained with language and cultural competency which we're talking about in newsrooms as well.

Those things are very significant in public safety but I would also say they're significant in public health.

When the pandemic broke out last year, our Department of Public Health wasn't translating anything in other languages.

And here we are in the middle of public pandemic that is dangerous to everybody, and non-English speaking people were not able to access information and that hurts everybody living in our country and in the state of Georgia.

The second piece is requiring 911, statewide 911 network with translations.

And I think for many children of immigrants, we grew up being translators and protectors for our parents.

In my specific case, I do remember being 12 years living in Augusta, Georgia and always having to speak up for my mother when a retail worker or a grocery worker decided they didn't wanna take the time to try to hear what she was saying.

She does have an accent when she speaks English but she can speak English.

But there was just such a disdain for her because of her heavy accent.

And I think of one of the stories that did emerge was one of the victim's husbands arrived at the Gold Spa scene and he was speaking in Korean pleading for help, unable to communicate with a PD.

And then he proceeded to perform CPR on his wife and that story, you know, that story really broke me in a way because when we are in distress, it is our primary most comfortable language that we revert to.

For me, that's in English.

I dream in English, I speak English even though when I was a child, we only spoke Vietnamese in our household.

When my parents are in distress or angry or upset, or there's some sort of emotion related to it, they struggle to communicate in English more.

And so I think of this horrific incident and I can't imagine anything more horrific when your loved one is dead or lay dying and you cannot communicate your distress to somebody who is supposed to be there to help you.

And so that is why we drop that 911 piece.

- What's the focus next?

Is it continued focus on violence towards Asian Americans?

Focus on what we can do in the newsrooms?

Focus on the Asian American community?

I want everyone to take maybe 30 seconds.

I'll start with Sophia on what we, as journalists should focus on and what we as Asian Americans can focus on coming out of this tragedy.

Sophia.

- Well, I think it initially, I mean, these victims all have not been buried yet.

We're still welcoming families into Atlanta.

So I think that's the focus first to support those families who are coming in to bury their loved ones.

But I think the long-term focus should be continuing this dialogue.

And especially this unity we're seeing among these fragmented, historically fragmented minority groups.

I love the unity I'm seeing, and I hope that continues.

And I hope these discussions continue because I think that's the only way that we leave it better for the next generation.

- The big thing we can focus on moving forward is maybe taking the things we learned individually as journalists.

Hopefully our colleagues in newsrooms and figuring out not just in coverage of Asian Americans but just in general, how we can work to fix our coverage so that we don't do things like take the word of the shooter and twist our coverage to fit what he said.

I think there is a lesson to be learned here as a whole in the entire realm of journalism, not just with coverage of Asian Americans.

But again also, I think diversity moving forward, it's critical.

And I hope this isn't something that dies down after this kind of gets faded in our memories.

- I think when it comes to this story in particular, I think hopefully we can move in a direction where we can do some solutions journalism to hopefully push forward something that will bring change because what happened was obviously very tragic.

And I think we can all use our platforms to hopefully bring some sort of change that will hopefully prevent something like this from happening again.

As far as newsrooms go, I hope we look at this and we realize newsrooms, we've always had a problem that we didn't address.

And hopefully, as far as we go, we can find solutions to address this because we shouldn't wait till the house is burning to try to address the fire.

You prevent it from happening, you know.

So I think hopefully newsrooms moving forward we realized the value that AAPI journalists bring and we support them, and we help them move up to have influential voices versus always bossing us around laterally from place to place.

- Natasha Chen.

- In addition to everything that everyone else has said so eloquently, I think that one of the focuses for this story thread is the idea of the Georgia hate crime law, right?

We don't know yet how that's going to play out in this investigation, especially the way it's written.

It includes the targeting of people based on sex.

And so, it's not just about whether they targeted Asians, it's about whether he targeted women.

And when he stated that this was a sex addiction problem, I'm so grateful for people like Anderson who said on the air very early on that even if that is the problem, he equated his issue with these women and these women of color.

So in his mind, even if this addiction is the issue, he placed the blame and the problem on these particular individuals.

And so, I think that's something we need to continue to look at.

Representative Nguyen thank you for mentioning the 911 situation.

Hearing those calls was probably one of the most emotional parts of my coverage.

Just hearing the lack of understanding between the two parties when we know how urgent that was.

- Thank you so much, Natasha, Sophia, Janice, Michelle, Chenue, Representative Nguyen.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you to the Asian American Journalists Association the Atlanta Chapter that I'm part of.

And of course the Atlanta Press Club, which I am part of.

Thank you all.

And we'll finish up here.

(upbeat music)