We are pleased to present the latest story in our series about how Columbia Journalism School has been training its students to become leading reporters on topics related to immigration and migration. Around the globe, the work of journalists is essential for telling the stories of how the movement of people across borders has been impacting lives, politics and economies. In this faculty spotlight, we interview award-winning broadcast journalist, documentary filmmaker, and video photographer Nina Alvarez, the CBS Assistant Professor of International Journalism and Director of Global Journalism. At Columbia, Professor Alvarez teaches such Master of Science Program classes as "Video Newsroom," in which students report, write and produce video stories ranging from the four-minute BBC-style story to the 90-second U.S. broadcast news variety to 30-second social media spots.
For over 25 years, Professor Alvarez has reported breaking news and feature stories from around the world, on broadcast and web segments, radio reports and long-form documentaries. An important theme in her work has been the experience of migration, historically and today. Professor Alvarez has produced numerous video reports on refugees, undocumented laborers, victims of violence or exploitation, and children. In 2001, she crossed the desert border herself on assignment with ABC News' Nightline. She was a producer on the Oscar-nominated 2009 film Which Way Home. Professor Alvarez also produced an episode for the landmark PBS series, Latino Americans, for which she received a Peabody Award and the Imagen Award. Her 2016 short film, Fields of Promise, was broadcast on America ReFramed and awarded the Alfred I. duPont Columbia Journalism Award.
Professor Alvarez is currently documenting the stories of Salvadoran refugees in the United States, some of whom fled the civil war over thirty years ago and are now fighting deportation. The project, currently titled De-Documented Salvadorans, will be broadcast on PBS and has received support from such organizations as the International Documentary Association, the Independent Television Service, and Latino Public Broadcasting.
Please read the Q&A below to learn more about the project and about how Professor Alvarez teaches Columbia students to report on immigration issues.
What is your current documentary project De-Documented Salvadorans about?
What began as the simple story of one Salvadoran-American family who is suing the Trump administration for the termination of their temporary protected status has now snowballed into an epic story that looks at the roots of their family being here. The family that we follow arrived in 2000, but the main character's parents and her older brothers had been in the United States for twenty years at that point. She was reunited with her family in the U.S. in 2000, and the film is actually going back to 1980 and looking at the arrival of Salvadorans and the establishment of the Salvadoran community in places like the Washington D.C. metropolitan area, where the largest foreign born population is Salvadoran. We thought it was really important to follow this trajectory of this family and this part of the family that arrived in 2000. The story is about this part of the family that is losing its temporary protected status and suing the Federal Government, but it's also the history of the other family members who were in the United States before that part of the family even arrived.
The second narrative of this story is about how the U.S. government decided to terminate immigrants' temporary protected status. We are looking at documents that became public evidence as the result of several lawsuits, and there's a wealth of information that is really telling about how the decisions were made and what might have motivated those decisions. The reason that it is important is because it's been a really stark departure from past practice. It's a very layered story that's worth examining.
Why has immigration been an important topic in your journalistic career?
I've been looking at the immigration issue - the way that it has been covered in the media, the way it has been such a controversial topic - since I began watching the news when I was 10 years old. Being the daughter of immigrants, I thought that the media coverage was incomplete and I thought that a perspective from people from an immigrant community would add value to help complete the picture. I still feel that way. I still think that there are certain narratives that dominate the public discourse. And, not just as a woman of color, but as a journalist, I think that it's important to highlight narratives that aren't reported on a more consistent basis.
Do your Columbia Journalism School students often report on immigration issues?
Immigration is a huge topic in "Video Newsroom" and in every class that I have had the pleasure of teaching at Columbia. You know, a large part of our student body comes from other countries. After graduating, some of our students are dealing with immigration issues. It's been important for those students to engage the topic of immigration, not just because they may encounter some issues themselves, but because they bring a different perspective to it than the American perspective. But, consistently, in every single class, the immigration issue, in various forms - how asylum is now being considered, how women are affected by changes in immigration policy - is a huge topic. Remember that if you've been tracking immigration, there's been a change almost on a daily basis over the past two-and-a-half years in immigration procedures, laws, or programs. So, there is fodder for coverage, and we have never seen this much activity in the immigration codes of this country. And, we've never seen it affect communities as negatively as we've seen in the past two-and-a-half years. And, that's in part why it's figured high on the list of coverage priorities for our students.
Do you have advice for your students who are reporting on immigration for the first time?
It's really important to not let our emotions, our sympathies, get in the way of our reporting. We need to stay focused on the facts. It's very easy to empathize with people who are suffering as a result of immigration policy. It's terrible what we are seeing on the border. It's terrible to see these images of children being separated from their parents. It's a very emotional topic. If you're not emotionally affected by it, that would worry me. But, we have to get past that, and really focus on what is happening, why it is happening, and who benefits from what's happening - and be as cold as possible about it. That's where I really have to commend Ginger Thompson for doing such amazing work on the border, because, as difficult as it is to witness those scenes and live within that environment while you're reporting, it's also so important to really engage the facts, stick to the facts, and report what is happening without being covered by your own emotions.
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