mindyourmegan

disabilitystudies

The Myth of Objectivity

Subtitle: How neutrality fails trauma journalism and why empathy is a better metric

Author: Megan A. Green
Project: Cognitive Culture Series
Date: October 2025

Abstract

Traditional journalism still clings to a 20th-century fantasy: that reporters can observe without influencing.
But when covering trauma, disability, or cultic abuse, detachment becomes complicity.
This essay reframes “objectivity” as a cultural performance—a posture of distance that privileges comfort over truth.

The Problem with Neutrality

Neutrality implies that all sides deserve equal weight. In stories of harm, that’s false balance.
When survivors describe coercion, and perpetrators describe “misunderstandings,” giving both equal space isn’t fairness—it’s mathematical erasure.
Trauma fields require discernment, not detachment.

The Reporter as Participant

Every journalist shapes the narrative by the questions they ask, the silences they leave, and the platforms they choose.
Pretending otherwise absolves them of accountability.
Objectivity isn’t absence of bias—it’s unacknowledged bias wearing formal clothes.

I learned this the hard way. When sources from cultic networks spoke to me as a survivor first and a journalist second, their trust depended on shared experience, not credentials.
To pretend that empathy contaminated my reporting would be to deny the very method that made honesty possible.

Empathy as Methodology

Empathy doesn’t mean agreement; it means precision in listening.
It allows for context without collapse.
An empathetic reporter can distinguish between manipulation and memory without granting both equal credibility.

Trauma-informed journalism begins with self-audit:
– Who benefits from my framing?
– Whose pain am I translating for whose comfort?
– What language normalizes harm as inevitability?

Reframing Accuracy

The ethical pivot is from “objectivity” to transparency.
Readers deserve to know where a writer stands, what informs their lens, and how they manage conflicts of interest.
Honest subjectivity produces clearer data than feigned neutrality.

TL;DR

Objectivity is not the absence of bias; it’s the denial of empathy.
Trauma reporting demands clarity, not coldness.
The goal isn’t to stand outside the story—it’s to tell it without betraying the people who lived it.

Tags

#CognitiveCulture #Journalism #MediaEthics #TraumaReporting #DisabilityStudies #Ethnography #MeganWrites

Field Note 003: The Economy of Attention

Subtitle: How trauma, technology, and capitalism compete for cognitive bandwidth

Researcher: Megan A. Green
Field location: Mobile workspace / Transit corridor
Date: October 2025

Abstract

This field note explores the economics of focus as a survival resource.
Among disabled and neurodivergent communities, attention operates like currency: scarce, rationed, and easily stolen by systems that were never designed for our cognitive load.
Every ping, feed, and algorithmic notification represents a micro-tax on agency.

Field Context

The researcher is currently operating in motion—airports, rideshares, text threads, remote study sessions.
Mobility creates fragmentation: multiple devices, multiple tabs, competing channels of urgency.
In the same hour I receive a trauma disclosure, a project deadline, and a flight delay. Each demands a slice of the same finite attentional budget.

Trauma compounds this scarcity. Hyper-vigilance makes the brain run background checks on every sound. The cost of safety is processing power.

Observations

  1. Capitalism incentivizes distraction.
    Attention is the new extractive industry; our focus is mined, refined, and sold.
  2. Disability reframes scarcity.
    Cognitive fatigue turns concentration into a measurable commodity. The more tired the body, the higher the transaction cost of thought.
  3. Tech replicates trauma patterns.
    Constant alerts mimic the unpredictability of crisis. Each “ding” becomes a small-scale startle reflex, rewarding hyper-alertness.

Survivor Adaptations

  • Micro-scheduling: carving ten-minute focus bursts with planned sensory breaks.
  • Cognitive triage: classifying tasks as life-critical, relationship-critical, or optional noise.
  • Selective invisibility: deliberately ignoring certain channels to preserve bandwidth. This isn’t neglect; it’s energy ethics.

The disabled body becomes both researcher and lab—testing productivity models that honor nervous-system limits instead of punishing them.

Cultural Implications

When society defines worth by responsiveness, those who pace themselves are labeled unreliable.
But delayed response is often the only sustainable form of participation.
A trauma-informed culture would interpret quiet as calibration, not disinterest.

Reflexive Note

Writing this in transit, I time my focus around noise levels and battery life.
The experiment is embodied: a researcher measuring attention by the charge left in her devices and her nervous system alike.

TL;DR

Attention is currency, and survivors live on a fixed income.
Every scroll, ping, or demand is a micro-transaction.
To spend attention wisely is not laziness—it’s sovereignty.

Tags

#FieldNotes #CognitiveCulture #AttentionEconomy #TraumaInformed #DisabilityStudies #Neurodiversity #Accessibility #MeganWrites