Solving Journalism’s Post-Truth Crisis With Feminist Standpoint Epistemology

Abstract

This essay proposes using feminist standpoint epistemology (FSE) to help journalists and scholars who increasingly find their credibility, authority, knowledge, and even their sincerity undermined. FSE foregrounds particularity and experience, arguing that the ways that bodies of knowledge are socially situated and embodied limits but also enables what one can know. I first outline some of the relevant principles of FSE, in order to suggest its applicability to journalism. Then I demonstrate how FSE explains professional journalism issues brought into the open by recent news exposés of work-related sexual harassment, including harassment perpetrated by journalists themselves.