Performing the News: Stuttering and Challenging Norms in Broadcast Media

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome back to Proud Stutter. My name is Maya Chupkov. We have Elia Powers. Um, he is the author of Performing the News, Identity, Authority, and the Myth of Neutrality from Rutgers University Press. He is an associate professor in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University. A sports features and podcast editor at the Baltimore Watchdog and a freelance podcast reporter, producer and host, and he is a proud Seattle native who lives in Washington, D.

C. Welcome, Elia, to the podcast. Thank you, Maya. Great to be here. I'm so excited to have you. We've kind of been talking on and off for a couple years now. And, yeah, it's just been really great to, um, be able to talk to someone that's also from the journalism world. Um, we've, we've bonded a lot on that. And, yeah, I'm really excited to dive [00:01:00] into your book that has just come out.

Um, so can you just talk a little bit about the summary of your book? to start us off. Yeah, definitely. Um, so the book is based primarily on interviews with current and former journalists. Um, and it focuses on how they learned about the norms for appearance and for voice, uh, in journalism. So primarily, you know, broadcasting and podcasting, um, you know, journalists will learn about them oftentimes through conversations, but also just Through like watching tv, listening to the radio, having sort of side conversations about what's considered professional.

And you know, the book kind of talks about how oftentimes in journalism, um, uh, you know, uh, there are unspoken rules about you're supposed to sort of use, you know, news anchor voice, sound a certain way, uh, or you're supposed to, you know, look a certain way to be considered to be authoritative. And, um, I trace sort of how journalists from historically [00:02:00] marginalized groups.

Uh, oftentimes have felt the need to sort of cover up or tone down, um, aspects of their voice, um, or, uh, you know, sort of change their appearance in order to be perceived as professional to get into the industry. Uh, so the book really focuses mostly on journalists, women, people from, uh, people of color, people with disabilities, um, and sort of their experiences and also they're actually changing perceptions.

norms around what's acceptable presentation, um, uh, in throughout the industry. So your introduction to this book, um, is all about your experience as a person who stutters. Um, so I'd love to to know like what, um, did you always know you were going to start off the book that way? Yeah. So I do think, I mean, in research and we all talk about like me search, you know, researchers often just start with the things they know best.

Um, and that's [00:03:00] definitely the case for me. Uh, my own kind of backstory that I talked about in the introduction. So like from a really young age, um, I really wanted to be, uh, like a broadcaster, like when I was like, you know, five or six, I'd be down in my basement, I would be like announcing sports games.

I'm an only child also. So I had a lot of free time, uh, you know, but I, like, I saw myself as like a TV announcer. Um, and. So that kind of continued, you know, I was like really early into like getting into journalism and just kind of wanted to do that and never really questioned it. Um, and I went kind of throughout high school, um, thinking maybe I'll go into radio, go into TV and, um, you know, sort of when I was younger though, I developed, um, a stutter and it was, you know, I would say sort of most pronounced when I was.

Teenager, um, maybe middle school, high school, and you know, no one really ever had to tell me, you know, and I don't really don't remember a conversation where somebody said, you know, you may not be able to make it in journalism because you have a stutter, but just through listening to who is on the [00:04:00] radio, watching who is on television, I just got a sense that like, I didn't sound like The traditional broadcaster who had a very smooth, you know, uh, uh, clear, uh, voice and never seemed to have any, you know, never seemed to falter.

Right. It almost sounded like they could, they were pre recording whatever they were, they were saying. Um, so I ended up, you know, going into print journalism. I majored in journalism in college. I gave broadcasting sort of a shot in a few cases, but basically again, never a conversation with a professor or anyone who told me not to, but I just kind of got the sense that print.

Journalism was my only route into the profession. Um, and I had, you know, I enjoyed my print career. I was a journalist for a full time for like almost a decade. You know, I don't have any regrets about doing print journalism, but in the back of my head, I kind of always was like, well, you know, why did I sort of not even try, why did I not, not put myself out there?

Um, and so that eventually led me to, um, you know, so that, you know, I went into academia, decided to get into, [00:05:00] uh, teaching, um, and then I, you know, as the teacher. College you also obviously do research and that kind of led me to think about, um, you know, what can I, how could I do some more research on whether my experience aligned with other journalists experience who stuttered and what are the like ideas out there?

Why did I perceive that? That stuttering was an impediment, you know, was a was going to be a roadblock to, uh, A career in journalism. So that's kind of a little bit about my back story. Before you wrote this book, you, um, had done some initial research related to stuttering. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, definitely. So like. You know, the first study that I did with a colleague of mine at Towson University was all about textbooks, which may not seem to be like the place you would first look for this kind of answer some of these questions. But, you know, as a journalism student, for instance, and as a professor, you know, the books that we assign and the books that we read, you know, which are often from.

Sort of voices of authority are pretty influential. So I wanted to see, [00:06:00] um, how like journalism and communication textbooks, uh, sort of like frame the ideal standards of verbal communication. In other words, like what was the message to journalism students or communication students about. What voices are ideal or professional.

Um, and just, I'll give you kind of a quick sense of the findings here. So I did, you know, a content analysis, basically looked at the language that was used in these textbooks. And so I've analyzed 41 textbooks and I, what I found was only seven of them, um, directly referenced, you know, speech disabilities, you know, these are mostly like.

journalism textbooks used in like a broadcast news course. So it's not like that surprising that, that a lot of them wouldn't mention speech disabilities. Right. Um, but a lot of them, even without mentioning, right. Then they, they use sort of this sort of, I would call kind of euphemistic coded language to show that.

You know, uh, the ideal voice, I'll just give you an examples of the quality, like the language they use were, were things like, uh, clarity, crispness, steady tempo, [00:07:00] pacing, um, several of the authors noted that, you know, journalists should be confident, assertive in press conferences and in interviews, um, there was very little mention about accommodations, um, and some of them even mentioned like that, Um, having, you know, um, either a stutter or having speech disabilities can be a roadblock to success in journalism or even a disqualifier.

Um, can I read like one or two? I have like one or two quotes that I just pulled out that I think are representative and quotes are helpful. So one here said that a pleasing voice is helpful, but an offensive voice is a handicap. Voices that turn off listeners may result from problems in quality, delivering and breathing.

Stuttering is a problem of rate and rhythm that is best addressed by a professional. So that is very clear message to journalists. One also mentioned that minor speech impediments, you know, could be barriers to a promising career. So oftentimes it was implicit, but sometimes it was very explicit in these textbooks of like what was considered to be professional so that [00:08:00] you.

That was the first study.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, there was a second study that I did kind of a follow up that looked very similar topic that looked at, um, job advertisements. So, you know, if you're thinking about going, like, if you're thinking about how you learn about like occupational sort of norms, right, you started in school, then maybe as you graduate, you're looking at job ads that are pretty influential too, to kind of express what employers are looking for.

So I did basically another analysis of about 510. Uh, job advertisements across journalism, job boards, all sorts of, you know, broadcasting and even print, uh, print jobs. Um, and this one I found [00:09:00] about half or so of job advertisements reference sort of verbal communication, um, just sort of ideals overall. Um, more on TV and radio than in print, obviously, but again, very similar findings.

Um, one of the things that was interesting, if you can imagine, you know, obviously job ads, employers have to be careful about language and they don't want to be discriminatory and they don't want to have red flags. So again, a lot of euphemisms, a lot of vague language around like being an excellent communicator or having a dynamic on air presence, so often.

You would read these, I'd read these ads and it'd be like, so what do they really mean by dynamic and excellent communicator? They didn't exactly specify. I don't know if they left it a little bit vague. Um, the broadcast ones sometimes mentioned things like, you know, the importance of like flawless or effortless improvising on air, um, or being poised.

Under pressure. Um, you know, even like print job ads, which I wouldn't think would really mention anything about voice made, made it clear that journalists were supposed to be like a comfortable public speaking, have excellent [00:10:00] phone interviewing skills, which is anyone who's, you know, done a job with her on the phone, who's had a stutter noses can be really difficult to do right when you're not making that face to face communication.

So again, all these euphemisms, like. Effortless, confident, flawless voices. Um, like same general idea. It was pretty clear through reading these that, you know, employers viewed the ideal form of communication as one that's, you know, and, and effortless and, you know, all, but they all, but said, you know, uh, having a stutter is, you know, it was a problem.

I mean, that was sort of the main takeaway. Yeah. So I wanted to actually, cause I made some notes. In my copy, um, and I kind of wanted to pull out a few quotes that stuck with me. Um, I, like one of the things you said in your, in intro is I'm not acting so much as I'm presenting a polished version of myself.

Yeah, so that gets a, [00:11:00] um, Why I titled the book performing the news. Cause some people, when I told the title, we're like, why do you, what, what is why you, and some journalists are even like performing, they were taking it back. We don't perform. We just do the news. We read the news. So yeah, the, the idea of like performing, right.

Is like, you know, we all code switch or we all put on different versions of ourselves and whatever, you know, wherever we, wherever we talk, uh, and like whatever, you know, whatever kind of audience we have. So like for me, right. I kind of realized, so, you know, I should say I kind of ended up getting into podcasting later.

Just in, in recent years, um, I decided, you know, I wanna give this a shot. And, um, yeah, I kind of realized as I was writing this book, like I was unintentionally I think imitating this sort of public radio voice. You know, I always, you know, kind of the, the warm, smooth, low, uh, very kind of, uh, you know, uh, a kind of , slightly toned down maybe I'm trying to act there.

Uh, you know, version of my voice is, you can tell. from probably this conversation, you know, I'm, I talk fairly [00:12:00] fast. I, I get pretty animated and I, when I do the podcast voice, I'm a little, a little less caffeinated, a little more, I try to go slower. So I don't, you know, uh, trip on words. I mean, it's sort of like, yeah, there's a performance there.

And I feel like, especially, you know, in broadcast, a lot of journalists that I spoke to for the book said that. They were kind of either trained that way, or they sort of unintentionally did that because they felt that was what they were used to hearing.

Another thing you talked about, you said that your stutter gradually subsided. You also said that your speech limited what you felt comfortable doing and saying. So my own experience, and this actually ties into just the last of the, the third study that I did before the book actually had to do with, I actually interviewed, Uh, journalists who stutter.

This was a very much an autobiographical type study and my experiences and their experiences were very similar. I'll just start with my experiences. So, [00:13:00] um, I mean, not only that it limited, you know, my, it just felt like limited my career options. Um, but even when I was a print journalist, so I would do things like, You know, when I, uh, let's just do phone interviews for an example, you know, I worked at this publication where, you know, it was a new publication and there was just basically one big room open concept.

I shared a desk with like two other people, my age or their young, you know, young reporters and they, you know, would get on the phone, pick up, you know, just like it was nothing. And I, uh, would. You know, do things like wait until they're all out and to make a phone call, I would go into a back room to make a phone call.

I would email people in advance to make sure they knew I was calling. So I wouldn't have that kind of awkward introduction. Um, you know, I, I, you know, I mean, I still. When I have to introduce myself, um, you know, I, I still get nervous sometimes because that my name was one of the things that I, that I block on.

Um, and so that never leaves you, even though, yeah, I mean, I sort of, my stutters become less pronounced and I've, you know, in [00:14:00] certain situations, I've become just used to speaking. Yeah. It's still, that still is with me. And even phone calls, even I still, to this day, you try to sort of, I don't like talking and, you know, doing this sort of conversations in front of a crowd.

And that was very similar to what I heard from other journals. I say we do all of those things. People, the journalists who had to go on air on broadcasting mentioned to me that they would do things like rehearse everything five times that they were saying, try to imagine. Conversations that they would have, you know, which was difficult because in unscripted situations, you can't pair for everything, but yeah, a lot of the experiences that I had, um, as far as trying to manage my stutter and sort of, um, you know, do things to, to, to avoid, you know, moments where I felt everyone was like, all eyes are on me, um, that was shared by other journalists that I spoke to.

One story you told it in your book really stuck out that you even. Yeah. Like, would get hung up on and then not have a source for your story. So, yeah. Like, [00:15:00] did that happen often or? That was less, I mean, that, so that specific story is actually when I was at a high school journalism program. So I'm sitting in this dorm room, the same dorm, the same dorm that I'd actually be in later as a college student.

And so, you know, in high school, I mean, you know, high school journalists are just trying to figure out what the heck they're doing anyway. So no confidence. Right. Uh, and so, yeah. So it's that particular case. Yeah. I just remember. Having a block and just having this person because, you know, when you're on the phone too, it's like, this was like 1998 people probably were doing still doing prank phone calls.

And the guy was probably like this, this person is like, like, like pulling my chain. All right. See you, man. So yeah, so I, that was, I didn't have that particular, I mean, usually sources were actually pretty, pretty good. I mean, they, you know, sometimes I would disclose my stutter in advance. They could tell early on and, you know, I mean, we're pretty like professional about it, but yeah, there were times where either I just couldn't do it or I would have to settle for an email interview or something like that.

And same thing happened with, you know, uh, uh, journalists that I interviewed for sure. [00:16:00] Yeah. Oh my God. That as a high school student, I can just imagine that's such a gut punch. Um, and the fact that you still kept going, um, and not like letting your stutter get in the way is. Um, amazing, because I remember I, I also had the same aspiration, like I wanted to be a sports broadcaster, um, and I just never really went after it, um, and I think It was mostly because of my experiences in high school because I, like, dabbled in broadcast journalism.

And then whenever I had the opportunity to, like, do a segment in front of the whole school, I just chickened out just because I didn't want to be exposed as, oh, that, That's girl stutters, right? So, um, so yeah, I think this I think this um your story is going to really um [00:17:00] help a lot of people out there who want to pursue um, Like journalism careers or even like public speaking.

So, um, that's really great. And then another really important um intersection you have Is not only like people who stutter and people with you know Disfluent speech, but also like access and accents and other forms of non standard speech. Can you talk about that a little bit? You know, if you think about what kind of voices you don't hear typically on the radio or on television.

It's people with, you know, often foreign accents or if they are their British accents and they're not other off, you know, sort of other accents, you very, rarely, very rarely hear Southern accents, accents, you know, people from sort of, you know, I mean like, um, you know, South Boston or the Bronx in New York, just to take examples that I cite in the book.

You know, accents are oftentimes an [00:18:00] indicator, sort of a signal of social class. And so, you know, there's all of this interesting background that I learned about sort of how the kind of like Midwestern kind of quote unquote, you know, accentless voice became the norm in journalism, but there is definitely, especially with voice, um, I think there has just been the sense that you have to sound like you're for like the quote that I always keep thinking of in the book, as someone said, you have to sound like you're from everywhere.

But nowhere, right. And you have to sound like, like, you know, you, we shouldn't know where you're from. Um, and then, you know, this relates to centering and it relates to, you know, you sort of anything that was deemed a distraction, right. A lot of the textbooks, a lot of the people I talked to, even like news consultants would say, you know, sometimes a stutter or stammering can be considered to be like, um, distracting to audiences.

That was a word that kept coming up. And so, you know. I want to be a distraction, right? That was sort of like the, the word I kept hearing that came up. Can you talk about the book a little more and like how you structured it and some of [00:19:00] the big themes that um, that You know, we're focused on, I talk a lot about kind of the backstory just as far as like, what, what I'm talking about, we're talking about covering and code switching and, and trying to tone down or kind of, you know, try to almost like, um, assimilate, right.

Uh, so that's kind of some of the more academic type chapters, uh, but talk about like the, the audience, the imagined audience, like podcasters and broadcasters always have this idea of who they're speaking to, which affects the way that they talk and the way that they look. Um, and then I talk about just like how journalists are going to learn.

About these norms, right? In classrooms from reading, from watching and listening, from meeting with image consultants and voice consultants. And then the rest of the book is basically just sort of, uh, looking at voice on radio, um, voice, uh, voice and podcasting appearance on television, right? Kind of just these different mediums and how.

You know, certain things became viewed as norm, normative [00:20:00] or professional. And, you know, podcasting has, has really has, cause I mean, broadcasting now, I think there are more, we do, you do hear more voices now, um, that are maybe non traditional, more journalists who maybe stutter or have speech disabilities, but I still think it's relatively, uh, relatively small, right.

Compared to the, the universe of journalists podcasts though. Our different story and that the medium has really changed. I think our perception of sort of, um, who, you know, who, um, you know, what voices we hear, and I think that's been a great thing. Yeah. I'd love to talk more about that because, um, I have met and interviewed.

Um, a lot of podcasters who stutter and I feel like there is still this like performance going on, which like, you know, that's hard to shake because a lot of people even who have, even who have podcasts come from either the radio world and have been, um, have been trained either professionally or by, [00:21:00] like you said, hearing others and trying to sound like they should be sounding.

Um, and so, yeah, I have met a lot of podcasters who stutter. And even me, like, you know, I'm trying to train my brain more to sound to not put on a performance. But sometimes I. catch myself falling into like sounding a certain way and um, and the things like that and that's also interesting because I've been, we've been doing voiceover for some of our fundraising materials for our documentary and so that kind of also gets into that dance of like wanting to sound like yourself but also having this person having this part of you that's like, okay, sound this way.

Absolutely. I mean, there is something about like, you know, we're both sitting behind microphones. There's something about the presence of a microphone that just makes, it just makes you, like I could be talking to a wall right now, it just does make you like, sit [00:22:00] up and kind of like, okay. Like I'm, I'm, I'm on now there's an audience in front of me rather than she's.

I mean, you know, w maybe if we were having coffee right now, uh, we, we, we would sound slightly different. Yeah. There is something, it is a very strong, the performance nature of, of being in media is strong for sure. Um, yeah, but I'd love, yeah, if you could talk more about like the opportunities in podcasting and how that's, you're seeing that shift happen.

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that was interesting about podcasts, so it seems like there were sort of were like two main strands of, especially early on in podcasting, you know, there were the kind of, yeah, people from public radio who were early, who were just saw podcasting as sort of another way to reach people on demand.

And, uh, Right. They're very professionalized and those people in public grade, obviously all. Sound like, you know, very public radio ish. I mean, they, they had sort of very professional, I don't know, I don't like the word professional. They had, they had very, you know, kind of slick voices. Let's just say very well trained.

And then there was kind of the DIY, right? The kind of bloggers and people who just were [00:23:00] not in media who came into podcasting and they. Sounded non traditional in a variety of ways, right? And they'd never had any voice coaching sessions. There was no sense of like, Oh, I've been trained to speak from, you know, speaking to sort of, you know, have a certain posture or speak a certain way.

And so I think, you know, because. Yeah, this was a new medium and people, you know, there wasn't that sense of like following tradition, you know, I think people just became used to listeners. I think just sort of became used to people who sound like them. Um, I mean, obviously people still have their own biases and dispositions of liking certain types of voices more than others.

I have all section of the voice of the book about, you know, women's voices and all the crap they have to deal with from audiences. Um, so there's still, you know, implicit bias and all that stuff. I don't want to. I just think in general, podcast listeners have a different sense of what, like they are, they want to hear the word that gets thrown around all the time.

I'm sure you could guess what I'm about to say is authenticity, right? That's the word that you hear in podcasting and people like hearing themselves. [00:24:00] Represented, um, you know, listening and that, and it matters, right? The more that, I mean, there's research that shows that the more that we hear certain types of voices, uh, we just become used to them, that they become less distracting and you actually can change people's views on sort of what is considered to be, you know, normal and professional.

That's one of my main arguments in the book of why we need more diverse sounding voices. Just getting into a section of your book that, um, I want to. Call out. Um, it says employers and educators have evaluated journalists for a study Agreed that speech impediments and vocal tics are faults that may lead listeners to question a person's suitability for broadcasting you also mention like Hurting their credibility and sounding disabled that really stuck out to me especially because You know i'm were, I mean, by the time this episode comes out, it would have been in the past, but we are [00:25:00] doing a disability Um, of Filmmakers with Disabilities panel and both myself and the filmmaker Reed have, you know, I would say non standard speech.

So would love to like, talk to you more about that. Yeah. I mean, that's, yeah. Yeah. That was one of those studies. Right. That's sort of, you kind of read and you're kind of, you kind of, you know, I was like, uh, that, that's sort of, I mean, I wasn't surprised by it, um, but it does show again that I just think, you know, as listeners.

We are used to what we're used to. And it's hard to get people necessarily out of that mindset that, Oh, people in, in, in, in media are supposed to sound a certain way. And so I think, again, the only way that you change perceptions, right. The word normalized comes up a lot, but that is, I'd really think that's true.

Like, I mean, the more you hear people who sound. Certain way, whether it's with accents, whether it's, you know, voices that are non traditional, whether it's people who stutter, the more that the less it becomes distracting, the more that it becomes normalized. And the more, you know, so I, I know, I don't want to, again, imply that like you can just erase [00:26:00] biases, uh, or erase ideas about, you know, stigma that people who stutter face, those are real and those are persistent, but you can chip away at it again, just by, by representation, by having people who do sound, um, you know, who's just has sound diverse, right?

With this book, um, we already talked a little about, like, your, your call to action, which is, like, having more people with diverse voices represented in all areas of media, um, is there anything else that you hope that the book, um, you know, like, is there any other call to actions you have and, um, and, like, where, you know, offer?

You want to kind of take the book as far as like advocacy or any of that stuff. So, I mean, one of the things, you know, I mean, the last year I kind of like break it down by different, the different roles you might have. So for like people like me who [00:27:00] are educators, like I teach a podcast in class and I would, I, one of the messages I have for educators is always, I use the word good radio voice, you know, we.

A lot of people always say, Oh, you know, you sound like, you know, I mean, like I've had people, so, you know, only later in life, right? This is one of the things that I always think about when I, again, you know, I've had a much less pronounced stutter, have I got to say, Oh, you have a good radio voice. No one said that.

When I was 17 years old, they only said it, you know, what I have, when I performed on my podcasts, uh, they, they said that. And so I really try to get out of the habit myself and encourage people not to use the word good radio voice or even good podcast voice. Cause there's lots of voices that are suitable for the medium.

Right. Um, so that's one thing, uh, to encourage that, you know, I mean, again. The reason why I bring up and like to come back to this tech studies of textbooks and job ads is those things matter. The way that you frame that stuff matters and job ads. And if you just insinuate there's one right way of sounding, that's going to be influential.

You're going to get [00:28:00] people that don't even try, right. They don't even apply to jobs. So, you know, not don't include unnecessary. from applying because I think they don't sound, you know, they don't sound right. Um, and you know, the other thing too is like my interviews with journalists, a lot of them said to me, and I felt the same way, um, that, you know, sometimes having a, uh, a Our speech disabilities, for instance, can actually be an asset, right?

When you're a journalist. So we don't often think about that, about that, but my own experience and what people told me was that first, you have to work a lot harder. Like you have to like the, the, the broad journalist who prepared over and over what he was going to say, right. He was prepared, he worked a lot harder and he knew exactly what it was to say.

And he would, you know, I mean, I don't know for a fact, but I bet he. just nailed it when they actually did it on air. Um, so, you know, being hard workers and oftentimes people that you'd speak to men like sources mentioned that you're more empathetic. Um, you know, and so that, you know, um, like they're at ease.

I've had people tell me and journalists told me in [00:29:00] that, uh, that study, I mentioned that because they sound like super polished, they didn't sound like a traditional broadcaster. You know, the source sort of felt that and was like, Oh, okay. I can like let my guard down now, which is person to person here.

Right. Uh, and actually open up more. So I think if we think more about not just about, you know, you know, people who stutter and people who have other disabilities and sort of being, you know, you have to like make a combinations and it's hardship, but also just like, okay, well, what can they bring to the job?

That's positive. That actually helps them do their job better and make sources or make people that they talk to feel comfortable. Like that's real. That's not, that's something that I think. So something we should think about. Definitely. Um, well, um, is there anything else, any last minute things you wanted to, to, to mention, um, before we close out?

One of the reasons that I wrote the book is for. whoever the 16 year old is, who is maybe like me, who is thinking about getting into journalism. Now I [00:30:00] wanted them to have, I mean, you know, some of the book when you read it is, is discouraging as far as the experiences people have had to go through, but it's also, you know, in some ways it's a positive story because I think journalism has gotten in some ways.

I mean, it's all. Difficult profession for a lot of reasons, uh, but it's gotten more open to, you know, to people who look and sound, you know, in diverse ways. Um, and so I really would like young journalists to know that the industry is in some ways more open now to them than it ever has been. Um, and you know, so that's the sort of takeaway message that I want to have.

And that, you know, again, hopefully that. Everyone who's involved in training and consulting with and teaching journalists, you know, is part of this and what they say, you know, the encouragement they give. Um, I mean, I have had a few students who have had stutters or who have accents and I try to, if, you know, Like the way I have to relate, really try to like, say, like, tell them like you, like this, you know, like you sound professional, right?

Not, not, not have them have to feel like, you know, [00:31:00] like no one's ever said anything to them. I don't want to have, I don't want them to have the same experience that I had. No one really ever encouraged me, right? No one discouraged me, but no one really encouraged me either. And I wish, and I hope that.

Young journalists now get that encouragement from people who are in positions of power. Totally. Well, thank you so much, Elia. This was a great conversation. And yeah, thanks for joining us on Proud Stutter. Thank you, Maya. It's been a pleasure.