Journalist Josie Duffy Rice gave a moderated talk on her experience reporting on the prosecution and prison systems.
The talk, titled “Telling the Untold Story: Investigating the U.S. Criminal Justice System,” was held in the Jody Richards Hall auditorium Thursday as part of the John B. Gaines Family Lecture Series.
Duffy is a freelance journalist whose stories have been published in The New York Times, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, The Atlantic and Slate, among others, according to her website. She founded and previously served as president of The Appeal, a nonprofit publication focused on holding criminal justice systems accountable.
Ananda Wallace, a senior broadcasting major, moderated the event. Wallace is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), including the women’s chapter on campus, which she helped form last year. Ryan Dearbone, her professor and mentor in the NABJ, recommended her as the moderator.
“It’s really good for networking and just meeting new people and just meeting black people that are in this type of field,” Wallace said. “NABJ has a special place in my heart.”
Duffy graduated from Columbia University before working in the Bronx Defenders office, then attended Harvard Law School. Duffy said she discovered her interest in media coverage working for the public defender’s office.
“Part of what I realized was not just that I was interested in the criminal legal system, but also that what media had taught me about the criminal legal system was inaccurate,” Duffy said. “It didn’t give context and, most importantly, it didn’t do a good job of describing who was responsible for decisions.”
Duffy later began her career as a journalist to hold the criminal justice system, namely prosecutors, accountable.
“Accountability really matters, and people behave differently in the dark than they do in the light,” Duffy said. “Sunlight disinfects.”
Duffy noted that the real focus of her reporting was on the systems themselves, not the people in them. She said that systems are drastically more powerful than people.
“I am a big believer in being soft on people and hard on systems,” Duffy said.
Wallace asked Duffy how working in the criminal justice system shaped her view of human nature and people.
“When I started at the Bronx Defenders and was first getting into this work, I became convinced that everybody in prison and everybody in the system was extremely misunderstood,” Duffy said. “That’s a kind of patronizing perspective. People are complicated.”
Duffy interviewed vulnerable sources for the Peabody-nominated podcast “Unreformed.” She produced and was featured in the 2023 podcast, which examined the historically abusive conditions at an industrial school for black youth in Mount Meigs, Alabama. Duffy spoke to former students, including the man who pitched the podcast.
Local Atlanta artist Lonnie Holley approached Duffy about covering the industrial school in Alabama. Holley told Duffy he had attended the school as a student and noticed it received no media attention.
“Then we had to find other people who went to the school, and that was the hardest part,” Duffy said. “There were no records.”
Duffy said that she was not aware of the school’s history when she became a producer of the podcast. She said that she might not have joined the project if she knew the school’s history.
“I also have kids, and so when you’re writing about child abuse, it’s really rough,” Duffy said.
Through critiquing the criminal justice system in her reporting, Duffy said she has to have difficult conversations with those involved.
“I’m often writing about people who have done something really bad,” Duffy said. “That often requires also talking to the people that they hurt.”
But Duffy said that she doesn’t define people as tragedies.
“People are just not the worst thing that happened to them,” Duffy said. “They’re not only the trauma or the bad thing or the harm, they also have joy in their lives.”
Wallace and Duffy conversed on various topics regarding journalism practices in the criminal justice field, including defining criminal and legal systems, making the complicated system more transparent, processing hard stories and dealing with criticism and backlash.
Wallace asked how Duffy balances her work and her personal life. Duffy responded that journalism was her whole life.
“I really keep meaning to learn to knit, and I still haven’t,” Duffy said. “I spend a lot of time reading about the system, writing about the system, doing projects on it. And I love that. I’m lucky to work in a field where I want to do this in my free time too.”
Duffy spread her passion for journalism during her time on campus. On Wednesday, she attended three of Journalism Professor Becca Andrew’s classes to meet and answer students’ questions about working in the journalism field.
“I sometimes worry that the way that we talk about journalism, myself included, discourages people from wanting to take it on as a job,” Duffy said. “Every journalist I know really loves their job, even when they’re on deadline or not having a good day and really don’t want to do it anymore.”
When asked to offer journalism students advice, Duffy instead gave a plea.
“Please go into journalism,” Duffy said. “We need you.”
