Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-5frr9-13d9aad

As communicators we are always aware of making sure we are navigating our own inherent biases. The same is true as we counsel our clients. But in today’s society there is whole new layer where biases are being systematized and institutionalized. What does this mean for us as communicators? How to we navigate these tricky waters while also honoring the nuance necessary for clear communication? We discuss this weighty topic in today’s episode.
 
Read the Washington Post Op-ed referenced in today’s episode.
 
Transcript
Michelle Kane (00:02):
Thank you for joining us for this episode of That Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters, and my ever steady co-host Karen Swim of Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen, how are you today?
Karen Swim (00:17):
I'm great, Michelle. How are you doing?
Michelle Kane (00:19):
Hi. I'm doing well, doing well. Spring has sprung and brought all the pollen with it, so apologies for any congestion you may hear, but that's okay, <laugh>.
Karen Swim (00:31):
Yeah,
Michelle Kane (00:31):
It's worth it for the beauty <laugh>. So yeah, I'm doing well and I'm excited about today's topic. It's pretty juicy, so we're going to try and keep it to our usual compact nugget as our audience can listen as they go about their day, we jokingly refer to ourselves as your walking partners, so yes. As you're on your daily walk, here we go. We're going to talk about institutional bias.
Karen Swim (00:59):
Yeah.
Michelle Kane (01:00):
I said it was juicy <laugh>.
Karen Swim (01:03):
That's a weighty topic. I mean, we could, this is one of those topics that I love for us to be in a room together and just have like rich discussions about it. We really want to just talk about some of the things that we're seeing and reading, and at least put it on your mind to be thinking through, and having those discussions with other solos and industry leaders and clients, and really think about what this means for the future.
Michelle Kane (01:33):
Because, at the center of it, it speaks to what is the general truth, right? What are those things we can all agree on as a society and as our society continues to be polarized, how that can be really damaging in the short and long run. And the beauty of it is, as communicators, we can have a seat at this table, and yet again, help guide our clients, people in our sphere through these conversations. I know, Karen, you had brought up, there was an article on the Washington Post about, was it a Stanford law student? I think?
Karen Swim (02:19):
Yeah, so there were two things recently that in reading through them, really drove this home to me of the impact and the potential emerging trends. So one was this Washington Post article. It was an opinion piece from a Stanford law student that talked about how the very charged, polarized political environment has infiltrated the campus. And if you go to the Washington Post, there are actually several articles about this in law schools from another columnist as well. But this particular piece was again, an opinion. And this woman talked about how people are being forced into us versus them very much like the rest of the world. But where it got really interesting for me was how she described that when if you were of a certain political party, people expected you to be an attorney. And if you said that you wanted to be a prosecutor, you were bullied for it, ostracized, as this particular group saw this as evil. And conversely, on the other side of the political party, on the other side of the aisle, if you wanted to be an attorney, it labeled you in a particular ilk. So the fact that bias could be impacting choice of profession is a very scary thing, particularly when we're talking about our justice system, because I believe that this is just a mirror of other institutions in our society. So, at the educational level, if we're creating bias and that bias is leading people to lean in a particular direction for how they would use their skillset in their careers, that's problematic because we need diversity of thought in every area. And the second thing that really brought this home was Twitter's code being released. And we knew that that was coming. They announced that they were going to open up the code and reading takes from people that read through the code.
I have not read through the code myself. So let me say that I can read code. I'm not an expert in it, but I do know how to read code. I haven't read it myself, but it really brought out and articulated the bias that's written into the code. Now, Twitter is not alone in this. We know, and we've talked about this for years, we've talked about bias and AI, we've talked about bias and algorithms. And so all of this led us to really start to think very deeply about, as communicators, we know that we already have to work to ensure that we are n