Enemies of Your Vote - Understanding Voter Suppression, the College Campus, and You

This interview was conducted over email with Kyle Spencer, award-winning journalist, by Aseel Ibrahim, a second-year undergraduate student working for the Duke Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute. 

What made you want to become a journalist/reporter? 

I wanted to be a journalist as early as elementary school. I came to it originally because I loved writing and the idea of storytelling. But I was also acutely aware from an early age that there were grave injustices in the world and I felt compelled to expose them. This coupled with my inherent curiosity made journalism an obvious profession for me.

What sparked your interest in voting rights and protecting democracy?

My work covering extremism and anti-democratic extremist groups [sparked my interest in protecting democracy]. Voter suppression is a key tool these groups use to obtain and maintain power. Seeing how enthusiastic radicalized leaders are about keeping people from the polls really disgusted me - and led me to understand that they do not just want power, they want absolute power. Democracy is of no use to them. This is worrisome in a nation that prides itself on free and fair elections. And it led me to see how fragile our democracy could be in the face of forces that want to overtake it.

How do you think journalism relates to human rights and democracy? 

Journalists must be pro-democracy. If there is no democracy, there is no free press. This makes it absolutely essential that journalists identify people, institutions, groups, funders and movements that seek to erode away at our democracy. Today, there is a conversation within the journalism community about what exactly journalists ought to stand for, with some journalists contending that standing up for democracy is somehow taking sides. In my world view, journalists must always stand up for democracy. That's not taking sides. That's supporting our constitutional republic, which is the protective bedrock of this nation - and the reason journalists get to do the work they do.

What advice would you give to students studying human rights and journalism?

Be vigilant. The journalism community must serve the communities it covers. And to serve them, it must be aware of - and report on - threats to our democracy. Book banners, forces that seek to mute speech and suppress votes, bad actors who are spreading misinformation and funders who support insurrectionists need to be called out. A journalism community that doesn't see human rights as its higher calling and the protection of our democracy as its North Star, is not doing its job.

Is there anything else that you would like to add in relation to your career or journalism and human rights?

We are at an important inflection point in our nation's history where there are very forceful actors trying to normalize anti-democratic ideologies. Folks interested in human rights should expect American journalists to be their allies in this fight to preserve democratic norms.