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00:00Wait, is that the guy they were supposed to...
00:18All the president's droids will continue after these messages.
00:21Phew, that was intense.
00:25Dear Tim and Moby, we're learning about journalism in school and have to research a famous reporter.
00:31Nellie Bly seems pretty cool.
00:33Can you tell me more about her?
00:35Thanks, Emilia.
00:37You picked a great one, Emilia.
00:39Nellie Bly is as well known for how she approached stories as for the stories themselves.
00:44She didn't just report on current events.
00:47Instead, she dove deep into subjects to dig up information that people were trying to
00:51hide.
00:52Her most famous piece uncovered the terrible conditions at a psychiatric hospital for women.
00:58Back then, they were called madhouses or lunatic asylums, and they weren't very nice places.
01:04To get the inside scoop, Bly pretended to be mentally ill.
01:08She faked memory loss and acted strangely.
01:12She was declared positively demented and sent to the facility at Blackwell's Island.
01:17Her resulting article, Ten Days in a Madhouse, was a huge hit.
01:21Readers were captivated by vivid details of freezing, filthy rooms, rotten food, and
01:27abusive staffers.
01:28Well, that's the kind of story that sold papers back then.
01:33The era's yellow journalism was all about drama and sensationalism.
01:37Writers used shocking details to pull readers in.
01:41For a lot of them, it didn't matter if the story was newsworthy or even true.
01:46But Bly stood out from her fellow reporters.
01:49She didn't make things up to grab people's attention.
01:52To get to the bottom of her stories, she put herself in the middle of the action, even
01:57when it came to reporting on dangerous situations.
02:00She filed dispatches direct from the front lines during World War I, one of the only
02:05female reporters to do so.
02:08Bly was just as daring during her time as a foreign correspondent in Mexico.
02:13She criticized the nation's dictator for jailing political opponents and reporters.
02:18Eventually, she had to flee the country to avoid prison herself.
02:22Well, Bly was never one to shy away from taking risks.
02:28In one series of articles, she raced around the world to see how fast it could be done.
02:33This was more than a decade before the Wright Brothers, so you couldn't just hop on a plane.
02:37Bly traveled by boat, train, horse, and rickshaw, filing reports by telegraph as she went.
02:46It was a hugely popular series.
02:49The paper even created a board game based on her adventure.
02:52After 72 days and nearly 25,000 miles, she arrived back in New York City.
02:59Yeah, it sounds kind of silly now, almost like a reality TV show.
03:05But this was 1889, when ladies were expected to have an escort just to go to the store.
03:11Taking a solo trip around the globe sent a message that women could accomplish anything.
03:16Which was exactly Bly's intention.
03:19She'd always been frustrated by the limitations placed on women.
03:23As a little girl, she saw her mother struggle to keep food on the table after her father died.
03:28When Nellie and her brothers reached their teens, they went to look for work.
03:33While her less-educated brothers easily scored high-paying factory jobs, Nellie was limited
03:38to what was considered women's work.
03:41Being a tutor or a nanny offered little chance to earn a decent living.
03:47Some of Bly's earliest articles focused on the struggles of working women.
03:51To find challenging jobs, receive fair treatment at work, and earn equal pay.
03:56Misogyny, prejudice against women, was a focus of many of her stories, including her investigation
04:03of the mental hospital.
04:05Many of the inmates weren't even mentally ill.
04:08Inmates were labeled insane just because they didn't speak English.
04:13Husbands had their wives committed just to get rid of them.
04:16And some women were locked away simply for speaking their minds, or violating the unwritten
04:22rules that defined how women should act.
04:25Calling them insane was a quick and easy way to shut them up.
04:29Bly went undercover in other difficult situations in order to break stories.
04:34She exposed employment agencies that took advantage of servants.
04:38Black market traders who bought and sold babies.
04:42And widespread harassment of young women by police officers.
04:46Her stories regularly sparked public outcries that led to real change.
04:51Bly was pioneering a new type of writing, investigative journalism.
04:57It's like a cross between reporting and detective work.
05:01Investigative reporters go to great lengths to unearth the truth.
05:04Some go undercover to get closer to their subjects, like Bly did.
05:08More often, it means spending months or even years researching a story.
05:13Threats to public health are a common subject of investigative reports, like when factories
05:18pollute rivers, or companies hide when their products are unsafe.
05:22Uncovering that kind of truth can be dangerous.
05:26Those in power will often do anything to protect their interests.
05:30Political corruption is another big focus, like in the Watergate scandal.
05:34That's when President Nixon ran a spying operation against his political rivals.
05:40Nixon eventually had to leave office, because two journalists refused to give up their search
05:44for the truth.
05:46In some parts of the world, they would have been imprisoned before they got very far.
05:50Our Constitution has specific language to prevent that from happening here.
05:55The First Amendment says that the government can't make any laws limiting the freedom of
05:59the press.
06:01It's no mistake that that same amendment protects our speech.
06:04When a reporter asks a politician a tough question, or writes about a corporation breaking
06:09the law, they're speaking out for all of us.
06:12That's why brave people like Nellie Bly are so important.
06:15They are our watchdogs, our whistleblowers, our guardians of the...
06:19Hmm.
06:20Point taken.