My name is Sean Na, a 24-year-old Asian journalism student. Before I came to the United States in 2008 to pursue a commitment to be a reliable and trustworthy investigative journalist, I spent the first 16 and half years of my life in South Korea.

I am a reporter for the Columbia Missourian serving about 110,000 people within the city’s boundary. When writing a story, I, as a reporter, should let the readers make the judgment, not the author. I should not be emotionally invested and always consider fairness and accuracy. Nonetheless, I am a human who is very much vulnerable to emotion. I am an Asian. And of course, I would feel angry when reading a news story that describes Asians in a very stereotypical way, such as viewing them as a silent model minority that does not speak up for its own justice.

One of the codes of journalism ethics by Society of Professional Journalists is that journalists should avoid stereotyping and be vigilant of their values and experiences that may affect their reporting. In order for me to avoid stereotyping a story, I may need to not write about anything that pertains to Asian matters.

However, there was a moment that I could not abstain myself from writing a story about Asian matters.

It was last fall when the University of Missouri – Columbia suffered a racial uprising. MU’s Concerned Student 1950 group was holding a days-long campout on the Mel Carnahan Quadrangle on campus protesting against systematic racism toward MU African-American students. The protest was sparkled since a former president of the University of Missouri System Tim Wolfe allegedly ignored the group’s effort to stop him during the MU’s 2015 homecoming parade. The Columbia Missourian, along with other local, state and national media, was deluging its coverage on racial discrimination toward MU African-American students. I was a Missourian reporter during the protest, but did not partake in the Missourian’s protest coverage. My eyes were not on the protest, but were on the other racial groups that might have experienced similar types of racial discrimination on campus.

It was in the midst of the protest when I was asking non–white and–black MU students whether they have experienced any racial discrimination. I talked to students from Africa, Asia, South America and Middle East. I spent about a week talking with these students, and found that a couple of Asian students had undergone a similar issue as African-American students. Those Asian students I spoke with shared their stories, but did not want me to put their stories in print.

That was the moment that I decided to write a story that delineates the unshared stories of MU Asian students. The moment I felt that if their stories were not known among other MU students, officials, and further citizens in Columbia, whereas stories of African-American students were widely known because of their active manner of voicing their concerns, I thought Asian students would remain unvoiced and timid in voicing their concerns as in the past, and MU officials would not know whether Asian students were going through the same problem as African-Americans. And as a result, MU’s policy for diversifying the campus climate would gear toward demolishing the racial wall between black and white, while the wall between Asian and other racial groups would remain untouched.

And I did not want that wrong legacy to continue.

It was early November. I told my Missourian editor that I wanted to write a story about racial discrimination toward MU Asian students. My editor knew I have a strong feeling about discrimination toward Asian. He knew I have encountered several incidents, such as when someone was throwing out racial slurs at me. Then he politely suggested to me, “Sean, why don’t you write a column about it?” I disregarded his suggestion because I thought the readers would not care about a column that tries to raise awareness of Asian discrimination written by a student, and more importantly Asian reporter. Thus, I was persistently asking him for a permission to write a story. I even brought my pitch during the Missourian’s daily budget meeting, where not only my editor but also other reporters and editors heard why I wanted to do a story. During that meeting, I received several nods from people, and my editor ended up granting me the permission.

From reporting to publishing the story took me about four months ­— which included a four-week-long winter break. Those four months were the time that I was consistently grappling with an ethical challenge — avoid stereotyping the story and write what is true.

I spoke with about a hundred Asian students. About 15 to 20 of them shared a story which they described a racial discrimination. Most of them who shared asked me: “You are an Asian, too. Don’t you feel the same way as I do?” I was, to be honest, tempted to say, “Yes,” as their stories were very similar as I have gone through during my time at MU — such as a random person on the street asking or more likely yelling at me, “Do you speak English?” or a professor seemingly segregating me from the rest of the class. I was tempted to acknowledge such stories as clear instances of racial discrimination, though they were not. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission acknowledges racial discrimination only when someone spits racial slurs or profane words about a person’s race. What I heard from these Asian students was, I believe, largely subject to a personal feeling of being discriminated. None of the stories I heard was in the commission’s category of regarding racial discrimination. Nonetheless, I was emotionally moved as an Asian, and I wanted to include those vaguely discriminatory stories in print.

I went home and began writing the story based on what they told me. The story turned out to be around 800 words without including interviews with MU officials from the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative and the Civil Rights and Title IX Office. Then, I started reading out loud the story. I was reading about half way down, and realized this story was overly emotional and not telling the truth. I wrote strong adjectives on every seemingly racial instance that I heard from Asian students. I even discerned that I was depicting each instance in an exaggerating manner. This was not right. This was not why I insisted my editor that I wanted to write the story.

I felt ashamed. I realized whenever I talked with Asian students, I had an assumption that they had to have an experience being racially discriminated. I spent a few minutes reflecting my behaviors, and realized that I was coercing them to share anything seemingly related to racial discrimination. What I was doing was not a reporting. It was more likely an interrogation. I was, in fact, inclined to manipulate a false story after being discontent by seeing the Missourian only covering racial discrimination toward African-American students.

It was a hurt feeling when finally realizing I was being a manipulator rather than being a reporter. It was even more hurtful when I admitted that I was going against what Walters William wrote in his Journalist’s Creed: “A journalist should write only what he holds in his heart to be true.” Even though I well perceived that the story was not telling the truth, I was caught up with my own stereotype and did not care whether the story was telling the truth or not.

I was, for real, going against my commitment to be a reliable and trustworthy reporter.

It was mid-November when I had this wake-up call. I still had a few weeks to do true reporting. After that night, I strived to wipe out my stereotype that had kept luring me into writing a false story. About three months after, the story titled “MU’s Asian students reluctant to report episodes of discrimination, racism,” was published through the Columbia Missourian. When I was reading the published version of the story, I felt as if I had just been rescued from floundering in a deep swamp. I would never forget that feeling of the victory against my own stereotype. It is a feeling that I will hold forever as I continue to strive to be a reliable and trustworthy reporter.