Since its October debut, This American Life producer Sarah Koenig's Serial has quickly become one of the most popular and critically acclaimed podcasts ever produced. Its episodes are a serialized inquiry into the 1999 murder of high-school student Hae Min Lee. Did Adnan Syed, her ex-boyfriend, really strangle her? Or was he an innocent teen condemned to life in prison for a crime he didn't commit? The possibility of exoneration is a recurring theme. In fact, the show's reporting caused the Maryland Innocent Project to launch its own probe of the case.

Despite that context, a small community of detractors is subjecting Serial to a scathing critique framed in the language of social justice. Its narrator and producer stands accused of exemplifying white privilege, stereotyping Asian Americans and Muslims, racism against blacks, and making "people of color" cringe. We'll get to the examples marshaled to support those critiques in a moment.

They're worth addressing for two reasons.

One is their plausibility. Journalism requires its practitioners to delve into unfamiliar subjects, communities, and subcultures. Mistakes happen often and can be difficult for the reporter or audience to discern. So the charge, "You got that country wrong," or "you misjudged that church," or "you don't understand how such companies work," or "that's not how it is in that political faction," or "you fell into stereotypes when writing about that ethnic community" should never be dismissed. The best course is to reflect on the critique with as open a mind as possible. As often as not, there is at least something to be learned from the critic.

The second reason to address these critiques is that the show's reception among those invested in social justice will help determine whether other experiments like it are attempted. Should more journalism like Serial receive funding or enjoy the moral and financial support of podcast listeners in the future, or is there something "problematic," cringeworthy, or even racist about this kind of journalism? The stigma attached to those characterizations could cause producers, editors, or reporters to shy away from similar projects, whether for better or worse.

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Let's get my biases out of the way. As a longtime fan of This American Life and especially of Koenig's past work, I went into Serial with high expectations. On first listen, I was not disappointed. The plot was riveting. Avid listeners couldn't help learning civically valuable details about the criminal-justice system. And I detected nothing objectionable about the podcast with respect to white privilege, race, or ethnicity. I did reflect on the ethical implications of publicly reinvestigating a murder case in a way that would likely force the family of the victim to relive it. But I concluded that the nontrivial chance of a wrongful conviction made renewed inquiry a moral imperative (if not for this podcast then for someone).

Despite all that, I kept an open mind when I saw Jay Caspian Kang's article in The Awl, "'Serial' and White Reporter Privilege." In part, this is because "white-reporter privilege" sounds like just the sort of thing I might not discern. I also have a high opinion of The Awl's cultural analysis, and hold Kang in even higher esteem. After reading "The High Is Always the Pain and the Pain is Always the High," which I selected as one of the best pieces written in 2011, I felt sure I wanted to read everything he ever published. In doing so, I've found much of his writing on race in America to offer uncommon nuance and insight.

In Serial, the victim, Hae, is a Korean-American daughter of immigrants, while the man convicted of killing her, Adnan, is the son of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan. "Sarah Koenig, the journalist telling their story, is white," Kang writes. "This, on its face, is not a problem. If Serial were a newspaper story or even a traditional magazine feature, the identities of all three could exist alone as facts; the reader could decide how much weight to place upon them. But Serial is an experiment in two old forms: the weekly radio crime show, and the confessional true-crime narrative, wherein the journalist plays the role of the protagonist. The pretense of objectivity is stripped away: Koenig emerges as the subject as the show’s drama revolves not so much around the crime, but rather, her obsessions with it."

To my ear, the show's drama is only tangentially related to Koenig's obsessions. Even apart from that, it isn't clear that the format matters in the way Kang asserts. Plenty of books and magazine features dispense with any pretense of objectivity. Plenty of ostensibly "objective" newspaper stories interpret racial and ethnic context, whether clumsily or adeptly. Broadcast is a unique format insofar as it allows us to hear sources speaking in their own voices. And Serial's audience absolutely decides how much weight to put on Koenig's editorial choices—they're all debated exhaustively in communities like the Serial subreddit.

Koenig "stomps around in a cold case involving people from two distinctly separate immigrant communities," Kang writes, arguing that "especially for people of color," she is "talking about our communities, and, in large part, getting it wrong." He sees her mistakes as characteristic of "well-intentioned white people" who retain a bankrupt understanding of other cultures despite their best efforts.

To illustrate this, he offers readers two examples from Serial. What he characterizes as the more objectionable example occurred in Episode 2. I've transcribed it below. Can you guess what part he regards as a white reporter going into an immigrant community and getting things wrong? Here's what Koenig narrates:

Kang's critique emphasizes the words, "Her diary, by the way—well I’m not exactly sure what I expected her diary to be like but—it’s such a teenage girl's diary." The statement "seems to suggest a colorblind ideal," he says, of a Baltimore where "kids will be kids, regardless of race or background." But he sees more:

I imagine there are many listeners—especially amongst people of color—who pause and ask, “Wait, what did you expect her diary to be like?” or “Why do you feel the need to point out that a Korean teenage girl’s diary is just like a teenage girl’s diary?” and perhaps, most importantly, “Where does your model for ‘such a teenage girl’s diary’ come from?” These are annoying questions, not only to those who would prefer to mute the nuances of race and identity for the sake of a clean, 'relatable' narrative, but also for those of us who have to ask them because Koenig is talking about our communities, and, in large part, getting it wrong.

This is a weak example to illustrate his theory. Kang himself presents the ostensibly objectionable passage as ambiguous. He doesn't pretend to know what Koenig did mean, only what she could have meant. He says listeners might have questions. There's nothing wrong with raising questions about ambiguous passages, but doing so doesn't actually support the thesis that a show is getting it wrong.