At Issue: The Devolution of Debate
It’s Time to Weigh In On One of 2017’s Most Notable Issues
It’s interesting times we’re living in — and uncharted territory, where world leaders engage in name calling and bullying via Twitter and throughout the public domain.
The trickle-down effect of such actions has the public wondering, “What happened to leadership?”
With that in mind, what is the news media’s role in this new era we find ourselves in? Is it magnifying and even glamorizing the devolution of debate? Should it “clean up” language and sentiment for appearances’ sake? Should it outright ignore it, and simply stick to the facts — or would that create false perceptions by a news media designed to speak truth to power?
Our experts weigh in with their own observations and advice. Give a read and then, we welcome your comments to further the discourse.
Bruce Lambert, The New York Times (Retired)
Our nation and world are in peril and need news media more than ever, yet the media are bleeding financially and are under relentless political attack.
All things considered, the media are doing yeoman’s/yeowomen’s work in these extraordinary times. They need to do even more of it.
They need to cover all the fleeting wedge issues like transgender bathrooms yet keep their eye on the really major issues like Russia and global warming.
No glossing or papering over real issues.
Tens of millions of Americans believe that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim, that climate change is a hoax, that Hillary gave uranium to Russia and was part of pedophile ring, Sandy Hook was staged by actors. There is a lot of work to do.
Dozens of “fact-checking” efforts have flourished, from Politifact to Snopes, and I hope they grow and reach more people.
Other needed remedies:
- A centralized fact check website on Trump should record several categories: broken promises (replace Obamacare with something better), reversals (drain the swamp), lies (inauguration crowds), falsehoods (illegal voters) and changed/muddled positions (Obama didn’t contact mourning military families). These entries should include Trump and his top aides, with entries listed chronologically and cross-indexed by topic, and include their many false repetitions.
- News reports should always call out Trump and his aides when they are lying, with instant caveats on each day’s developments.
- We need focused coverage of the great canards — like birtherism and climate change denial — that definitively disproves them. (Of course there will always be gullible deniers no matter how many facts you give them.)
- The media should scrutinize the sources and motives of this misinformation — InfoWars plagiarizing from RT, for example, or that guy who admitted on 60 Minutes that he makes up false internet posts just to profit from the associated advertising.
- The media needs to do more coverage of the distributors of this vile material — Facebook, etc. — and who is advertising next to it and profiting from it.
- Let’s have more coverage, too, on psychological research on why people spread and believe lies, why so many are defensive and impervious to facts. Remember that misguided guy who ran into the Washington pizza parlor and began shooting it up in search of Hillary’s pedophile sex ring in the basement? There wasn’t even a basement.
Prof. Thomas Cooper, Emerson College & Co-Publisher, MEDIA ETHICS magazine
“American media has long had the responsibility of being a watch dog not a lap dog so it must continue in that role by making transparent what is important to democracy. This means championing unheard voices, especially those which could easily be silenced by bigotry and bullying.
But media also have a counter-balancing role to show the full spectrum which includes the positive alternatives to the endless “slash, trash, flash for cash” which over-populate both news and entertainment. So media also need to show examples of positive moral exemplars, whistle-blowers, and pro-social leaders who demonstrate the positive alternatives and models.
To be shown only the endless descent from ethics, the desecrated environment, and endless executive excess is to emotionally poison the media audience and ultimately the American people.
So we must beware “smotherage” of contaminating topics as well as avoiding hidden shadows cast by those who abuse power. In short balance is needed — always emphasizing both what must be teased out of hiding in the interest of truth and also what must be modeled of integrity in the interest of sanity and humanity’s future.”
Lance Ulanoff, Chief Correspondent, Mashable
Our jobs as journalists is not to amplify or minimize these debates, but to clarify. We cannot take it for granted that our audience will instantly discern fake from fiction, truth from hyperbole or bluster from real emotional response.
Our reportage on these interactions should be full of as much supporting facts as possible, and not just ones that support the side of the debate we secretly support. We have to seek and report truth from all corners so we can illuminate the reasons people take the stances they take and cook up the lies they peddle. Every position, true or false, has a reason. Understanding the source of the lie, falsehood or shading of the facts can help the audience understand how we got here in the first place. They should walk away from each story about these debates armed with the truth, whatever it is.
Ted Rubin, Social Media Evangelist
The news media’s role is №1, simply being a purveyor of what people will pay attention to (media)… they need to create revenue to exist and being watched/read at scale is therefore necessary.
№2, reporting on what is happening and when… the “news.”
And №3, “most importantly perhaps” for the future of our free society, being a legitimate source of journalism… Journalism is the activity of gathering, assessing, creating, and presenting news and information. Journalism can be distinguished from other activities and products by certain identifiable characteristics and practices. These elements not only separate journalism from other forms of communication, they are what make it indispensable to democratic societies.
History reveals that the more democratic a society, the more news and information it tends to have.The purpose of journalism is thus to provide citizens with the information they need to make the best possible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments. #NoLetUp!
Jaci Clement, CEO & Executive Director, Fair Media Council
Is every tweet newsworthy? No.
But it seems the news media has now become so accustomed to reacting to the latest social media post — whether it’s from POTUS or a celebrity — that our news cycle is now driven by information that’s already available to the public and often instantly forgettable.
After a year like this, it’s pretty safe to say America is suffering from news fatigue and meaningless information overload. The news media needs to remember today’s news consumer is so connected that we’re subjected to breaking news in an echo chamber — we don’t just get the report that the world is ending, the news follows us and the same story is delivered in a multitude of ways: via news outlets, social media feeds, email alerts and tweets. Combined it leads you believe the world is going to hell in a hand basket when, in reality, the Dow just dropped a point.
Maybe this current of nonstop news extremism is the result of technological advances brainwashing the media into thinking they need to be first with a story, and now they’re just running on autopilot. Maybe now’s the time for newsrooms everywhere to push the pause button, take a deep breath and ask themselves, ‘Is this actually news?’
Robert F. Keeler, Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist
The primary role of journalism in this dark era is to push back against the rising tide of know-nothingism with serious, aggressive, fearless, plain-spoken, careful reporting.
That is not an easy task in any era, but it’s especially difficult at a time when newspapers in general are facing sharply declining ad revenues. Most of that advertising has migrated to the Internet, and newspapers are scurrying to develop a greater web presence, hoping to increase the percentage of total revenue that comes from online readers. For most newspapers, however, the bulk of the revenue still comes from traditional readers who want to get their news printed on dead trees. Still, newspapers keep trying to compete with the instantaneousness of the Internet, and that has a serious impact on reporting. Any time that a reporter spends tweeting or writing an incomplete story for the newspaper’s website is time that the reporter doesn’t spend on deeper reporting. So, the Internet is a problem for journalism in two ways: It has deprived newspapers of some of their most lucrative advertising, and it has given younger readers a false sense that they can get all the news they need from Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — all of which are far more subject than newspapers to clandestine manipulation by, you know, Russia.
Right now, that means newspapers have to do some serious soul-searching. In order to fully fund the national and international reporting that they MUST do in the current environment, newspapers need to allocate spending in ways that they might have hated in the pre-Trump era. In other words, if they need to cut back on what they spend on reporting about culture and entertainment, in order to maintain and improve the republic-saving journalism that is absolutely crucial, then that’s what they have to do, as painful as it may feel.
As to the more specific question of tone: Newspapers — and network and cable news providers — have no choice but to quote the untruths and attacks emanating from the highest levels of our government, but they also have no choice but to push back with blunt language of their own. It is encouraging, for example, that the New York Times has taken to using the word “lie” in headlines and in stories to describe the current president’s profound aversion to truth. That’s one step. Beyond that, journalists can’t simply ignore the debased discourse emanating from that “president.” They need to report it in the news pages, but make sure that the same news story that carries the lie or slander also contains language and facts rebutting that poisonous rhetoric. Above all, journalists must not allow themselves to become nothing more than stenographers, passively recording and disseminating this debased language. They have to push back in every news story and analysis piece, and their editorial pages have to comment sharply and disapprovingly on the state of our discourse.
It’s also time for journalism to examine the dangerous “he-said-she-said” fallacy. Too often, newspapers persuade themselves that they are being fair if they simply have quotes from both “sides” of an issue. The obvious example is climate change. Too often, news stories quote the consensus of many hundreds of climate scientists as one “side” of the issue and quote a single scientist, representing a nanoscale fraction of all scientists, as the other “side.” Journalism must find a way past this outdated and inaccurate convention.
And now it’s your turn to weigh in with your own comments.
