Reporters and Fairness

From https://www.flickr.com/photos/marcn/24550116329/

The professional media has had a tough time trying to figure out how to cover the current US presidential campaign.  Many of the things they learned as student journalists are leading them astray this year. But the general public is also being led astray by the greater cloud of amateurs and promoters using fake journalism for advocacy.


Advocacy Masquerading as News

A large percentage of what appear to be news stories coming down your social media news feed is actually advocacy.  When the headline, the lead, or the body of a story contains value judgments that are not attributed to a news maker, then it is advocacy, not journalism.  But the public generally doe snot differentiate.

I teach media and journalism, including an introductory news writing class this semester. Because their social media feeds contain such poor role models, I have to hammer away at NO including their own opinions in their story assignments.

A good journalist will attribute everything, except for straight-forward information that is "widely known or easily available."  For example, a local news story can simply state that it rained last night, without citing a source of the information.

Now, when public relations folks write news releases, they write as if they were writing a news story, but they only tell the positive thins about their cause.  In particular, they state things as fact that are really promotional talking points without attribution, in effect claiming that they are "widely known or easily available."

Again, the general public does not differentiate between professional news sources and quasi-journalistic advocacy.  It is all "the media" to them, not journalists and advocates.  Therefore, it's all opinion to them.


Fair to Both sides?

The other journalistic tradition that is leading professionals astray is that we teach them that they must fairly report both/all sides of a controversial issue.

Generally I believe in this way of telling a story, but when one side has all the preponderance of evidence and the other is strictly opinion, based on logical fallacies, or is a nut-case, giving equal attention to their position legitimizes unsupported positions.

It is a no-win situation for the professional journalists.  Either they get criticized for excluding some positions, or they legitimize illegitimate positions, and they do it in a way that appears to contain bias.


Where do we go from here?

Professional journalists have been making the attempt recently to do more fact checking and pointing out inaccuracies of statements from the candidates.

But the high "noise" of fake news in the media environment makes people mistrust "the media."  That means that they see fact checking as opinion, and thus also untrustworthy.

When empirical evidence is seen as opinion, promoters and advocates love it.  They can reinforce the people who already see it their way, and sow the seeds of doubt in those who don't.

the professional journalistic media is going to need to future this out.  Unfortunately, I don't have a good solution.

Where I start from, however, is that facts and evidence can be "widely known or easily available" whereas opinions are not.  Journalists should not be shy to differentiate widely-known facts from beliefs and opinions that may be widely, somewhat-widely, or narrowly believed.

For more perspective on how journalists are trying to work their way out of this quandry, see this story.