It starts with the truth.
What we know. What we think we know. What we believe to be true. What we believe to be untrue. What our gut instinct tells us. Truth can be an individual matter or a mass reasoning.
Now to all that intellectual understanding necessary to determine the truth, add the terms misinformation and disinformation, both purposeful untruths, a manipulation of facts or a set of ‘alternative facts.’
Then play on human emotions—our knee-jerk reactions and unreasonable notions and inclinations based on how, when and where we were raised coupled with religious teachings and culture—and ta-da! Today we have dozens of truths from which to choose … instead of just the one and only truth.
The truth used to be called the news. But even the mass media is suspect today, as it always has been centuries prior to the internet. Just not so blatantly disbelieved, ignored, doubted and questioned by every kind of person as it is today.
Where do we as U.S. citizens go for news each morning when we awake and at night before bed—that is the question.
And that’s the way it was
The news used to be unquestioned especially by Mr. and Mrs. America. In the days of Walter Cronkite and Harry Reasoner and early network TV, old-school newspaper reporters were the logical hires to sit in front of a camera at 6 p.m. Eastern Time and recite the most important events of the day albeit succinctly. The weathered face of newsmen, most who were involved in World War II, were as trusting as our fathers and honest in their reporting. They got their facts straight. The public had no reason to doubt the news.
The proof was it was true.
But after the Kennedy assassination, the turbulent 1960s, the Vietnam War, assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and another Kennedy, FBI investigations, then Watergate—most Americans grew up in a post-truth era. We learned then to not trust our government and even the news whether network or local, big city or small town.
Yet through the decades, the news has rarely been inaccurate.
Why is that? First, journalism is the search for truth. Nothing more. Nothing less. The worst thing that could happen to a news business is to publicize untruth. There are laws, too, that news institutions must adhere, one being libel, the other slander. And any false or misleading or even an accidental oversight of facts requires a retraction. How many of those have we seen lately, in the past 20 or 30 years? There are corrections, and even those are rare, but not retractions which must follow untruth printed or broadcasted in and by a news business.
Fake news comes from the mix of entertainment with news. Since the advent of the Worldwide Web, there are so many ‘news’ sources. Some websites are the legitimate news business such as The News York Times, CNN and The Washington Post. The majority of online news sources are not intended to be any more than entertainment. They cannot be relied upon as providers of truth.
The consumer must decide what so-called news source is providing truth from the many providing entertainment and therefore can play fast and loose with the facts—and if online are not penalized for libel or slander let alone lies and half-truths that can incite and enrage the public and as we clearly see can cause harm and murder.
Will the real news please stand up?
A real news business will be a member of the Associated Press. The AP, which began in the 1840s by several newspapers, is a nonprofit organization. A news organization’s membership in the AP means several things, the most important being: The media organization is first a serious provider of news and adheres to journalism integrity. And if a news organization does not adhere to news integrity, it cannot be a member of the AP.
Real news stories for print and broadcast will include the who, what, when, where, why, which and how. Facts must be substantiated from at least three different sources, preferably more, but not just one source. Those sources when human, as opposed to a document or report, must be verifiable. Rumor and hearsay are not news. A professional journalist will check the background of anyone providing information which will be used in a news report.
So now we can see why so many consumers of news are essentially bored. The news is news, usually reported the exact same way by cable, network, radio and print.
When news presentations started mixing opinion and political or social angles, that’s when the public lost trust. The news was supposed to be just the facts. Newspapers carried opinion from columnists to editorial boards and letters to the editor. The ‘full package’ or full spectrum of covering and presenting the news from all angles was a tradition in a newspaper. But broadcast news, especially radio, had more time to fill. And cable news had practically 23 hours to do something. Cable news’ national beat reporters were brought in to talk about the news and maybe dish. In the public’s mind, the career of journalist morphed into a celebrity role.
And Americans love celebrities, trust ’em as good for their word.
Our press is free, which means the government does not control the news. But freedom of the press never meant the news could be untrue, half-true or exaggerated. No, the daily news when presented accurately is just the simple facts. That can be quite boring for today’s Americans so in need of escaping mundane lives—or a misperceived pointless existence.
With all that has gone wrong in online media, Americans must avoid the glitz and wowness of news-as-entertainment. Anyone who cares about the truth in news must first seek and ensure news organizations that are bona fide, the ones that do not play fast and loose with the facts but instead verify information and substantiate sources and facts. The truth has always been out there.