"Media" Is Not "Journalism"
Don't Be Fooled By Liars
Kill the messenger!
It’s a common refrain throughout history, beginning with the story of Spartan king Leonidas throwing a messenger from the Persians down a well in 491 BCE. Although there seems to be a wealth of evidence that this didn’t actually happen, there is no doubt that the bearers of bad news have often paid the price for it.
Modern day journalists frequently suffer this metaphorical fate. Those who don’t agree with the facts they deliver are quick to condemn the messengers, rather than examine the facts as they are. The problem is, in this day and age of more disinformation than true fact, determining who is a messenger and who is an imposter is not an easy task. I’m going to try to help you sort it out.
The term Media encompasses everything that flows through your TV cable, satellite dish, internet connection and however else you’re plugged in. Journalism is one segment of this flow. All journalism is a part of the media presented to you, but not all media is journalism. In fact, the overwhelming bulk of media is not journalism. It is content, designed to keep you engaged and generate income for the parent company. Most of what you see, hear and read has absolutely nothing to do with telling you the truth. Even flipping through the “news” channels, you will find far more media than journalism.
So, how do you tell the difference? The answer is, you must do your homework. Before you can judge a given source, it is incumbent upon you, as a consumer of media, to know who is behind the origination of that media and what their motivations are. You need to learn the history of a “news” organization and the people or companies who created it. There is no shortcut to this. I can’t give you a list of “honest” providers of journalism anymore than I can give you a definitive list of bad actors. But I can help you learn how to tell the difference between factual reporting and slanted spin.
Let’s use politics as our basis for this process, since it is the easiest type of story to sniff out the good from the bad. First of all, if a given source always presents the Democrats as the good guys and the Republicans as the bad, or vice-versa, you are looking at a source with a clear agenda, which is not the role of journalism. That doesn’t mean you should discard them. What it does mean is that you should seek out another source who presents politics in the opposite light. Between the two of them, you might be able to discern some truth. If all you do is pick the source that is most aligned with your personal views, you are getting a skewed perspective of the world that only serves to reinforce your preconceived notions. This kind of media is a main driver in the polarization of politics we see happening in the U.S. today.
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Another way to tell the journalists from the charlatans is the nature of the program you’re watching. If it begins with the person on camera spending the first few minutes spewing opinions, smears, and other judgments about a given politician, you are clearly not watching a journalist. These type of personality-based shows generally show up during the evening prime time or morning hours on cable television. The internet, specifically social media, is infested with them. Not all shows in those time slots are bad, though. If the show anchor never issues opinions during the opening segment of the show, you’re probably looking at a real newscast.
The best sources of honest journalism clearly label opinions, commentaries and editorials as such. The newspaper that sets aside a special page or section of its website for commentaries, and keeps its front page clean of opinions is striving for good journalism.
But even here, it is incumbent upon you to do your homework. In today’s world, most journalistic outlets are owned by massive companies. Huge corporations operate on a bottom-line mindset which doesn’t always align with the goals of a pure journalist. I worked for many years at ABC News, which is owned by Disney. I don’t ever remember working on a story that was critical of that massive corporation. So, if you want to find out about the latest Disney strike, or the current rises and falls of its stock, you must seek that information from another source.
The best way to stay informed with real facts is to accumulate a selection of sources from which you get your news. Learn about those sources, understand their limitations, and weigh their information against that of other sources. That’s how a true journalist goes about the task of gathering information for an accurate story, and it’s how a consumer of facts, not spin, has to go about doing the same.
It used to be true that the sifting of fact from fiction was the job of a journalist, but as the variety and volume of sources has exploded, that burden has shifted to the consumer. Before the advent of the internet we were being buoyed by the promise of The Information Age. What no one realized was that it would also become the Golden Age of Disinformation. So-called Social Media is leading the charge when it comes to information that is wrong on purpose. My personal rule is that if I see purported knowledge on social media, I approach it the same way I would approach an angry rhinoceros…Not at all. The way to know the difference between spin and fact is to consider not only the source you are looking at, but also the source from which that media outlet generated the knowledge. Are they giving you fact, or is it spin?
Even with all of the filtering methods I have given you, it is still not enough. Media is infiltrating Journalism in ways unheard of when I was practicing the craft. A perfect example of this is NBC’s ridiculous hiring of Ronna McDaniel, the recently fired chair of the Republican National Committee, to be a paid talking head espousing MAGA-ultraright lies on NBC’s news programs. An election denier, Trump lie repeater, and promoter of the infiltration of RepubliCulters into the party, does NOT have a valid opinion about anything. The persistent spreading of lies and undermining of what used to be a legitimate conservative political party is not something that can be wiped from a mouthpiece’s history, just because a pal of hers in the hierarchy of NBC management (also not a journalist) decided to give her a $300,000 a year paycheck. Redemption takes a lot more than that. True journalists at NBC rightly waged a very public revolt, and the network quickly gave her the second set of walking papers she’s gotten in the last month. Surely, NBC can find a conservative voice to express this point of view with clarity and honesty. Maybe they should talk to McDaniel’s uncle, Mitt Romney. He would be a far more qualified person to fill that role.
The proliferation of voices, thanks to the internet and expansion of cable, is a good thing - with an equal dose of bad. Every opinion (provided it is based in facts) is valid. But it is now up to you, dear reader, to do your own fact-checking, lest you be led down some dark, lie-filled path.
For a FREE Special Offer from Distant Perspective, and a chance to get a FREE copy of my first book Plan A Never Happens, click here.