You can be easily forgiven if you think that anyone who willingly enters the field of journalism must be completely nuts. After all, why would someone want to be abused by those in power?
Quite a lot of us, actually. And only some of us are completely nuts.
Of course, some are instead used by the powerful to spread their message. For those not willing to be used, apparently there's a new moniker: "fake news." Oops, sorry, that's FAKE NEWS. If it's in all-caps, it's extra believable, ya know.
And it is believable to some, as Morning Consult's poll released Friday indicated that 37 percent of those polled trusted Donald Trump to tell the truth, while 29 percent trusted the media to tell the truth (the other 34 percent--a very sizable chunk--said they didn't know). That's a painful result, considering that the Washington Post tallied 488 false and misleading statements from Trump in his first 100 days (nearly five a day!!).
Yeah, I know, some of you believe the Post (and the New York Times and others) are part of a FAKE NEWS empire. Darn their dismissal of "alternative facts" in favor of reality.
Two legends of the Watergate era--Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on that scandal for the Post led to President Richard Nixon's resignation--had a pointed message for the current president at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner on Saturday. Bernstein said that when asked about their research, methodology and reporting on Watergate, the two said they were always looking for the best obtainable version of the truth. "It's a simple concept, yet something very difficult to get right because of the enormous amount of effort, thinking, persistence, pushback, logical baggage and, for sure, luck that is required, not to mention some unnatural humility."
Bernstein said the question of what constitutes news is even more important when covering the president. "Richard Nixon tried to make the conduct of the press the issue in Watergate, instead of the conduct of the president and his men. We tried to avoid the noise and let the reporting speak. ... [U]nreasonable government secrecy is the enemy, and usually the giveaway about what the real story might be. And when lying is combined with secrecy, there is usually a pretty good road map in front of us. Yes, follow the money, but follow, also, the lies."
Woodward said the Internet and the rush to be first undermines what he called journalism's most important tool: the "luxury of time to inquire, to pursue, to find the real agents of genuine news, witnesses, participants, documents ... . Like politicians and presidents, sometimes, perhaps too frequently, we make mistakes and go too far. When that happens, we should own up to it. But the effort today to get this best obtainable version of the truth is largely made in good faith. Mr. President, the media is not fake news."
But we're not going to convince someone who believes that reporting anything negative (polls, facts, etc.) constitutes FAKE NEWS. Accurate it may be, but if it upsets true believers (boy, is that an oxymoron in this instance), it's clearly fake. Only things that make our guy look good are real news, even if they're cherry-picked to within an inch of their life, deliberate misinformation or a hoax.
And Bigfoot showed up in my backyard the other night. Really ticked off the furry one. Mostly because he was bogarting the catnip toys.
The whole "fake news" (sorry, can't keep up the all-caps) campaign is seen by some as an indicator that freedom of the U.S. press is in great peril. After Reince Priebus' comment on ABC Sunday that the administration is considering a push to change the First Amendment, Matthew Menendez of the Brennan Center for Justice wrote: "Apparently not satisfied with using the president's Twitter feed to attack the media, the White House is continuing the most sustained attack on the media by an administration in decades. The issue isn't libel--it's whether we can criticize our government and important political leaders without fear of crushing legal liability. The issue, in other words, is American democracy."
Because our democracy permits the media to point out that reality and the current administration don't always exist on the same plane. (But the rain did stop at the inauguration while the president was speaking!!!!)
The press (at least at the moment) is protected as long as it doesn't knowingly publish false information or operate with reckless disregard for the truth. When responsible news organizations make an error, it's admitted, as finding truth is kind of our mission. Our job is not to present only the good or only the bad about the president or anyone else; if that's what you're getting, you might be consuming real fake news.
White House Correspondents' Association President Jeff Mason spoke clearly Saturday about responsible media organizations: "We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations. And we are not the enemy of the American people."
Unfortunately, it seems a segment of the American people is not so sure about that.
------------v------------
Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at blooper@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 05/03/2017