News media

A well informed electorate is critical to the functioning of democracy. Democracy can’t function without debate. The news media is the primary tool for informing and prompting debate. Those things elected officials want to hide, are precisely the things we need to be informed of. The news media is an essential part of democracy and not the enemy of the people.

Elected officials lying to us are the real enemy of the people. The current President was lying over 30 times per day in the run up to the election, according to fact checkers. Calling the media fake news is Trump’s defensive response to his lies being exposed.

News is a money making business and is no longer straight forward fact based information. Reagan’s elimination of the fairness doctrine crippled objective news reporting. The way to maximize profit is to grab and hold viewers to obtain ratings that increase the sales of advertisements by using fear as a hook. 

Psychology Today tells us fear based news programming attempts to grab viewers attention by preying on anxieties and then hold them by persuading them the answer to reducing their fear will be covered later in the program. Fear based reporting presents dramatic anecdotes in place of evidence, treats isolated events as trends and depicts categories of people as dangerous. This is designed to replace thoughtful debate and problem solving with fatalistic thinking.

There is no such thing as a liberal media. Nearly all news outlets including papers, radio, and TV stations are owned by six multinational corporations. Some of these corporations are also defense contractors. That doesn’t spell liberal to me. 

When is the last time you heard mainstream news advocating for action on climate change, speaking out against war, showing the cost savings of Medicare for all or standing up for raising the minimum wage? These progressive positions are not discussed by corporate media because corporate media is not liberal.

A University of Maryland study found that people who watch FOX “news” are 12 to 31% more likely to me misinformed, depending on the issue. Both democrats and republicans who watched FOX came away misled and misinformed. FOX viewers were actually less informed than those who followed no news at all, because of the misinformation. FOX focuses on stories that make people angry or show liberals as evil. It is a partisan propaganda outlet for the Republican party. It doesn’t inform, it misinforms. 

Fairleigh Dickinson University found that MSNBC is also a partisan outlet, in this case for democrats. While they focus on opinion over fact just like FOX, they use less falsehoods. Real journalists are independent and not partisan hacks. Several FOX “news” hosts recently appeared on stage with Trump at his rallies.

FOX viewers scored the lowest of 30 popular outlets for knowledge. Those getting news from NPR and Sunday morning talk shows were the best informed.

Objectivity in journalism does not mean giving both sides equal play. It means telling the truth and providing evidence. It means providing people with the information they need to make good decisions and participate in our democracy. If one side advocates for something that is inconsistent with the facts or is a lie, journalists should not give them equal voice with the truth or something proven by science. The only reporting that should be done on a lie, is to call it a lie, and tell how it is known to be a lie.

We all have a right to an opinion. When that opinion is proven false or is based on faulty information we should be ready to reevaluate that opinion. Opinions are not equal to facts or things that can be proven.

Thomas Jefferson said, “When the speech condemns a free press, you are hearing the words of a tyrant.”

“There is no God higher than truth,” Mahatma Gandhi.