The first newspapers, dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century, took the names “gazette,” after the Italian word gazetta, the copper coin that was the price of the first Venetian papers. Others took up names like “News” or “Relations”. More imaginative titles included the Journal, the Record, the Morning, the Evening, the Times, the Press, the Post, the Telegraph, the Intelligencer, the Advertiser, the Tribune, the Sun, the World, the Mirror. The very names of the press held the promise to inform, to announce, to instruct, and to reflect the world in all its complications.
The press has promised to hold up a mirror to the world. Walter Cronkite famously signed off, “And that’s the way it is.” He wanted his own signature on the news. Edward R. Murrow opened his radio reports from wartime England with a marvelous promise: “This…is London.” His reporting brought the war to American living rooms before Americans were ready to make the war their own. The media is a mirror to the world, perhaps, but the mirror shouldn’t be allowed to reflect just anything, should it? “Make a paper for the nicest kind of people,” wrote William Randolph Hearst in 1933. Decades earlier, Adolph Ochs, who bought the New York Times for a song and built it into the paper of New York’s establishment, added the memorable, long-lived pledge of “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Walter Cronkite put it this way: “A democracy ceases to be a democracy if its citizens do not participate in its governance. To participate intelligently, they must know what their government has done, is doing and plans to do in their name… This is the meaning of freedom of press. It is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”
The press has promised to make a better world. That was Joseph Pulitzer’s idea. His paper, he wrote, should “never be satisfied with merely printing news.” It “should always fight for progress and reform; never tolerate injustice or corruption; always fight demagogues of all parties…always oppose privileged classes and public plunder; never lack sympathy with the poor; always remain devoted to the public welfare…” His paper wouldn’t be just a watchdog on power. It was the very representative of the public. William Randolph Hearst in 1936 explained that “It is essential for the papers to conduct constructive campaigns for the benefit of the community with which they are associated.” The press would then move its readers to department store specials and elixir sales, to plays and films and sporting events. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the advertising income of the largest newspapers already exceeded their sales income. It was a sign of the world to come.
The press has also promised to entertain. “To instruct and amuse,” that was one of the mottos of the best-selling French newspaper of the nineteenth century. The mass of the public doesn’t want algebra. It wants emotion, sincerity, a good story. Hearst asked his editors to give people the kind of news they wanted to read, not the kind “that they were supposed to read but didn’t like.” “We must have the courage to be stupid,” said a Paris press baron. Most of what the press has provided is not news of any importance. Or news at all. Unfortunately we now find ourselves a long way from the early image of the press as a check on government. We’re caught in a web of conflict and tensions—to tell all the news and to tell the news that readers want.
The power of the press is also the power to misinform. This is where we are today with “fake news”. It has been around since the early years of our Republic. As President, Thomas Jefferson was hounded by an opposition press that mixed slander and misinformation. It was in the early nineteenth century when Jefferson wrote that “the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.” When it does work, the power of the press can be great. But its effects are not always in the service of truth and justice. Under the sign of a common catastrophe or the threat of war, the press has worked to create a common sense of identity for its audience.
But the press is never simply a force for cohesion. It can just as easily serve as a means for division, giving voice to conflicts of all shapes. For all of its history, we hold fast to a vision of the powerful impact of the press, for good and bad. Take the case of William Randolph Hearst and the Spanish-American War. When Frederick Remington cabled from Cuba in 1897 that there would be no war, Hearst is said to have replied: “You supply the pictures, I’ll supply the war.” American intervention in Cuba would come the next year. What of Vietnam and television? It is offered up as a lesson of media and war: when the American public sees American casualties, the war is lost. However, far from demonstrating the horrors of war, television sanitized the conflict, and the networks went out of their way to not show American soldiers who had been killed or wounded.” The public, it turns out, was way ahead of the news.
A 1967 poll showed that 50 percent of Americans saw the American effort in Vietnam as a mistake. When Walter Cronkite famously declared on February 27, 1968 that the war was unwinnable, he was, simply coming around to the views of middle America.” The internet-borne forces that are eating away at print and television advertising are enabling a host of fake journalistic players to pollute the media with dangerously fake news items. The cure for fake news is an overwhelming dose of honest news. Maybe this year’s explosion in fake news will serve to raise the value of real news. If so, it will be honest journalism that saves journalism.
Think about this, almost every area of news has been invaded by fake news, but some subject areas appear to be more or less immune from it. Fake news about sports or business is extremely rare. Oh, the sports and business pages aren’t fake-free. Hoaxes and baseless rumors get published, but sports and business readers tend to be knowledgeable about their interests. A fake story about a stock price or a baseball score is quickly resisted by savvy readers who demand that it must be corrected or retracted. Why is this? The answer is simple. Fake political news thrives because intense media coverage causes nearly everybody to develop some sort of interest in political topics.
However, not everybody has the knowledge to equal their basic interest in political topics. This makes them easy to fool and easy prey for fake news. The more outrageous and partisan a fake story is, the greater the chance it will be reshared, go viral and break into the mainstream. But no matter what measures we take, fake news will persist because human nature persists. People throw their money away on get-rich schemes, and correspond with Nigerian scamsters and get fleeced, even though they know better. We may never end fake news, but practicing critical thinking skills can go a long way toward slowing the influence of fake news. Remember :
1. Don’t Take Anything at Face Value
2. Consider the Motive
3. Do Your Research
4. Ask Questions
5. Don’t always assume You’re Right
6. Break It Down
7. Keep It Simple