Like many English and writing majors before me, I have considered journalism as a possible career path. Journalists write for a living, work in a community of other writers, and make a visible impact on society, all of which are extremely attractive qualities in a job to someone like me. It is a profession that relatives at Thanksgiving dinner recognize as legitimate and laudable. It has monetary value and may be associated with some prestige.
While I no longer dream of interning at NPR, I maintain a lot of respect for those who follow the path of a reporter. Journalists like Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times and Brooke Gladstone of WNYC’s On the Media podcast are among my personal heroes, and when they write, I read. From their work and work like theirs, I learn about the experiences of people I’ll never meet, gain insight into the socio-political climate in which I live, and am generally able to understand the world more complexly. Good journalism encourages empathy in its readers, which, as a fiction writer, is my goal for my own work. I have a lot to learn from great journalists.
However, the well-crafted and well-researched journalism I love has been under attack as of late. The President of the United States has publicly denounced the free press as “the enemy of the American people,” blatantly lied on national television and refused to correct himself, and sat back while the people who work for him tried to validate his lies by calling them “alternative facts.”
I have very little faith in the current president, so I was not surprised when he tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS media (failing @nytimes, @NBCNews, @ABC, @CBS, @CNN) is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” This is coming from a president who hired Steve Bannon, a founding member of Breitbart News, as an assistant and chief strategist in his administration. Breitbart is a news and opinion website that has been associated with the alt-right movement and relies on sensationalist headlines that are often murky on reality. For instance, this January, the syndicate published an article stating that President Obama had awarded himself a medal, when, according to the Associated Press (AP), the medal was presented to him by Defense Secretary, Ash Carter. They have also been known to run unproven stories, once claiming that Secretary of State, John Kerry, had funneled taxpayer money into his daughter’s charity without any basis in fact. Both articles attempted to discredit Democrats, and reinforce the idea that the “other side” is evil.
Breitbart and organizations like it are not new, they existed long before the digital age. People like to consume media that affirms their own beliefs. We know this. We experience it. But I think there is a crucial difference between someone with extreme conservative leanings reading Breitbart versus a liberal like myself reading the New York Times: facts. In her book The Influencing Machine, Brooke Gladstone reminds her reader that all journalists have opinions, and it is impossible to take oneself completely out of one’s work. It is possible, however, to write articles based on reliable sources and facts. As an editor for our little school newspaper, I have seen how printing something false, even by accident, is treated seriously. We have recalled stories, published letters to the editor that correct stories we approved, and apologized publicly to the parties that were misrepresented. This has only happened a handful of times in my time at the Star, but I have seen firsthand that it is a big deal to publish something false. People get upset, and they should.
The media has the power to plant seeds in our minds, and even if the incorrect information is recalled or denounced, not everyone will get the message. This is not as scandalous when the Star publishes the wrong date for a soccer game, but what about when the president falsely claims he was elected with “the biggest electoral college win since Reagan” and then cites he read it somewhere? If that is true, whatever he read was not good journalism. If it is not true, he needs to find a different excuse.
Either way, the American people need to recognize that the mainstream media, otherwise known as the “failing” publications the president listed, are their friends, not their enemies. They exist to help the public make good, informed decisions, and to understand their country’s decisions more complexly. And while the people who write and produce for these news outlets will certainly have their own opinions, they will also print the truth, or else face severe repercussions. Mr. Trump is not the first president to attempt to discredit the press, and he will likely not be the last. But the press is necessary to hold those in power accountable.
Before he became president, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” The United States has a rich history of the relationship between the media and the government, and we are fortunate to have a system in which the press is free. But as consumers, we cannot let fake news outlets like Breitbart (or whatever that one person from our home church is posting) ruin real journalism for us. Continue to read with a critical eye as your education has taught you, but remember that the enemy of the American people is not journalism. It is blather.