Fact or Fiction: Life in the Age of Fake News

In the aftermath of a bitter election, and upon the inauguration of a new president, a challenge confronts the media: How can this institution, from print and electronic journalism to radio and TV reportage, regain the trust of the public when there is a flood of fake news and inappropriate editorializing?

We live in the era of the tweet, by and of the face of this medium, President-elect Donald Trump. We live in a country, where the soon-to-be 45^th President of the United States has a record of disputing – and many of his acolytes continue to question – the citizenship of the 44^th President of the United States. We live in a world of our own facts and opinions, where no amount of evidence will convince the unbeliever, no amount of proof will persuade the skeptic and no amount of truth will convert the cynic.Worsening this situation is the news anchor, who segues from introducing a story to rendering judgment on the characters within that story. Thus do we desecrate the integrity of Edward R. Murrow or the independence of Eric Sevareid or the individualism of Douglas Edwards, or the prestige of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, or the care of Walter Cronkite, thereby bringing us to this sad state of affairs.

How can we trust the news, when we have good reason to disbelieve so much of it? For, while rumors and innuendo will always find an audience, and while there will a constant craving for gossip and hearsay, our country cannot survive – learning cannot exist – without sources beyond reproach.

We need, in other words, newspapers and magazines – we need publishers and TV station owners – to operate as a public trust, like a utility company: Reliable and free of partisanship, because there is neither a Republican nor a Democratic way to deliver electricity, for example, in which users get what they want without interference, delay or some hidden agenda.

These individuals must be stewards of the news, treating their stake in this business as more than the pursuit of quarterly profits and an attempt to pacify a board of directors. If these executives want to attract readers – and sell more papers by getting more subscribers – then they must accept that they are the unacknowledged legislators of this society.

That term is about the ability of writers – journalists, novelists and even poets – to appeal to the conscience of the country, to be a catalyst for change by compelling the agents of change – our elected officials, from the nation’s state houses to Congress and the White House – to enact positive change.

That event cannot happen without nonpartisan information, as straightforward and free of bias as data about science or medicine.

We must ensure that that event will happen because, when we take a quick look at the world, when we see the Middle East overrun by civil war and mass murder, when we see Europe facing crises of the heart and home, when we see refugees seeking asylum in Germany and terrorists staging attacks in France, when we see North Korea expanding its nuclear arsenal and China increasing its navy, when we see all these things – and more – we need unity not about the proposed solutions to these problems, but agreement that these problem do in fact exist.

We must defeat the circulation of fake news before it defeats us.

Now is the time for good reporters to file good stories, free of prejudice or personal politics.

Now is the time for truth to triumph.

Now is the time to make journalism great again.

Elizabeth Rice Grossman

Kailua, HI