The Shadow Side of Journalism

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Journalism can be beneficial to society insofar as it benefits the individuals within society (without unjustly defaming their character or violating their privacy). But journalism is double-edged sword and what it can defend with one edge it can destroy with the other.

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The defamation of the individual and violation of their privacy in the name of public gratification is one such example of dishonest journalism. Journalists who claim to report “facts” and “truth” but actually publish opinions and unsubstantiated facts that harm people should be held to account for their dishonest reporting.

   

According to the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, journalism is “writing designed to appeal to current popular taste or public interest.” This type of reporting appears on its face to be benevolent—if not noble—when it is in the actual interest of the public. However, there is a wide chasm between appearances and reality.

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In reality if the “popular taste” is merely for tantalizing sound bites that arouse the emotions or stimulate the public appetite for distracting gossip, then journalism will inevitably trample the individual right to privacy in its quest to satiate this popular taste and unjustly defame the character of people in this process. It can hardly be argued that there is a public interest in violating individual rights seeing that the most fundamental element of the public is the individual.     

            

But there is a darker side to journalism. Journalism that is weaponized for “the purpose of…injuring an institution, a cause, or a person” (Merriam-Webster online dictionary) is known as propaganda and loses all credibility when it’s used for this purpose. This is the worst form of harm because of its malicious nature. And intentionally harming others is hardly in the interest of the public in a society that claims to be civilized.

  

Dishonest Journalism Isn’t New

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Dishonest journalism—colloquially known as “fake news”—isn’t a new phenomenon. But this should come as no surprise to the rational person because news by its very nature is designed to stir up the peoples’ passions and incite their curiosity. The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer wrote that journalism is, in essence, alarmism. According to Schopenhauer:

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Exaggeration of every kind is as essential to journalism as it is to the dramatic art; for the object of journalism is to make events go as far as possible. Thus it is that all journalists are, in the very nature of their calling, alarmists; and this is their way of giving interest to what they write. Herein they are like little dogs; if anything stirs, they immediately set up a shrill bark. (“On Some Forms of Literature,” 1851)

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This “alarmism” instills a tension in society through priming people to think and act a certain way. To do this, dishonest journalism uses various conditioning devices such as sensationalism, scandalous stories, emotionally-charged messaging, provocative language, invoked guilt, public shaming, social proof, suggestibility, fear-mongering, scapegoating, gaslighting, intimidation, and other forms of influence and persuasion to create interest and achieve conformity to its narrative.   

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The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard loathed this darker side of journalism that produces the very situation it claims to be reporting on.

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Journalism used in this way puts thoughts into the minds of the audience and words into their mouths regardless of objective reality to the contrary or facts that might rebut this reporting. By doing this, journalism fabricates an alternate reality that, with enough people thinking these thoughts and speaking these words with frequency, gradually becomes a “reality” for that social group. And because, as Kierkegaard noted, “the great mass of people naturally have no opinion,” dishonest journalism is more than happy to remedy this.   

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Thus, not only does dishonest journalism alter reality, but it alters the fate of individuals by destroying their right to privacy and defaming their reputation through character assassination posing as “honest” journalism.

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By dishonestly making private matters fodder for public consumption, this nefarious kind of journalism betrays people’s privacy and exposes them to public hostility. A cursory look at current events will reveal how dishonest journalism has wreaked havoc on the personal lives of real people and destabilized the greater social order.

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Countering Dishonest Journalism

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There are ways to counter dishonest journalism. Here are some steps that can be taken before going straight to the cliché “sue them” option.

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First and foremost, DON’T BELIEVE THE REPORT ON ITS FACE!

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Although this may sound simple, it’s actually quite challenging. This is because people have an innate tendency to believe things at face value. This is a process that often happens below our conscious awareness and therefore outside our active control. Whereas critically examining something to determine its credibility requires active and intentional effort and a lot of patience.

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Remember, in the wise words of Schopenhauer, journalists have to “giv[e] interest to what they write” in order to sell their product. For this, dishonest journalism appeals to the emotional part of people and not the rational part. Thus, to avoid falling prey to this emotional appeal, the consumer must refuse to swallow what they are fed without first inspecting the food they are given to eat.

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If the consumer is successful in not believing the report on its face (a huge feat in itself), they should then examine the report for validity, reliability, and credibility.

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Validity

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To determine its validity, the consumer must check to see if the report is correct and grounded in objective facts.

The consumer should consult with primary sources (original documents, records, information) using more reputable sources that have greater oversight (such as official government sites). The idea isn’t that these sources are bulletproof but that they have more reason to be correct (i.e., to avoid litigation, file grievances, public records requests that could expose their misconduct, investigations from oversight agencies, etc.) than other, less reputable sources with little to no oversight.

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This may not be practical for the busy consumer who has little time for this. Yet, the alternative is consuming unverified information that can harm the consumer by corrupting their perspectives. Thus, without determining a report’s validity, the consumer is exposing theirself to potential harm from dishonest reporting.  

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Reliability

  

The consumer should also check the reliability of the report.

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One way this can be determined is by asking if looking at the situation or issue being reported on from different perspectives would yield similar results as the original report. Journalists are people. Thus, journalists are biased. The individual journalist’s interpretation of events or situations will likely be skewed or distorted by their personal biases and subjective perspectives, or, by the bias or agenda of the organization they work for.

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The consumer should also look at the dependability of the source of the report—its publisher.

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If the publisher is an independent journalist, the consumer should check their personal track record of trustworthiness in reporting. This is a challenging task because a journalist will almost always claim to be trustworthy and only report the “truth” in their work (after all, the quality of their product is a major sell point). And self-report is, for self-evident reasons, not necessarily dependable.

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Checking with public rating systems isn’t necessarily reliable either. These are often based on public opinions and feelings and not necessarily factually-correct information that is objectively verifiable. But they do often provide themes and response patterns that may be useful in the process of determining reliability.

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If the publisher is a news organization, the consumer should look at the bias and values of the organization by researching the mission and values statement on the official website, complaints against the organization, government reports of misconduct or sanctions, history of lawsuits against the organization, etc. The biases and values of the individuals in an organization will determine the biases and values of the organization and vice versa. Thus, these biases and values can be assessed using a top-down and bottom-up approach.

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In our time now, understanding the likelihood of bias in a news report has been made rather easy because people generally wear their biases on their sleeve. By understanding more about the biases of the journalist or publishing organization, the consumer can better assess the dependability of the report.   

     

Credibility

  

The consumer should also look at the report’s credibility, in other words, whether it’s believable.

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This entails more than just believing per se; it involves believability based on evidentiary support for this belief. This is complicated by the reality that there are many interfering factors.

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For example, belief is fundamentally subjective. What inspires belief in one consumer may not inspire belief in another consumer. Moreover, one person could believe something that another person finds absurd or implausible. Then there’s a plethora of cognitive distortions and mental disorders that impair perception and the ability to evaluate something objectively, or that create an irrational degree of believability in that person (e.g., delusional mental state, gullibility, naivety, etc.).

 

Also, making something believable could easily be accomplished through good argument that uses convincing forms of persuasion similar to alarmist journalism discussed above. In this sense, “credibility” could be established through carefully crafted rhetorical word play without actually being sufficiently believable.

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To counter this likelihood, credibility should be assessed based on the objective plausibility of the report versus the subjective believability of it. This can be checked by cross-referencing the validity and reliability of the report.  

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Don’t Simply Believe What You’re Told to Believe—Check it for Yourself First

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The purpose of journalism is to report objective news to the general public without unjustly defaming the character of individual persons or wrongfully violating their privacy.

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This is no small thing but is a very important responsibility that must be taken seriously and held accountable. News that is intentionally used to cause injury morphs into weaponized propaganda which violates the very premise of objective reporting.  

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In theory, any news prepared for public consumption must first be put through the most stringent of vetting procedures before it’s released to the public to ensure that it is valid, reliable, credible, and objective.  

In reality, the subjectivity of those reporting the news—and the agenda of the agency publishing the news—contaminates any objectivity of the news.

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Thus, the most effective way to avoid consuming dishonest journalism dressed up as honest reporting is to REFUSE TO BELIEVE THE REPORT ON ITS FACE, regardless of the claims of the reporters or publishers or social pressures to conform to the narrative, and conduct your own independent check of the report for validity, reliability, credibility, and objectivity.

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If you can’t do this or don’t have time for it, then you have only yourself to blame when your mental digestion is disturbed by the toxic information you’re willfully consuming, or worse, when you are complicit in perpetuating news that harms others.

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In sum, if you haven’t verified the report using objective methods, don’t believe it.