Most people agree that actual facts matter – in such activities as debate, discussion and reporting. Once facts are gathered, verified and distributed, informed decision-making can proceed in such important exercises as voting.
But what happens when important, verified facts are published and broadcast widely, yet the resulting impact proves underwhelming – or even meaningless? If vital facts fail to affect the news audiences they intend to inform?
This is the conundrum facing American journalism after Nov 5.
As a former journalist, and a scholar of media effects history, I know from both my experience and my research that even the most ethical and accurate reporting can have limited impact. Too often, critics and scholars assume that providing what they perceive to be the “right” information, while carefully policing “misinformation,” can solve the informational challenges in democratic governance.
But reality is not that simple.
Historical examples abound of American news consumers being presented with verified facts about controversial figures or events, only to have the excellent journalism have little to no effect.
Bitter – and unfounded – complaints
In the run-up to the war in Iraq in 2003, for example, one newspaper chain distinguished itself with ethical, skeptical reporting on the reality of whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, as the Bush administration asserted.
Despite their careful and accurate approach, there’s little evidence the reporters at Knight-Ridder convinced their bosses, their audiences or national politicians that their eventually vindicated framing of the issues was more accurate than the sensational and eventually largely discredited stories in The New York Times. In retrospect, the facts were ignored, and misinformation disastrously informed the citizenry.
The question of journalistic quality and its impact or influence in current events has again arisen due to the election of Donald Trump on Nov 5.
Numerous media critics and academics have argued that American journalism failed to sufficiently inform the citizenry of Trump’s malfeasance and his clear and present danger to American constitutionalism and democracy. Some bitterly complained that “the legacy media” were complicit in the “relentless normalization” of Trump’s “extremism, madness and ugliness.” Others blamed Trump’s victory on journalism’s collective failure “to make a persuasive case for democracy” when confronted by Trump’s “extreme, authoritarian agenda.”
“Horse-race coverage is back in full force,” wrote The Intercept’s James Risen in August, “and the threat Trump poses to democracy is now an afterthought.”
Yet two months before Risen wrote that, The New York Times published a detailed enumeration of Trump’s proposed policies and explained with precision how they violated basic constitutional and democratic norms of governance. Even press critic Margaret Sullivan, once the Times’ in-house journalism critic, credited the newspaper with publishing such impressively detailed and specific reportage.
But Sullivan also argued that “too often, the coverage of Trump has been an embarrassing failure – sanewashing his lunacy, falsely equating him to his traditional rivals, or treating him as some sort of amusing sideshow.”
‘Widely reported’ and broadcast
You can easily find journalistic examples of accurate and fact-based reportage about Trump throughout autumn 2024.
Numerous articles and broadcast stories appeared, in everything from USA Today, which warned readers just three days before the election of Trump’s desire to unconstitutionally “deploy U.S. troops to combat ‘the enemy within,’” to ABC News World News Tonight, which ran packages on several unconstitutional and authoritarian aspects of Trump’s plans if elected, including Trump’s announcement that he’d be a “dictator on day one” if elected.
And during his first term in office, Trump’s behavior – and his illegality – was covered extensively. The American public learned that he interfered with the presidential election in Georgia, he did not properly pay his taxes or file appropriate regulatory paperwork, he cheated on his wife with an adult film actress, he incited a riot aimed at preventing the peaceful transfer of power, he dodged the draft in Vietnam with spurious bone spurs, he insulted America’s war dead in Europe, and he is charged with violating the law when he took top secret federal documents and hid them in his home in Florida, among other acts of illegality or malfeasance.
Trump also was found liable by a jury for sexual abuse, and he was earlier caught on a recording talking about grabbing women’s genitalia.
All of this information about the president-elect was widely reported and broadcast by credible, established news organizations in the United States. Such ethical and professional reporting has played a role in his lawyer and a top financial official at his company being convicted and serving jail time, with additional serial reportage continuing throughout the series of court cases that occurred over the past two years. I would guess almost every American knows that Trump is currently a convicted felon.
News media did their job
Yet despite such constant and widespread coverage, it failed to dent Trump’s popularity with the American people. For some critics, this was seen as clear evidence of journalistic failure; for surely if the citizens realized “the truth” about Trump, his career would be over.
Yet that’s not how the news process works.
Now that Trump secured over 70 million votes on Nov. 5, 2024, you can say with certainty that millions of Americans who know that Trump is a threat to democracy and constitutional governance still elected to vote for him.
It’s likely that women who have been sexually assaulted voted for him, knowing he’s sexually assaulted women. Business owners who pay their taxes and abide by legal and regulatory filings know that Trump has evaded both obligations – and still voted for him. Military servicemen and servicewomen who know what Trump has said about their dead predecessors and heroes such as John McCain still voted for him.
Millions of well-informed, moral, ethical and law-abiding Americans who know all about Trump’s behaviors, malfeasance and illegalities, and his threat to democracy and constitutionality, voted for him.
Somehow, despite reading and absorbing verified truths and accurate reports about Trump, their voting behavior failed to match their knowledge.
That’s not the fault of the news media. They did their job.
Perhaps Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs best explains why so many news consumers who were informed of Trump’s malfeasance voted for him. Here’s how that hierarchy works: Long before we can satisfy our desire to live morally, ethically and with spiritual meaning, Maslow reasoned that physiological needs – e.g., food and shelter, safety and security, employment and health – must be met.
So just as the COVID-19 pandemic threatened health and job security, the rising price of food, medicine and housing destabilized people’s sense of security. To seriously consider Trump’s behavior or morality, or the way he seemingly threatened democratic governance and the constitutional order almost four years ago, would seem a luxury for families who can’t afford to buy an overpriced ramshackle house or old used car.
For most Americans, Washington, D.C., is distant from their local grocery store, and although inflation has diminished, many Americans seem to have voted on the memory of the less expensive world that existed during Trump’s presidency.
Rein in expectations
Perhaps the most useful lesson a journalist can learn is humility.
Being more realistic and modest about the ultimate influence of any factual and verified report – no matter how sensational or vital to national security – might help lessen disappointment if audiences fail to receive the news as intended and act accordingly.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink. The media can repeatedly publish or broadcast numerous disqualifying truths about a politician, but they can’t ensure the prevention of his or her election. Journalists need to understand how distributing true and useful information out into the world can be its own rewarding service – no matter what happens next.
Ultimately, the First Amendment protects the right of journalists to report, publish and broadcast, but it can’t force citizens to read, listen, absorb or learn. In that sense, journalism didn’t fail us – we failed journalism.
Michael J Socolow is Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine
The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.
- External Link
- https://theconversation.com/what-should-journalists-do-when-the-facts-dont-matter-243197
24 Comments
Login to comment
sakurasuki
What really matter is click and eyeball, that's why so many clickbait content now.
TaiwanIsNotChina
There will be a reckoning among the social medias. People will return to credible journalists in such an event.
Bad Haircut
Boo hoo. The academic who wrote this lives in an echo chamber with little idea what happens out in the real world. Facts don't matter in the legacy mainstream media. It's the narrative that counts. The left-wing mainstream media lied through their teeth and covered for Harris in a failed attempt hoodwink the public into voting for her. But, a majority of the voting public saw through this, accepted Trump for all his faults, and decided he'd still be a better president than Harris.
Covid was another example where facts didn't matter to the mainstream media. The fact that the corporate media are owned by companies that are also heavily invested in companies that made the treatments, and their news shows were heavily sponsored by the pharma companies that made those treatments, led to an obvious and undeniable conflict of interest, where truth about the treatments suffered and actually effecting measures were demonised by the presenters of those shows. Facts be damned. What's more they gleefully repeated the pronouncements of government and health authorities without the slightest bit of scepticism, even when those same authorities were delivering contradictory information or being caught breaking their own rules. The same was true for publicly funded media like the BBC, CBC, and Australian ABC.
So no, journalists in the mainstream corporate and government-funded media don't care about facts. They care about the hand that feeds them or their ideology.
And they wonder why trust in the mainstream media is evaporating?
Desert Tortoise
"Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence."
John Adams
virusrex
When a sizable portion of the population is functionally illiterate there is very little you can do to inform them, their own biases and prejudices become the prism that filter reality, anything they don't want to believe becomes false, and anything that they believe will be beneficial for them automatically is true, evidence and information will not change that.
It becomes clear when there is a relationship between education and political orientation, and states with a less educated population becoming more likely to vote for one candidate while those with a better educated population vote for the opponent
https://www.axios.com/2024/11/07/college-degree-voters-split-harris-trump
From the US population over 25yo, only 37% have a bachelor's degree or higher (in countries like Japan or Korea this is around 55%), the consequences of this are evident.
Geeter Mckluskie
Make them matter when they do. If they don't, don't gaslight the reader with half-truths or curated quotes that don't include what does matter such as "peacefully protest" or "I'm not talking about the white supremacists, they should be condemned", or by knowingly printing straight out lies.
mikeylikesit
Journalists could start reporting actual facts instead of “narratives.” That would be a change.
mikeylikesit
A generation or two ago in the U.S., only about 25 percent of the population had Bachelor’s degrees (and most of them broke Republican in their voting patterns).
A college degree is not necessary for functional or civic literacy. It is the epitome of elitism to suggest that a successful, high-school educated construction worker, pipe fitter, or truck driver is somehow dyscivic. Democrats lost this election partly on this same elitism.
Those without college degrees are beautiful, functional people who make critical contributions to society, without which the college-educated could not survive. They are literate. Their interests are important. They know how to vote in favor of their interests.
That the interests of the majority don’t line up with the interests of the most highly educated elite suggests how out-of-touch that elite is.
Geeter Mckluskie
The issue being there are fewer and fewer credible journalists who haven't been captured by political activism or grifting for entities like Big Pharma. ABC used to be viewed as a credible news outlet. During the presidential debate when Trump cited an increase in violent crime "credible" journalist and debate moderator David Muir, "fact checked" Trump with ""President Trump, as you know, the FBI says overall violent crime is actually coming down in this country," A fact check of Muir's fact check found that there were an additional 1,699 murders, 7,780 rapes, 33,459 robberies and 37,091 aggravated assaults that year.
Muir has yet to acknowledge his error in a crucial debate that was meant for the American people to decide on a way to overcome issues in crime, inflation, the economy and immigration principally. Such gaslighting and misinformation has made more and more people less and less convinced of the "credibility" of legacy media and their "credible journalists".
jeffy
From the original article:
—James Risen ( https://theintercept.com/2024/08/28/trump-campaign-election-media-coverage-journalists/ )
Risen is kidding right? All the media did was say how Trump was a threat to democracy.
From the article:
This does not appear to be an accurate description of the article in question. The article, located at https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/06/16/us/politics/trump-policy-list-2025.html, almost matter-of-factly enumerates Trump’s proposed policies without offering commentary as to why those policies are unconstitutional or undemocratic. For example, the article states,
So the article states there is a legal rationale. The article does not say whether this legal rationale is valid or invalid under the constitution.
Another example,
So the article states there is an exception which Trump would invoke. It does not say that Trump will use the military contrary to the constitution.
Another example,
So the article mentions “aggressive legal theories,” but says nothing as to the validity or invalidity of those theories.
This is why it is important to check sources rather than rely on other’s characterization of them. I find the inaccurate description of the article particularly amusing given the subject of the article.
Some dude
Modern journalism is all about money, clicks, and views, and "the facts" haven't mattered in ages.
You know who the biggest winner is from the recent election? The US media. They were salivating at the thought of another four years of Trump, and they got it.
As long as he generates outrage and anger, the media will be genuflecting to him and probably hoping he does away with elections altogether.
Raw Beer
What?!! You're joking, right?
People have been leaving the MSM in droves.
If you want to know what is going on, you need to find dependable sources online. Most of it is trash, but you can find good sources. In the MSM, all of it is trash...
MSM push narratives dictated by their funders. Any journalist who deviates from their narrative is eliminated.
BB
US voters without a bachelor's degree outnumber those with one in the electorate by 57% to 43%. Most won't ever read real news because they don't think they need it. Smart people, including investors and other finance types, will continue to read reliable, fact-based news from Reuters, Bloomberg, the FT and WSJ, and the rich-poor gap will widen along with the knowledge gap.
BB
That's BS. The main stream media reported early on that people were dying in large numbers from Covid, country by country, citing figures collated by Johns Hopkins.
Certain people denied the news, called it fake, and claimed Covid wasn't real, and thousands died due to ignorance. The US fared poorly. Literate societies like Japan did relatively well.
virusrex
And coincidentally those that died more were from the same group that was less educated in the previous reference.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2807617
BB
Hah, yeah, quite a coincidence indeed!
Raw Beer
Certain people believed the news, called it "science", and claimed the shots were safe and effective, and thousands died due to ignorance.
Zaphod
That claim is pretty rich coming from a representative of the mainstream media with their endless list of false information about this topic. Talk about an upside-down world.
That said, I prefer the biased mainstream media to be allowed to spread their misinformation, as long as others are free to correct them. The last ting a free society needs is a Ministry of Truth.
Geoff Gillespie
The facts always matter to someone, just not enough people these days. Should the day ever come when they really don't matter to anyone...well, it'll time to pull down the shutters and go home, won't it?
Wick's pencil
"It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled."
virusrex
As the reference clearly prove the ones that died (more) were the groups that did not believe the news and rejected the vaccines that were proved to be safe and effective.
As it is clear by now this applies more for the less educated.
FizzBit
The con-nundrum being corporate media won't be able to force-feed their warmongering ways onto the US citizens so easily.
Too bad, so sad.
Wick's pencil
Depends on what "education" you're referring to. Much of it consists of lies, but I doubt I will ever be able to convince you of that.
virusrex
Unsurprisingly since you give up trying to argue the point even before beginning, something that betrays an understanding that the claim is at best baseless, and at the worst so obviously false it is impossible to convince anybody, you could not convince anybody that the moon is made of cheese either.