Factual, but Fake: Untangling a Confusion

Recently, I was asked to take a survey from the Missouri School of Journalism. It was seeking to understand how people like me evaluated the credibility of news sources. But it never got around to asking how. It only asked what sources I trusted and where I fell in the political spectrum. If you want to know how, read on.

The President’s news conference last Thursday put the question in stark relief. In a particularly telling exchange with a reporter from CNN, the President said, “The leaks are absolutely real. The news is fake.” For some, this statement is utterly baffling, causing heads to explode. For others, it captures the problem in a perfect paradox.

To help my friends with exploding heads, let me offer a few reflections to reconcile the contradiction. Perhaps along the way we can understand one another better and find a more productive civil discourse. How is it possible that anyone can call a news story “fake” when the facts themselves are true? The answer can be summed up in four words: context, framing, balance, and comparison.

Let’s take them in reverse order. The first thing to remember in every conversation about politicians or public policy, is that judgments are comparative and not absolute. All politics is an attempt to strike a fair balance between any number of competing interests.

The U.S. Constitution was designed to put them in opposition to each other so that through public discussion we can come to a livable balance. States’ rights vs. Federal power, Executive branch vs. Judicial and Legislative, Church vs. State, and many others all meet in a glorious scrum of ideas.

Sadly, the evolution of the electronic media has increasingly undermined meaningful discussion. Neil Postman, in his brilliant book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, compares the depth of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates of the mid-19th century with the shallow thinking and short attention-spans of today’s interlocutors. It isn’t pretty.

While the print media at least possesses an inherent potential to be more thoughtful than cable news, this promise is largely dissipated. Instead of informing our sound-bite culture with a more nuanced analysis, they have themselves become bumper-sticker parodies of the evening news.

In a sound-bite culture, nuanced comparison is transmogrified into bombastic false dichotomies between absolute good and absolute evil. These, in turn, stir up powerful emotions that produce more heat than light. But they also produce money. Media moguls know how to exploit the emotions of their patrons to pad the bottom line. Worse still, politicians encourage these false dichotomies to stir up panicked support for their cause du jour.

Consider recent elections. Candidates bring up every possible unsavory detail of an opponent’s words and actions. Then they conclude with a rhetorical flourish like, “how could anybody possibly support that?” But, of course, no reasonable person does – not even those who pulled the lever for that candidate.

Voters do not – or, at least, should not -- support a person because of their character flaws, but in spite of them. Election is not a question of deciding who is good and who is evil. It is a matter of looking soberly at the good and evil of both candidates, or both policy proposals, and deciding which one, on balance, tips the scales more to one side or the other.

Balance is key. Not absolute loyalty. The election of people to office is neither the anointing of a savior, nor the destruction of a devil. It is weighing the strengths and weaknesses of any course of action and judging which is better and which worse. In a world where balance is key, it is necessary that all of the facts be placed in the scales, and not just some of them.

People stop listening to news outlets, not because they occasionally repeat a lie. These can be corrected. But a consistent pattern of refusing to report the facts of both sides leaves them hungry. Here is what mainstream journalism needs to understand and take to heart if they ever hope to fulfill their duty as the fourth estate.

Questions like that of the CNN reporter in Thursday’s press conference simply miss the point. Incessantly asking, “can you prove that I said anything wrong?” misses the more important question, “what necessary information have you left out of the story?”

Serious reflection on this question would go a long way toward helping mainstream journalism understand why conservatives are drawn to news sources outside of the mainstream. Thoughtful people are not looking for alternative facts. They are seeking the rest of the facts. If you want to keep them reading your papers and listening to your broadcasts, give them all the facts and not only half of them.

Balance is undermined not only by omitting certain facts, but also by omitting certain words. George Orwell put his finger on this phenomenon in his dystopian novel, 1984. There, “newspeak” was the mandated language of the pressroom. By expunging certain words from the dictionary and inventing others, Oceana not only created facts, they controlled the framework of thought, limiting the very thoughts that are possible.

While 1984 is fiction, it is far from fantasy. In our day, the mainstream media is the Ministry of Truth. Accordingly, the Associated Press keeps an ever-evolving dictionary of approved words and expressions and their corresponding forbidden words. Just look at two of the hot-button issues of our day.

According to the AP stylebook, the terms “pro-abortion” and “abortionist” are never to be used. The preferred terms are “abortion rights” and “abortion practitioner.” This word choice is clearly designed to cast one side in a more favorable light. But the same stylebook mandates that someone who calls themselves pro-life, must be referred to as “anti-abortion.”

We find similar framework bias in words about marriage. According to the GLAAD Media Reference Guide, both AP and Reuters stipulates that the term “sexual preference” is proscribed, along with “gay lifestyle.” These are always to be replaced by “sexual orientation.”

Obviously, GLAAD’s agenda is advanced by down-playing choices and behaviors. But for the AP and Reuters to adopt the word preferences of a special interest group into their official guide is biased journalism plain and simple.

Finally, weighing facts in the balance requires careful attention to context. If somebody has killed a man, it is important to know whether this was in the line of duty, or in a bar room brawl. The same goes for infractions against the incredibly complex rules of American government.

Take, for example, the case of Michael Flynn. It has been stipulated as fact that he contacted his Russian counterpart before being sworn in as National Security Advisor. This is against the rules. But it is also true that the Logan Act has been regularly violated for over two centuries. When reporting on the Flynn affair, failure to include this fact turns the entire story into fake news.

“You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you will never fool all of the people all of the time.” Whether or not honest Abe said these words, they contain a wisdom that cuts two ways.

On the one hand, it should be a comfort to everyone that the occasional false narrative will not long prevail. Whether it is misreporting by the New York Times, or by the Onion, some will believe it initially, but eventually the truth will prevail.

On the other hand, when vital information is consistently withheld in order to promote a progressive agenda over a conservative one, people will eventually come to distrust everything that comes from that news source, and seek another outlet altogether.

Such asymmetrical reporting is the greatest contributor to the polarization of the American people. By imposing one framework over another, and deliberately throwing off the balance, it sabotages civil discourse. The best thing we can do to prevent polarization is for every news outlet to strive for a full and fair reporting of every relevant detail.

This requires editors who actively seek out writings from all sides of the spectrum. It requires reporters who not only seek an occasional quote from the other side, but actually spend enough time with their ideological opposites that they can think within their framework and speak in their language.

We may not be able to change the culture on the pages of the New York Times, but each and every one of us can change the culture on our Facebook page. Remember, it is about comparison and balance, not absolute party loyalty. Admit weaknesses. Repudiate the inexcusable actions of your candidate. Seek to understand the framework and word-choice of the other side.

In so doing you will be joining the revolution and striking a blow for civil discourse. America can come together one civil conversation at a time.