Not All Political ‘Truths’ Are True

It’s time for the press to change its coverage of Trump.

Fearless reporting, a behind-the-curtains look at how journalism is made — and an unabashed point of view. Welcome to Chills.

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A meme I tweeted last year. I have a tweak for it now.

Six years ago this week, I tweeted out a meme about journalism: “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.”

The tweet went viral, with about 150,000 people liking it — aka it resonated.

Seeing it pop up on my feed yesterday got me thinking about the new politically insane moment we are in. And while I am not by trade a political reporter, I think a lot about such reporting and how it should be done. The coincidence of seeing the tweet and the political week we’ve had here in the U.S. has brought up a lot of connected issues I see with how media is made and how it is consumed these days.

First, there’s something I’d like to tweak in the meme: “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to step outside, put your hand out, and find out which is true.”

In light of the presidential campaign and its millions of words being spilled on all sides, it’s more important than ever to maintain (and gain back) trust in journalism. Part of that entails journalists showing up in person and recording everything.

We live in a time in which Donald Trump averaged more than 30,000 lies and misleading claims during his presidential tenure — that’s an average of about 21 false claims a day — and in which much of the country believes what he spews. Because of this, we in the media need to take that extra step of walking out the door to feel for rain rather than just looking out a window. Reporting requires all your senses. Being the on-site eyes, ears, nose etc. of events is part of how we keep trust alive between readers or viewers and the press.

Another way to do this is to rein in the excessive amount of coverage given to every erratic thing Trump does. Like so many consumers of journalism, I continue to be irritated by the endless airtime and column space given to Trump’s nonsense.

In a related frustration, the former president’s unending rants make it nearly impossible for the media to keep up with his firehose of falsehoods. But nearly impossible is not impossible. Journalists need to suck it up instead of sticking with, You know, the door is a few feet too far from the newsroom, so whether it’s raining or just a bunch of air-conditioners leaking, not our problem. Outlets too often let Trump’s words air and then quickly move on to the next headline. But while it may be incredibly hard to keep up, it’s our job as journalists to keep power in check.

Therefore, I am equally fed up with the lack of media correction of Trump’s lies. Our job is to find out which is true.

False equivalency

As someone who makes journalism, I’ve spoken with my colleagues for years about the idea of so-called balance and offering “false equivalency” in our stories, particularly when it comes to featuring two political candidates’ words. Just because candidate Trump said X and candidate Biden said Y did not mean they deserved the same weight. It’s not your job to quote them both.

Much of the press suffers from a desperation to appear “balanced.” It’s a noble goal, but one that makes less sense when you look at the times we’re in. Giving “equal space” to a bunch of made-up garbage isn’t balance. Especially if you don’t even bother to call out or correct untruths.

Additionally, I, like many of you, am fed up with the mainstream media not simply calling a lie a lie.

This was particularly frustrating for me when I was at The New York Times. While working on the live Trump election coverage there, I asked a colleague if I could use the word “lie” in a headline when Trump had, you know, lied. I’d been hearing this complaint from readers and friends for years: Why won’t the Times just call a lie a lie? Your job is to look out the fucking window and find out which is true.

My colleague told me to go for it. So, for maybe 20 minutes, I had a headline up on the homepage that called out one of Trump’s lies using the actual word. Then I got a call from a senior editor who told me to change it. I vaguely understood his point at the time, although years later, I can’t remember what it was.

Implicit bias is inevitable

I’ve always believed that what separates journalists from bloggers, etc., is news judgment. It is what informs the many, many decisions that go into making a story.

When covering politics or any other kind of news story (opinion and magazine feature pieces are handled differently; there is usually a clear point of view), we work hard to maintain equality in coverage, but the way we frame stories, the words we choose, the photos we pick to display, where we place stories, these are all down to the decisions of humans, undisputably fallible humans.

As journalists, we are trained curators, and usually we have editors who work toward ensuring that what we put out is coherent and accurate. The curation is sometimes obvious, but more often than not, it’s not easy to discern — but it’s always there. It’s not that journalists are nefariously putting their personal bias into stories but that, in the end, what we put out is an amalgam of the endless decisions that are made in the course of producing a story.

Media consumers seem to understand this better than ever. Consider that recently, the “voice of God” — the omnipotent, faceless narrator that speaks over films and documentaries — is used less and less. The voice is called this specifically because the words are supposedly the utter truth, unfiltered.

Catalin Brylla, a principal lecturer in film and television at Bournemouth University in the U.K., told The Guardian that the “‘traditional, authoritative voice-of-God’ documentary narrator has indeed become an endangered species, as audiences have turned against their ‘pretentious objectivity’ in favor of more personal accounts.” She goes on to connect “the death of the narrator to the age of ‘post-truth’ politics, in which ‘information is presented through emotions, rather than factual accuracy.’”

So, it’s complex, this conversation. I admit that, on one hand, we are in a new era for media in which sounding authoritative is less interesting to consumers than more intimate perspectives, but also that we are in an era where there needs to be better discernment in what is published. But I really don’t think this is as new as it seems. The fundamentals of journalism have always meant accepting that we report and tell stories as best we can and accept defeat (aka corrections) — and change course — as needed. I think what’s mainly new is taking responsibility for our decisions and being open about them, and making different ones when the others no longer serve the public.

Now is a moment of truth as our democracy teeters.

It’s delusional that so many journalists at straight-news operations think everything they do is balanced and/or objective. And without a stronger sense of reckoning with our roles in doing journalism for the public good, we’ll continue to produce stories that offer what are provable lies and demonstrable truths as if they both deserve the same space and respect. Trust in media will continue to erode, consumption of media will continue to go down, and the gadflies of American democracy will drown in the (maybe) rain.

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