Let’s talk about fake news.
How did we get to a point as a nation and as a society that we would write off the news media as half garbage at best and half propaganda at worst? The obvious answer that everyone will probably want to say is that we’re where we are now because of the 2016 election.
There’s probably a lot of truth in that.
The polarization of the 2016 election literally split the country. Pundits say the nation hasn’t been this divided since the Civil War.
Whether you like it or not, though, having the President of the United States call the news media “the enemy of the people,” is absolutely mind-boggling. With that, I’m not surprised half the country has no trust in the media. I mean, the President said so, right?
Listen, presidents have gone twelve rounds with reporters for decades. But there has always been a mutual respect. An acknowledgement from the chief executive of the press’ role and essential place in our country.
The Founding Fathers cemented the need for a free press in the First Amendment. It was something that they knew was vital in a healthy democracy.
Thomas Jefferson even went so far as to say, “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”
And as for President Trump’s claim that the press is the enemy of the people, Former President and Founding Father John Adams would disagree entirely.
“The liberty of the free press is essential to the security of the state,” said Adams.
So we’ve established up until a minute ago (in the grand scheme of American history) the press has been respected and regarded as vital.
Going into the future, I’m not so sure the press as we knew it will ever be revived.
I had a professor raise this example: during the Nixon administration when the Washington Post broke the Watergate scandal, nobody, not even Nixon called the Post “fake news.”
The public’s reaction was to take the reports seriously.
If Trump were president during a time when the press was looked at in the same way, he would’ve been out a long time ago.
But because half of the media outlets are apparently “fake news,” Trump could win re-election.
Now wait, I said could, so don’t flip out. But nevertheless, having such a yuge (as Trump would say) distrust in the media does nothing but help the Trump administration.
It’s not just the president or the polarized public that has created the distrust in the media. In a way, the media has done it to themselves, too.
With the rise of extreme fringe outlets like Brietbart, InfoWars and the Palmer Report, exacerbated conspiracies have sent people scurrying to their respective corners of the political spectrum.
These media outliers have grown while outlets that were widely respected and trusted have suffered. These are sources like the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC and ABC.
In a hundred years when kids are learning about this time in American history in their history classes, what will the lesson be? What was more impactful on us as a society and as a nation? Our mutual hatred of those wearing MAGA hats and those with Bernie bumper stickers? Or our inherent and senseless distrust in the free press?