Where the press is free and every man able to read, all is safe.”
― Thomas Jefferson, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Retirement Series, Volume 9: 1 September 1815 to 30 April 1816

P is for The Press

A Free Press is essential for a robust democracy and guaranteed by the First Amendment, but some say that journalism is dead.

Back in the day when I studied journalism with the idea I might one day be a journalist, the idea was to present the unvarnished truth—Who? What? When? Where? Why? How?

The lede, these days often spelled lead, should contain the main facts, and after that, you present a succinct explanation/description/overview, and you better be accurate because back then, the penalties for fake news were severe.

And you edited it to avoid errors—horror stories abound and woe to the writer who sent in a story about a pubic meeting instead of public meeting, or freshly stocked fish humping in the river instead of jumping-though doubtless they were doing both but some things just weren’t mentioned back then.

Needless to say, I never became a journalist. I found it more entertaining to embellish the facts to make a good story, which, my journalism teacher told me, is called fiction instead of news. Who wants a story about a lost kid who is later found drunk in the basement when you could have a lost kid who is, in fact, an alien body snatcher? No one, that’s who.

Up until the past couple of years, fiction seemed stranger than truth–not so much now.

I have been sorely disappointed in cable news outlets. CNN and MSNBC, along with so many others, have become editorials instead of news. I go outside the U.S. to BBC, Al Jazeera, and CBC. I watch NPR and FreeSpeech TV, which also have a bias, but I do trust their facts. And a shout out to Meidas Touch podcasts—absolutely biased to the left but also accurate in their reporting.

I’m sorry to say, I don’t trust the U.S. media anymore. Some of them have been bought. Some of them have been cowed. This is a sorry state of affairs.

So, how do we hold them accountable? How do we fix this?

I wish I knew. We can stop watching—MSNBC suffered a considerable decline in viewers after a couple of their pundits made a hurried trip to Mar-A-Lago to kiss—something. But those people are still on the channel, so that decline didn’t seem to have an effect. Other pundits, however, several of them women and/or people of color, were dismissed.

Legislation may be necessary, but this is not going to happen in the current political clime. And even the best legislation doesn’t take the place of a population with the ability to think critically.

So, once again, education and self-accountability are the answers. We all have to learn to spot fake news and think critically. Here is a resource with some concrete suggestions for doing these things. Please see the link after the infographic to find even more discussion on this topic.

Cornell University Guide to Evaluating the News

Good journalists do exist, despite my doom and gloom. If you have examples of that, please share! If you have suggestions for holding the media’s feet to the flames (literally or figuratively) I’d love to hear that too.