I hear it all the time. “You can’t trust the media.” It is often used to delegitimise a piece of information or dismiss an argument, which can be frustrating, and use of the term “the media” is too reductive in its assumption that all media are the same. Beyond the logical fallacy though, the phrase is far more sinister in what it proposes about the state of journalism.
I know there is some truth in it. After all, media ownership in Australia is one of the most highly concentrated in the world, especially following the merger of Nine Entertainment and Fairfax last year. The ABC too has suffered ever-increasing cuts to funding and pressure from the Liberal Party. A 2018 Edelman survey of 28 countries showed that Australians’ trust in media was second lowest, next to Turkey. Admittedly, we’re not the best, but we’re certainly not the worst. Australia still ranks 21 out of 180 countries listed by Reporters without Borders on their world press freedom index.
However, when you consider that two-thirds of Australian adults get their news from social media, and over 50% expect this news to be inaccurate, it leads you to wonder whether people want trustworthy media, or whether they simply want to mistrust the media. There will always be media that is corrupt and there will always be “fake news” for as long as there are social media sites like Facebook to host it, but these should not define “the media”. There are countless media organisations and journalists who are risking their lives every day to uncover corruption, offer fresh perspectives and bring us more accurate information. They do all this so that we can act on injustices and make better informed decisions about how to navigate the world.
Saying “you can’t trust the media” is more than just an annoying conversational ad hominem; I’d go so far as to say that it is dangerous. Attacking the credibility of the institution of journalism is an existential threat to freedom.
It also overlooks the risks that so many journalists undertake in less democratic and less safe parts of the world. It delegitimises Jamal Khashoggi, who was tortured and killed last year in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey for his criticism of the Saudi prince Mohammad bin Salman. It delegitimises the two Reuters journalists Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo who have been jailed in Myanmar since December 2017 for reporting on the killing of Rohingya Muslims. It delegitimises Lyra McKee who was shot dead in Londonderry just two weeks ago during an uprising of Irish nationalists. Not to mention the 100+ journalists killed in the last two years, over half of which were targeted murders.
In fact, journalism is a more dangerous profession than it has ever been before, and although a sad and frightening fact, this to me signifies that it is just as effective a profession as it has ever been. Nobody kills a journalist because they are outdated and ineffective. They kill a journalist because they are a threat to corruption and power, they are a threat to secrecy and mistruth, and they are just as important and relevant today as ever, if not more.
Respect for media is integral to the safety and effectiveness of journalists in a world where they have increasingly fewer protections. Disengaging from media is one thing, but delegitimising it is another and, given our unprecedented access to information, painting all media organisations with the broad brush of mistrust amounts to intellectual laziness and a refusal to acknowledge the very lifeblood of a democracy.
For all your kind words about trusting the Australian media, I still have trouble even believing the date printed on Murdoch’s rags.
OK Mell!
I”ll modify my belief in “journalists” which is just an invented word to try and upgrade the status of “Reporters” and allow the inclusion of know it all (at least in their own minds) “Columnists”.
I’ll now believe that you (me) can not trust 98% of the media.
You say – “You can’t trust the media.”
I answer that 100% of the times I’ve read a story where straightforward technical information within my lived experience is reported I find that a significant key fact is plain outright incorrect. This is not an issue of bias, it is an issue of reporters not having sufficient depth of understanding to cover the story accurately.
Once the mental ‘pump is primed’ and I believe that reportage in areas that I know about is inept or lazy it is not a massive mind trick to wonder if the rest of what is reported is as inaccurate.
Perhaps I’m just incredibly unlucky to know significantly more about a very small range of topics that the media?
You don’t have to go to corruption or obvious, deliberate bias and fakery. Simple incompetence is sufficient to explain the phenomenon in most instances.
As quite a young boy I discovered that events that I had first hand knowledge of, either through proximity or involvement, usually bore little resemblance to the “story” that subsequently appeared in the local paper, on the occasions that that happened. It’s not hard to extrapolate to the conclusion that all newspaper stories will not appear correct to the people who were involved. And so a grain of salt is required when reading. You can usually deduce that something has happened, and get a sense of who might have been involved, and perhaps where. Beyond that you’re usually on much shakier ground.
That’s without the obvious bias. Even many “serious” journalists in big publications or broadcasters tend to advocacy from time to time. As the Telegraph showed us yesterday, even the print-media can stoop to shitposting and the dividing line between opinion and news is blurry everywhere.
It’s not as though this is a new phenomenon. Newspapers have been held in similar regard since the invention of the presses. Necessary, very possibly, but not often admired.
You can trust the media enough for most purposes, but only if you are prepared to read multiple outlets. And I mean read.