14 Don’t Lose Sight of the Facts

Remember filter bubbles? These sources of information will keep you in them.

• One America News.
• Newsmax.
• The New York Post.
• The Blaze.
• Daily Caller.
• Epoch Times.
• The Washington Examiner.
• Breitbart News.
• The Gateway Pundit.
• The Washington Times.
• The Right Scoop.
• Fox News.

Unlike the fact-based organizations and those that have opinions based on strong arguments, those listed here have a different kind of agenda. In some cases, it’s to curry favor with specific political parties. In others, it’s to first and foremost to make a financial profit.

The editorial models found here are not taught in any credible — or accredited — journalism program in the United States. They are agenda-based rather than First Amendment-based. Instead of offering multiple sides of an issue to better inform readers and viewers, they cherry pick information to present a manipulated reality.

What, you might ask, is wrong with that? Well, it depends. As Chapter 2 explained, the concept of objectivity is relatively recent.

When the United States was founded, media were similarly party-oriented. There were Whig newspapers and there were Tory newspapers, among others. And they could be tough on their opponents. Despite that, the founding father who served as the country’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, said, “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.”

That was a noble sentiment from a man who was savaged by oppositional media. At another, less magnanimous moment, he said, “. . . the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them.”

This has turned out to be true for some people today as well, quantified by research from Farleigh Dickinson’s Public Mind survey research center. In 2012, researchers there found people who watched no news at all answered more questions about international current events than people who watched cable news — specifically Fox News.

Fox News fails to even come close to consistently presenting information that might help viewers make their own decisions on issues or facts that help them understand current events.

Take the case of Seth Rich. Fox News paid Rich’s family millions of dollars in an out-of-court settlement after repeatedly claiming — falsely — Rich had leaked Democratic emails during the 2016 presidential campaign. The story evolved from Reddit posts after Rich was shot and killed in Washington D.C. While no evidence connected Rich to the leaks, Fox News reported the false information at the expense of the real story: Russian intelligence officers had leaked the emails in an attempt to help Trump win the presidency.

Knowingly reporting falsehoods is not protected by U.S. law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruling New York Times v. Sullivan shields news reporters from libel and defamation lawsuits, provided the reporters were acting in good faith. The out-of-court settlement speaks for itself in the same way Carol Burnett’s settlement with The National Enquirer did.

But Fox’s overall financial success has spawned many imitators that appear on this chapter’s list, some of which are more extreme than Fox. The media outlets on the list above, for example, reported (and in many cases continue to report) the false claims of election fraud impacting the 2020 presidential election, according to a 2020 Harvard University study.

Weeks of stoking election fraud claims were followed by the Jan 6., 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol. Journalist Tom Arenberg, who teaches reporting and writing at The University of Alabama, has written, “No one is more responsible for the devastation to life and property at the U.S. Capitol than the criminals themselves, but retributions are under way against parts of the media environment that allowed it and even encouraged it.”

He noted Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan called the pro-Trump media’s role in Wednesday’s events — led by Fox News — “disgraceful.”

“They own this,” she wrote.

Sean Hannity of Fox News offered the most egregious example. In the months following the attack on the Capitol, the U.S. House select committee investigating the incident showed the namesake host of Fox News’ “Hannity” program advised President Trump and his aides. At the same time, Hannity also commented on the election and the attack on television.

Viewers noted Hannity downplayed the insurrection to his audience, as CNN’s media reporters showed in a breakdown of Hannity’s journalistic ethics lapses. Politifact noted Hannity, as well as other Fox News hosts, downplayed the violence and blamed the attack on antifa. All legitimate reporting of the Jan. 6 attack clearly showed the antifa allegations were untrue.

Lest you think liberal-leaning news organizations are getting off the hook here, there are several that also promote Democratic Party or even more left-leaning policies almost exclusively, including MSNBC, Huffington Post, Democracy Now and Pacifica (radio) Network — although none of them promoted false claims about the 2020 election.

None of these compare in size, budget or influence to Fox News. Only CNN does that.

So, what of CNN? Criticism of Fox often precipitates similar criticism of CNN. The pioneer 24-hour news channel is not without its journalistic flaws. The most egregious of them is anchors who lead in and out of stories, panel discussions and interviews by interjecting their own opinions on the issues being examined. This is antithetical to the traditional American anchor’s role of guiding the program without commenting on it. (BBC World News is a model of doing this right.)

Anchors spouting personal opinion adds nothing helpful to the dissemination of the news and exists more for ratings and to engage audience members on one side or the other.

Taking the news anchor partisanship problem one step further, CNN prime-time anchor Chris Cuomo offered public relations advice to his brother, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, after the governor was accused in a series of sexual harassment complaints. CNN acknowledged the conversations were “inappropriate.” Poynter said a journalist going behind the scenes to help shape what happens in politics is a clear conflict of interest.

In this case, “it was more than a year in the making” and “finally blew up in CNN’s face.”

But while these actions undermine journalistic norms and ethics, they come quite short of functioning in a way that undermines democracy itself. The media outlets that report false information to support one party or one candidate have gone well beyond fairly reporting facts or even interpreting them. They’ve crossed the line into disinformation territory.

The first half of this book describes broad categories of information, noting the differences in misinformation, disinformation, biased news, opinion and objectivity, among others.

Here’s what it all boils down to: For journalists and nonjournalists, news junkies and casual followers of current events, there are places we get reliable information and places where we get the opposite. And as you follow the news, hear this. This book is not saying you are wrong to watch Fox News or MSNBC, follow TMZ or @Deuxmoi.

We’re saying, if you do, know what you’re watching. Think critically about the content. Seek out alternative perspectives. In other words, consider the source.