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The most recent presidential campaign has reignited many Americans’ Facebook rants about “journalism these days,” and how it’s all turned into a biased, money-centered propaganda machine. No one could log into Facebook during the run up to the election without reading one or more lofty diatribes on why the candidate they support will be the next Messiah and how “the media” has a merciless vendetta against him or her.

Yes, news organizations all across the country missed an important mark while covering the race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump by writing that Trump’s victory was a “shock.” I’d bet good money that many hard-core Trump supporters didn’t share that same sentiment, so why was it spreading like wildfire in election night coverage?

Regardless, a generalized hatred for media coverage is unjustified. After all, journalists are the ones who maintain your Fourth Estate and are ultimately the glue that keep your democracy intact. I recently saw a tweet by Sarah Jeong, a contributing editor to the online publication Motherboard, that said, “Audiences say ‘journalism’ when they liked it and ‘media’ when they don’t,” which in my experience so far could not be more accurate. Journalists are undoubtedly a public pain in the derriere, but we’re also an undoubtedly necessary one.

As a budding journalist myself, I have seen these rants by my own peers and have taken them personally at times—even if it was aimed at a national outlet. While my youthful idealism is still somewhat intact (but diminishes a little more with every passing semester), I am not naive enough to deny that poorly-written and completely false reporting is still out there. It’s out there more often than it should be.

The most recent outrage over the unvetted Russian dossier is a particularly painful controversy for those of us trying to save the reputation of reliable reporting. However, the overwhelming majority of news and journalism in the world is still fair and truthful, and it’s a shame that the hysteria over fake news gets more spotlight time than the incredible, breakthrough work that reporters kill themselves for and sacrifice personal time and sleep for every single day.

For all the readers out there, I humbly ask you to hear my takeaway plea: keep an open mind about journalism and the news industry. Sure, it has flaws, but every other industry does too. How can the world expect improvements in our field if you don’t even give us up-and-comers a chance to prove you wrong?

This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2017.

38 replies on “The Fake News Frenzy”

  1. I think the biggest problem is the crucial role of journalists no longer the primary concern of their employers. Larger media outlets are an ad-revenue driven business, and getting clicks is the primary goal, with accurate and important reporting somewhere lower on the priority list.
    So when I hear people complain about ‘the media’ I agree on one level – what they chose to cover and how they cover it (he said-she said style personal beefs totally distracting from policy implications etc.) is not good journalism, but gets traffic. THAT to me is the problem more than any inherent bias one way or the other.
    The term ‘infotainment’ pretty much covers it.

  2. “journalists are the ones who maintain your Fourth Estate and are ultimately the glue that keep your democracy intact”

    No they don’t, not anymore. They are one and the same with the Democrat party, more specifically they are almost ALL liberals graduating from liberal indoctrination centers.

  3. Major media outlets are knowingly lying to the American people to advance a liberal agenda, example of it just today. Regardless of what agenda they are advancing, they should not be, the institution and industry is dishonest. They are in collusion with a political party.

    “ABC/Washington Post and CNN are out with a pair of polls on Trump’s favorability this morning that sport some of the most egregious “oversamples” we’ve seen. The ABC/Wapo poll showed an 8-point sampling margin for Democrats with only 23% of the results taken from Republicans…”

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-01-17/new-abc-wapo-poll-shows-drop-trump-favorabilty-through-aggressive-oversamples

  6. The numbers don’t lie. But liberals deny the facts. And you lost an electoral landslide. So keep on, keepin on. You’ve lost all power at state and federal level. Enjoy the next eight years.

  8. While we’re on the subject of denying facts.
    Trump’s electoral college win ranks 47th out of 58 elections. He lost the popular vote by 3 million votes (3rd most ever, most since before 1900).
    Yup, he won the election, will be our president shortly. just don’t call it a landslide. i’m not arguing politics. i’m pointing out facts.

  9. Sorry to burst your bubble some guy but popular vote means nothing, absolutely nothing. The spread in California was the only reason Hillary won the popular (see below).

    He walloped Crooked Hillary in the 50 states of the United States of America, and that’s the point. All the journo’s and their fake news polls were preaching how he didn’t have a chance, how Hillary had it all locked up, just like the fake polls put out today. All wrong, all lies. Here are the facts;

    Trump – 306, Crooked Hillary – 232. A trouncing, maybe not the biggest trouncing, but a trouncing none the less.

    It’s Official: Clinton’s Popular Vote Win Came Entirely From California
    http://www.investors.com/politics/commentary/its-official-clintons-popular-vote-win-came-entirely-from-california/

  10. A great place to start would be the admission that it is incorrect to refer to our governing model as a “democracy.” We are not. We are a Constitutional Republic.

    “In a republic, the government is constrained by the limitations placed on it through a constitution or charter. The term democracy is often confused with the representative democracy used in the United States. The United States is a republic, and its elected officials are bound by the protections of the constitution.”

    This might help. They used to teach it in 8th grade. I wonder why they eliminated it?

    https://www.reference.com/government-politics/republic-different-democracy-e57d72c133a0797d

    We are not mob rule. Our founders protected us from that. Thank you very much.

  12. yes, the 46th biggest trouncing ever. and california is indeed one of the 50 states.
    bad polling is not fake news. it’s just bad polling. all wrong, yes, obviously. all lies, no. journalists do not make the polls. they report them, and in this case, as in every election, they reported polling from a wide range of firms.
    to bring this back to the actual subject of the article – the story here is not journalistic bias, but rather what the hell these polling firms can do to be more accurate. it seems like you’re seeing malice or intent where there wasn’t any.

  13. Very well done, George. Watch how many dislikes you get now because liberals can’t argue with facts.

  14. Someguy – “journalists do not make the polls”

    In this case, ABC, Washington Post and CNN absolutely DID make the poll with intentional oversampling of Democrats, by a lot.

  15. Fair enough – their names are right there on the poll. i do think news organizations that do polling like ABC, WSJ, Washington Post, NBC, FOX – all of those – are big, divided organizations where the polling is not done by journalists but by in-house or 3rd party polling experts contracted to do the research.

    I do however find it hard to believe that they would make a poll with intentional bias built in. That is self-defeating,

    However a president who got significantly fewer votes than his opponent is going to be unpopular going into office. That’s just a numbers game.

  16. someguy – the lie isn’t the makeup of the respondents, the blatant lie is the reporting of the results. They absolutely knew of the oversampling, did not adjust for it and reported as if it wasn’t there.

    This is FAKE NEWS!

    Trump to Enter Office as Most Unpopular President in at Least 40 Years, Poll Finds

  20. dude, you just used an actual fake news site to ‘prove’ that the Washington Post traffics in fake news. research your sources. just because they says things you want to hear does not make them credible.

  21. George S- with liberals, giving state secrets to our enemies is good, exposing liberal corruption to Americans is bad. Most liberals do hate America.

  23. I am beginning to believe it. You know when Obama was elected in 2008 he said he would “fundamentally transform America.” Eight years later I am opposed to any more transformation because his presidency will go down in history as one of the most damage a sitting President has done to our country. The problem is I don’t think many of us thought we he meant was what we thought it meant.

    Were we blinded by the financial collapse of our economy? Even though it only initially harmed a small percentage. The rest of us languished in the aftermath for eight long years.

    The Great Depression didn’t last this long. Hey, there’s his legacy…..

    The Worst Attempted Recovery In The History Of The US.

    Let’s move forward, please.

  26. Stop some guy! Please stop!

    Logic and common sense burns like acid on my brain!

    I can’t hang! You liberals outsmart me every time!

  27. Ok! Ok!

    I admit it! I’m a measly troll!

    Just quit throwing logic my way, please!

    You don’t understand how much all this intelligent investigation into what real news is is killing a fool such as myself! Please, please, please stop! I am in a lot of pain!

  29. Oh God! I feel as if my heart is going to explode!

    I’m really sorry for being the most obnoxious troll on this site! I rue all that I have done and I promise not to troll anymore as long as nobody else attacks me with logic. Please, please, no more logic! I can’t take it. It BURRRRNNNS!!

  30. Ac/Dc – first you dreamed of having your own crew of illegals to serve you, then you had the crusties, now your heart is going to explode – hope you’ve paid your obamacare premiums cuz I heard it also covers mental illness.

  31. “After all, journalists are the ones who maintain your Fourth Estate and are ultimately the glue that keep your democracy intact.” This is what journalists are supposed to be. Journalists are supposed to report factually without interjecting their personal viewpoints into their reports. When that occurs, you’ve traversed the line between journalism and editorialism, which is inherently biased and invalidates the “checks and balances” responsibility of the Fourth Estate. I wish you luck in your fledgling career. However, if you want to be a true journalist, TW is not the place to do it as the publication is unapologetically biased.

  32. I initially sent this to the Weekly as a Letter to the Editor, but apparently it did not make the cut for publication, so here goes anyway

    In light of recent events concerning the posting of false articles, also known as fake news online which may or may not have influenced this presidential election I thought it past time that we examine what has happened to the quickly vanishing free press in the digital age of amateur journalists.

    Journalism is not the first institution to be dismantled by the sirens song of making fortunes by breaking down old outdated barriers in the name of a new more public world of opportunity promised by the internet.

    Some people may remember when Wall Street and the markets around the world were ruled by laws and by long-standing practices and traditions that ensured stability, before the fast and furious introduction of day-traders and like-minded trading houses that geared their business to creating volatile markets that could make fortunes in a day for the select few with enough funding and bring other businesses to ruin. In those days, an investor was someone who carefully and thoughtfully made an investment into something that may not have seen a return for years, not the parasitic hoards that ravage the markets today looking for a quick turnaround and creating a feeding frenzy that rewards companies that liquidate jobs and people with their costly salaries, benefits and retirements to appear more attractive to potential investors.

    The decline of journalism in the United States has been driven by the same mindset that took down Wall Street. The careful, time-consuming and sometimes costly reporting of the past was traded for quick attention-grabbing headlines with minimal reporting geared to online platforms for people too busy, too disinterested and too distracted to realize that their world has been taken over and controlled by multinational and global interests that see them as nothing more than a revenue stream through the consumption of fast news with the same benefits to the mind as fast food has for your health and the endless trivial, vitriolic and mindless content provided for free by countless amateurs who post their thoughts and feelings online like the internet is some giant electronic bulletin board, or more truthfully a digital bathroom wall.

    Now we are faced with not knowing how much of this news is actually false and baseless click-bait geared to generate money, undermine truth or both and the biggest irony of all is that some of the providers of this questionable caustic content tell us they cannot or will not monitor and mediate because they would not want to discourage free speech. Bull! How many people remember the example of free speech being limited by prohibiting someone from yelling fire in a crowded theater? Allowing the posting of fake news that can influence actions and decisions in the real world is yelling fire in a crowded theater except in this case it is happening 24-hours a day, 365-days a year around the world. We used to call these false stories propaganda, but even propaganda usually started with a grain of truth that was twisted to some other purpose you know, like advertising.

    Today, more than ever, people need to check facts and consider the source of the information they use to make decisions. It is not easy and those that want to continue to control you will not make it easy. They will feed you quick, prepackaged custom news to give you the illusion of staying informed, just like the fast food industry will give you fatty, salty, sugary, carbonated crap to give you the illusion of nutrition.

    So, where does that leave us? First, start reading newspapers again. I know that could be hard, especially since many local papers have become shadows of what they used to be, but the big national papers are still a good source for finding out what is going on. Second, stop getting all your news from boutique news outlets that cater to your particular point of view. Sure it is nice to view or read things that make you feel good about yourself and your opinions, but that does not mean you know what is going on in the world. The Republican Party found that out in 2012 and the Democratic Party found that out this year. You cannot have an open mind living inside a closed bubble. Lastly, start using social media to elevate civil conversations and discourse. Sure, there will still be bullies and trolls, but if people are having intelligent conversations those people will stand out like the costumed characters flooding Time Square in New York and who wants to listen to a naked cowboy or bearded teletubbies.

  33. I must really have mental illness. I keep responding to my own messages and I keep referencing a rock group that isn’t even here. It was bound to happen, I was already way off my rocker.

  34. Since the media is owned over 90% by six far right wing republican companies I’m always amazed by those who call the media “so liberal it’s literally the democratic party”. This is what a conservative business site says. Oh yeah, a lot of the rest is owned by Mitt Romney (ClearChannel) . . http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-cor…

  36. Kenneth Groves – “Since the media is owned over 90% by six far right wing republican companies…”

    Well there’s some ignorance and Fake News for ya’. 1) Those are public companies, 2) All with the exception of News Corp have leftists as their CEO’s and Boards.

    You ignorantly seem to think that wealthy equals Republican yet the 8 richest are all lefties as is most of the evil Wall Street.

    http://www.denverpost.com/2017/01/16/eight-richest-people/

  37. Ok, here’s how it works folks:

    If the news you read slanders conservatives but favors libtards, it is Fake News.

    If the news you read slanders libtards but favors conservatives, that’s the Real Deal.

    Don’t you pinko liberal commies understand anything?

  38. The News might not be literally fake, but the media has had a vendetta against Mr. Trump and the people he represents.
    For years the media establishment has supported mass immigration, globalization at expense of the working class, LGBQTXYZ-ism and other causes that most Americans really don’t support while for the most part denigrating most traditional values of the working class.
    So while the “fake news” charges are hyperbole (hyperbole from Mr. Trump???) the political fight of the middle and working classes against the media establishment has valid reasons behind it.

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