The Media’s Moment- Introspection and Change, or Abdication?
The Impact on Democracy of Failing to Recognize a New Presidential Political Paradigm
The News Media’s Self-Examination Opportunity is Now
In something as fluid as democracy, while it may at times appear that things are as they have always been, appearances are often deceiving. Democracy is fluid, ever changing, just as the people and the society it serves are, even when it seems we are stuck in a rut. The news media is no different. Much of it has changed due to social media and the changes it has brought to news media economics, especially for the print media. But, since 2016 our news media has resisted fundamental change in one area in particular. For much of the media, understanding how in a democracy to effectively cover today’s politics (especially at the presidential level), has been confounding for it.
It is not a new challenge, one that the news media has met before.
What’s Old is New Again
The year was 1942. It was the eve of the United States’ entry into World War II. Henry Luce, publisher of Time Inc., met with his friend Robert Maynar Hutchins. Luce suggested to Hutchins, a legal and education philosopher who also was president of the University of Chicago, to create a panel of scholars to engage on the “state of the American press.”[1] The environment in the United States at that time was one of pervasive distrust of the media. Hutchins eventually agreed to lead this effort, which came to be known as the Hutchins Commission.[2]
The Hutchins Commission met and produced in 1946 its report titled, “A Free and Responsible Press”. It became “journalistic canon.” The report goes on to layout society’s requirements for a free press.[3] They are:
“…five essential mandates: first providing “a truthful, comprehensive, and intelligent account of the day’s events”; second, furnishing a forum for discussion of “all the important viewpoints and interests in the society”; third, offering a “representative picture” of society and its various groups; fourth, educating the public on the “ideals towards which the community should strive”; and fifth, making information available to everybody. The press, the commission found, was failing to meet all these requirements.”[4] (emphasis mine)
Déjà vu All Over Again?
Compelling arguments can be made that the state of United States’ news media today is much worse than what the Hutchins Commission described it to be in 1946. As Michael Lao noted in his New Yorker piece on this subject:
“…years after the publication of “A Free and Responsible Press,” we face a crisis similar to, and perhaps deeper than, the one contemplated by the Hutchins Commission. Confidence in the media is at a nadir, the country’s political divisions are driving disagreement over basic facts, and half-truths, falsehoods, and propaganda have overrun the digital platforms and political news ecosystem.”[5]
That is not to say that all American news media are falling short. In fact, some of the smaller or lesser-known news outlets are breaking huge stories that force Americans to see more clearly what is going on in their nation’s government and public square. However, for the most part, our major news outlets, which are often described as mainstream or corporate media, consistently do not meet the criteria that the Hutchinson Commission report laid out years ago.
Is it Worse Today than 1946?
According to the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life (CITAP) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the state of the news media today in this country, especially local newspapers, is dire:
“Our current media ecosystem produces too little high-quality information; we have a tendency to be attracted to information that confirms our existing biases about the world and to share this information with little regard for its veracity; and there are an increasing number of actors who seek to leverage these observations to distort public discourse and to undermine democratic decision making.”[6] (emphasis mine)
Despite these challenges, the importance of the news media as a “guardrail” for maintaining democracy has long been recognized. In fact, because of its importance to democracy, the news media is at times referred to as the “Fourth Estate” or “fourth power” because of its unique “…capacity of advocacy and implicit ability to frame political issues.”[7]
But ask yourself this- if our news media is considered such an important guard rail for democracy, what is it supposed to be guarding for us?
Democracy’s “Watchman on the Wall”
The answer? In a democracy, the news media is given a key role- shining a light on our democracy itself. This light is supposed to illuminate our democratic norms, values, our democracy’s operation and practices (both good and corrupt), its tenets, its institutions and founding documents (including their amendments), its achievement and failures, and its public officials’ performance (elected and appointed), just to name a few. And with that shining light of journalistic investigation using relentless inquiry and integrity, the news media is supposed to ask the most fundamental question a democracy should be asked in order to ensure its continued success- how is American democracy doing? Is it measuring up or not? And if not, why not, and what must we do to meet our own democratic standards?
And while there is evidence in many forms that our media is falling short of effectively functioning as this democratic guard rail, the reasons offered for this failure are many. While there are likely many reasons for the news media’s “guard rail failure,” the most basic one is right “under our noses.” It is in plain sight if we pause to see it.
The most basic reason our news media is not performing its guard rail function is how they go about trying to perform it. This approach has, for the most part, been chosen by most of the news media as to how they will shine their light on our democracy and cover it journalistically Spoiler alert- since 2016 it has not been working, and it all has to do with a thing called “paradigms”.
The News Media’s False Assumption
Paradigms are simple, but powerful things. A paradigm is “a standard, perspective, or set of ideas,”[8] a way of looking at something. The Greek word it is derived from means to “show side by side.”[9] Choosing the wrong or nonapplicable paradigm can lead one down a “rabbit hole” of wrong comparisons, inaccurate analysis, incorrect conclusions, absence of helpful observations, and most importantly, failing to gain an understanding of what is actually going on.
Since at least 2016, the American news media, for the most part, has chosen a particular paradigm to cover the politics of the Trump/MAGA presidential candidacy, the Trump presidency, and all the political machinations emanating from that source all the way to the present. The means of executing that paradigm was the same one they had always chosen to cover American politics and especially the presidency. It is called “bothsidesism.”
This paradigm assumes both political parties and their candidates are functioning as typical American political candidates who both believe in American democratic norms and values within the framework of American democracy as established by the U.S. Constitution and our other founding documents. That is not what has been occurring. The wrong paradigm was chosen to cover it.
Why the Chosen Paradigm Has Failed Democracy
“Bothsidesism” is a colloquialism for “false balance.” This is when journalists “…present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports. Evidence and arguments are presented that are out of proportion to the actual evidence for each side, or may omit information that would establish one side's claims as baseless.[10] According to Marvin Kalb of the Brookings Institution, the news media’s desire to use “bothsidesism” stems from their striving to be “fair and balanced”. [11] Ironically, it is a marketing phrase put forth by Fox News, a news media outlet that has never been concerned with that approach to news coverage.
The problem with this paradigm is that it is the wrong one. It’s like taking a set of golf clubs to go bowling.
Why Hasn’t It Worked?
The answer to this question, while fairly obvious, should not be understated or under emphasized. In the Amerian political scene since 2016 when Donald Trump declared his candidacy for president, there have not been two equivalent sides for the news media to cover. There are not two parties or two candidates operating within the same political construct of democracy. Only one of them is. The other has abandoned democracy and has made no secret about it. The result is there are not two sides to apply “bothsidesism” to, because they are completely different approaches to governing America.
One party is operating within a political construct of populist authoritarianism thereby rejecting democratic norms and values. Further, it is executing those values and beliefs with a Russian styled disinformation campaign.[12] However, “bothsidesism” has prevented this from being effectively explained to the American people. It is often presented simply as “conservatism” which of course, it is not. It is fascism. Thus, American democracy is without a “guard rail” and is unprotected because the news media has chosen a paradigm to operate within that prevents it from conducting its vital democratic role of accurately describing reality in the public square.
The Damage to Democracy
When two completely different things are presented as being essentially “two sides of the same coin,” the result is often deadly to democracy. This approach attempts to convince us that we are merely arguing over the “how” of democracy, as opposed to its “what.” However, in reality within our politics since 2016, there are not two sides that can be presented as being equivalent in terms of their basic philosophical construct or context. It is claiming a false equivalence which in turn makes all the reporting conducted in this paradigm inadequate to support democracy.
False equivalence is when an attempt is made to compare and draw equivalence between two things based on the presence of a few shared features when, in fact, the two things are not alike on the relevant aspects.[13] For purposes of illustration, an absurd example of a false equivalence argument would be: “Dogs have tails and feet, and so do cats. Therefore, dogs are equivalent to cats.”
By ignoring Donald Trump’s authoritarianism and clear commitment to replace democracy with autocracy as well as giving it news coverage by using “bothsidesism” journalism, our news media has abdicated its role in democracy. False equivalence has prevailed, instead of truth, which is the foundation of democracy.
It Can be Regained
But we can get back to journalism that upholds democracy if the American people demand it. It begins when we start letting journalists throughout our news media know that we accept the fact that a new paradigm must be used to cover politics in this era of Trumpism and MAGAism. It begins when we let them know that we understand and accept they must report facts. However, those facts about these two parties and their candidates cannot and must not be presented as somehow being falsely equivalent and cannot be presented as if they come from a shared context of democratic norms and values.
Perhaps one day a Republican Party will reemerge that believes in democracy and the old paradigm of “bothsidesism” can be used effectively by journalists to cover them. However, that time is not now. Perhaps one day journalists will operate with the shared understanding that a candidate’s political ideology is as important, if not more so, than the mechanics of the campaign they run or their party’s platform.[14] That is how the Fourth Estate should and must operate in a 21st century democracy, if that democracy is to survive.
The question remains- is our news media going to take the opportunity, as it did in 1943, to examine itself, its choice of paradigms for news coverage, and restore its key role of helping to guard our democracy? The time for the news media to seize this moment is now.
[1] “How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society? The Future of Democracy,” by Michael Luo, The New Yorker, July 11, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-future-of-democracy/how-can-the-press-best-serve-democracy
[2] How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society? The Future of Democracy,” by Michael Luo, The New Yorker, July 11, 2020, Ibid
[3] How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society? The Future of Democracy,” by Michael Luo, The New Yorker, July 11, 2020, Ibid
[4] How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society? The Future of Democracy,” by Michael Luo, The New Yorker, July 11, 2020, Ibid
[5] How Can the Press Best Serve a Democratic Society? The Future of Democracy,” by Michael Luo, The New Yorker, July 11, 2020, Ibid
[6] “Addressing the Decline of Local News, Rise of Platforms, and Spread of Mis- and Disinformation Online”, by David Ardia, Evan Ringel, Victoria Smith Ekstrand, and Ashley Fox, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life, UNC Center for Media Law and Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, https://citap.unc.educ/local-news-platforms-mis-disinformation/#executive- summary
[8] Paradigm - Definition, Meaning & Synonyms | Vocabulary.com
[9] Paradigm Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
[10] False balance - Wikipedia
[11] Press “bothsideism” has failed Biden, and America | Brookings
[12] On Disinformation, How to Fight for Truth and Protect Democracy, by Lee McIntyre, pp 30-40, Copyright 2023 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
[13] “Five False Equivalence Examples to Know Before Your Next Argument,” Develop Good Habits, A Better Life One Habit at a Time, https://www.developgoodhabits.com/false-equivalence
[14] Letters from an American, August 9, 2024, by Heather Cox Richardson, Copyright 2024.