Journalists should worry about how much social media tells their readers
What’s the problem with the media?
Ping a journalist with that query, and you’re likely to get back chapter and verse about the insane fiscal pressures facing newsrooms and the utter indifference to their profession from advertising-stealing tech platforms like Facebook and Google.
Ask a random bloke on the street, however, and there’s a good chance the answer will be “bias” or “trust,” as in: “I don’t trust the press, they’re all biased.”
Ah, yes. “Fake news.” Operating as “enemies of the people.” Photojournalists being hit for doing their job. It’s not exactly the best time to be repping the fourth estate.
The question now is what the press should do about their dismal approval ratings, which are hovering somewhere between “toilet” and “sewer.” A good start would be to stop being their own worst enemies. And a good place to start with that is ditching social media, which is seriously harming journalism. It’s too easy for opinions to slip into posts that would never make it into news copy, and the last thing journalism needs when it’s under severe scrutiny, as it is now by an increasingly skeptical public, are more accusations or perceptions of bias.
Instead of waddling through its fallout in the search for clicks and celebrity, reporters should treat social media like the radioactive poison it is. The positives of these platforms are proving to be false, while the negatives are all to real. Social media isn’t a representative sample of the news-consuming populace, nor is its encouragement of a “shoot-first, think-later” mentality conducive to good journalism. Most importantly, social media reveals way too much of a reporter’s own bias to the people they cover and the people who read that coverage. And the main culprit is Twitter.
The ability of Twitter to reveal reporter bias has been apparent for years, but it’s shifted into overdrive now that U.S. President Donald Trump has turned Twitter into grotesque political performance art, dragging an enraged Washington press corps with him, most of whom tweet their disgust or puzzlement at what the president does every day. The same dynamic exists in the United Kingdom, where I live, and in Canada, where I used to act as gatekeeper between the press and the prime minister. A day now isn’t a day without reporters broadcasting hot takes that risk tainting the coverage they ultimately provide. Why, it’s enough to make a politician set up his own news service.
And while it’s true most media organizations have guidelines or social media codes of conduct — most of which prohibit opining — they are mostly self-enforced. Stretched editors and executives simply don’t have the time to police all social content, especially when many reporters spend all day on platforms like Twitter.
Forget about columnists, who are paid to be personalities who give their opinion; it’s a mystery why straight news reporters would want to reveal anything at all about themselves or their views on public policy, or about the people delivering or it, especially on a public platform like Twitter. Most politicians already think the press are biased — why confirm it for them in real-time?
Why, for example, would a freelance Parliamentary journalist want Conservative leader Andrew Scheer to know that his views on Scheer’s views on government are that they are a “ridiculous collection of straw men?” They very well might be, but how about showing that through reporting, instead of telling the people who follow you (most likely because they already agree with you) that you think it’s all bunkum? Good luck convincing Scheer’s people that anything you ever write will be a fair shake.
Make no mistake; every politician and political staffer watches social platforms like a hawk. Especially the stuff coming from reporters. They look to see how the issues are playing, how their arguments are working, and who seems hostile and/or sympathetic to their cause. It’s an oasis of information compared to what came before, when staffers would have to gauge these things face-to-face, or by examining edited copy, which was already scrubbed for opinion. And it makes picking targets for exclusives that much more precise. You don’t have to guess who will buy what you’re selling, you can know.
Sadly, it’s not just the smaller fish of the profession who blunder in this way; the problem reaches to the sharks of Canadian journalism, too.
Lots of people heaped scorn on CPC MP Maxime Bernier’s clumsy foray into multicuralism on Twitter, including me, but did one of them really need to be the senior broadcast producer of Canada’s most-watched television news broadcast? Instead of cracking wise at Bernier’s dumb play, why not offer to send a camera into one of these mysterious ethnic ghettos Bernier’s concerned about?
And then there was Rosemary Barton, one of the anchors of The National, who recently suggested on Twitter that the CBC didn’t have a close about Bernier’s motives for tweeting about diversity, even though reporter Evan Dyer inferred in his report that the one-year anniversary of the alt-right march in Charlottesville had informed his timing, if not his thinking. Barton then got into a lengthy back-and-forth with Bernier on Twitter after the MP for Beauce complained about the CBC’s “calumny.”
As a reporter, where’s the gain in broadcasting your opinion, especially when the other arms of your organization are already on the story? Other than the applause of your followers, that is. And there’s the problem.
The above examples are the kind of clever and knowing things journalists have always said to each other. In private. Now they fire away for all to see. All for what? A bushel of RT’s and “likes”? But at what cost? Because the more the consumer of news sees about the people they consume it from, the less they appear to like it.
A reporter’s online activity doesn’t even have to be explicit to be a problem; the stories or opinion columns reporters choose to share on their channels can also give the appearance of bias, even if their Twitter bio dutifully says “RT ≠ endorsement.” The latter is a distinction most casual observers don’t buy as a difference.
Reporters risk alienating their audiences with their online activity as much, if not more, than they stand to grow them. Ten years or so into the folly of social media, it should by now be clear that it’s the ranters and shouters who get the most clicks, not the neutral observer. Reporters should stop trying to play the game.
They should instead go back to being a mystery. To valuing scarcity over ubiquity. To ditching Twitter, and forgetting Facebook. Or, at least limiting appearances there to the posting of their work or search for interesting voices on public policy issues. They should also say no to panel appearances. And radio hits. Or at least the ones structured to argue about their work or the daily goings-on in the places they’re covering. As CNN and Fox News prove daily, the world doesn’t benefit from endless hours of shouting between reporters, lobbyists, and spinners.
Reporters should use social media only as a broadcast and amplification medium, not as a two-way dialogue with people who aren’t there to be persuaded. They might even find the lack of distraction focuses them on their work. And if bullshit does need to be called out in real-time, reporters should have an editor or colleague peak over their shoulder to give them a sense check on tone. Because even super-fact checkers like Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star can appear biased owning to the sheer volume of material they post to their channels. But most reporters aren’t super-fact checkers, they’re just smart people with opinions, ones the news-consuming public shouldn’t know.
Most of all, reporters should keep doing the work. But do the work, full stop. Keep your opinions to yourself. More people will believe the good work you do if they have no idea who in the hell you are.
