Fake News or No News?
The News Opportunity in the Decline of Traditional Journalism
It seems the media has found a culprit for Donald Trump’s election: fake news. Websites made up pro-Trump stories because his supporters would read and share them. The Russian government helped disseminate them. These invented news stories changed the dynamics of the race and helped destroy Hillary Clinton’s reputation.
Everyone agrees that a fair and truthful flow of information is crucial so that voters can make the right decision.
But what happens when, instead of fake news, there’s no news?
That’s the case for the vast majority of American politics. Outside of Presidential campaigns, Gubernatorial, and Senate races and the occasional big city Mayoral election, there just aren’t reporters covering elections. And don’t even worry about policy: reporters are stretched so thin that no one is really digging in beyond what politicians announce.
Even local papers don’t do much to cover their own cities. How many stories does the LA Times devote to a typical City Council race? How much does the New York Times report on the election of a borough president?
(The answer for the 2013 Queens Borough President race — an election to represent over 2 million people — is zero. The New York Times did not write a single article about that contentious race.)
For the record, if newspapers are bad, every other media is even worse. Local TV news barely covers local politics. If you’re reading about politics online, odds are that you’re reading about it on a national news site. If your local newspaper isn’t covering your elections and government, odds are no one else will.
How does democracy work if there’s no news coverage of an election?
By and large, the lack of coverage disempowers voters and further empowers insiders. Homeowners and older, typically whiter, typically wealthier voters who’ve been voting every year turn out. Groups like unions and community organizations that can get voters to show up have more power.
Who loses? The rest of us (and even those groups, too).
Without news coverage, campaigns need to entirely rely on advertising. Instead of talking to voters, elected officials spend most of their time talking to the donors who can pay for those ads. Those ads obviously tell only part of the story and promote misinformation.
The news vacuum has a direct impact on the results, too. When there’s no news coverage, very few people will turn out and even disliked politicians can hang onto office. Corruption won’t bring a candidate down if no one knows they’re corrupt. If reporters don’t tell readers that their elected officials have problems, voters won’t know either.
On policy this is even more extreme.
When a bill comes up in Congress, people notice. It might not make headlines but it’s on CSPAN and various people around the country will at least take note.
That’s not true in state legislatures.
Legislators can easily sneak laws through in the dead of night. It’s actually a common practice in many states, where the legislature will pass dozens or hundreds of bills at night. And if you want to find out what those bills do, good luck.
Reporters don’t have the time to pay attention to legislation unless it’s controversial (and they only know it’s important if insiders tell them so). I don’t mean to denigrate reporters. It’s not their fault. But without a massive increase in reporters, they just don’t have the time to dig into the weeds of policy.
The only people who actually know what’s going on are the people involved in the fight: government officials, advocates, and lobbyists. If they don’t want to talk, the public is left ignorant. And even if they do want to get their stories out, reporters are busy and newspapers only have so much space.
This lack of coverage is how you end up with a government that doesn’t even know about the existence of a city agency.
But maybe this is an opportunity for progressives?
The absence of news coverage means that new media ventures might get more attention than they would in a more crowded landscape. If all of the sudden, there’s a website that covers what you care about, whether that’s local politics or anything else, you’ll read it. While the audiences might not be huge, they could be enough to support an active news site.
Politico might be a good demonstration of that. There were very few outlets offering an insiders’ view of Washington DC until Politico stepped up. Fake news sites aren’t really about journalism but they followed a similar trajectory: real journalism wasn’t writing the news that the far right wanted to read (because it wasn’t true) so fake news entrepreneurs saw an opportunity.
Serving a niche can be successful.
It’s not just about financial success, though, which might be limited in some markets. For instance, how much money is there going to be in covering Wyoming politics from a progressive perspective? Probably not much.
Better news coverage of state and local politics is important, regardless of the financial rewards, for a few key reasons:
- Steering attention to important issues.
The Marshall Project, a nonprofit investigative journalism project focused on the criminal justice system, has demonstrated how this works in important ways. After they reported on “The Deadly World of Private Prison Transport”, Congressman Ted Deutch brought it up in a Congressional hearing and Attorney General Loretta Lynch promised an investigation. One company then instituted new safety measures. That’s real change because they shined a light on something that otherwise would have been neglected. - Changing the narrative around high profile issues.
Too often, news stories only focus on what people in power want to talk about. To take a recent example from the New York Daily News (not to single them out or any of the people mentioned in the article), a recent article about medical marijuana quoted just two sources: the state Health Commissioner and the state director of the Drug Policy Alliance praising the Health Commissioner’s decision. Where are patients or other voices? A progressive news outlet could surface those other voices, showcasing progressive perspectives to policymakers and influencers and that can affect how the media covers other stories about the issue in the future. - Actually influencing elections and policy.
It’s nice to get attention and influence how reporters cover stories but this can directly lead to different results. For instance, faith leaders regularly stand up for progressive policies around issues such as criminal justice reform, raising the minimum wage, and against war. But so often, the media doesn’t cover those progressive religious stances, leading both voters and politicians to assume that religious people are all conservative. Showing legislators and voters that religious leaders support progressive policies or candidates can directly impact votes. - Democratizing the media.
In addition to policy changes, progressive media outlets can provide new sources of information competing with the corporate-owned media. Companies need to make money and their coverage is dictated by financial decisions, arguably influencing their greater coverage of Donald Trump than Bernie Sanders (to take just one example). A broader perspective, less polluted by profit motives, can include new voices that enrich our democracy. - Diversifying the voices of influencers
In addition, to changing what’s covered, new outlets can include new people from underrepresented communities. In fact, diversity needs to be a priority of any progressive media venture. Amplifying those new voices means that different perspectives will get attention and also hopefully allow those journalists to advance and tell their stories at larger media companies in the future.
This is a major opportunity for us to make a difference. Tweet me at @msrpotus and join the conversation!
