Abandoning the truth: The growing threat to journalism in America
The tumultuous spread of COVID-19 is unequivocally responsible for heightening the general public’s value of the news. After all, with quarantine restrictions prompting Americans to stay informed on the latest details of the outbreak, a newfound sense of dependability and trust was bound to emerge between the media and the masses.
Nevertheless, a national pandemic has not expunged the “fake news” era of journalism that has loomed over American society since long before the current administration took office.
Attacking the integrity of the free press poses a considerable threat to our nation’s democracy.
For decades, this journalistic era has bred the cultivation of a collective distrust in the media, one that is characterized by powerful people and organizations pressing down onto the free press in an attempt to drive individual political agendas.
This tactic of riding off wrongdoings as untruths in an attempt to undermine the credibility of journalists is designed to distract the public from paying attention to what is actually happening around them. It permits the push of personal narratives and is not a gambit originating from President Trump’s Twitter account.
It was the Watergate Scandal in 1971 that propelled a society in which people began questioning the validity of the news and fostering a skepticism on what to believe.
Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post released a story disclosing White House involvement with the burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters inside the Watergate hotel, yet pushback from influential political figures degraded the credibility of their work, smeared the name of their organization and for a time, effectively covered up a pervasive criminal enterprise.
Through an aggressive and relentless brand of investigative reporting, a massive criminal conspiracy was eventually exposed. Booting President Nixon out of office and holding government officials accountable for their illegal actions, this was a turning point in history for journalism.
It is the duty of the free press to protect the ideals of democracy and ensure a well-informed society.
Every day journalists are risking their lives to expose arduous truths happening around the world. Taking into account imprisonment, harassment and casualties, last year was the most dangerous year on record to be a journalist, according to New York Times publisher A.G. Sulzberger.
The targets on their backs are not always a matter of life and death.
Oftentimes, these targets are allegations bent on undercutting the careers of working journalists by stripping legitimacy from genuine work as in the case of the Boston Globe’s uncovering of the Catholic Church abuse scandal.
It goes without saying that the media is not faultless; mistakes are made and rectified.
At any rate, to allow this nation’s most important figures to utilize the prospect of torpedoing the very institution sought on preserving its democracy as a political maneuver to elevate their own positions of power is disastrous.
If the President of the United States can slap an illusory “fake news” allegation onto honest reporting and that alone possesses the authority to discredit it entirely, then the power he is rewarded with is enormously problematic.
Too much dependability being placed behind baseless claims enables leaders in power to inch their way closer towards gaining total control over their people. Perpetuating the distrust of the free press opens the door to censorship and corruption.
It sets a dangerous precedent that borrows from more restrictive foreign government systems in which free expression is silenced; it is time to stop tolerating these efforts to repress the truth.
