Fake News versus Incomplete News

Oversimplification and Slant are not the same thing.

I recently had an experience at work that made me think about the current dialogue in the U.S. about the credibility of the media from a slightly different angle.

To date, I have been frustrated because the media is certainly in the habit of providing incomplete information. However, the dialogue has centered around the notion that they do so deliberately to present a particular message. That they are in the business of propaganda rather than in the business of presenting factual information.

However, lets go back in time a few years, and think about what our stereotype of a reporter looked like.

I’m going to go with the 50’s reporter in a trench coat and fedora with the “Press” tag sticking out. He (because it was the 50’s) is standing in a crowd waiting with a pad of paper in hand, his trusty photographer at his side ready to set of that huge flashbulb.

What were they trying to do? They were trying to get the scoop. They were trying to be the first to get the story, so their newspaper would sell more copies than their competitors.

Did they have a political agenda? Probably not. Did the owner of the paper have an agenda? Maybe. But these guys working in the trenches (note the deliberate reference back to the trench coat) just wanted the story.

Flash forward to today. What has changed? The modes of communication, the sheer number of reporters (journalists), the number of media outlets, etc., etc.

But has the nature of reporters really changed that much? Are they all politically motivated, in bed with a particular party, and hellbent on only presenting information that supports the party line?

Before we answer that, we’ll go to my (somewhat vague) example.

In my job, I do demographic projections based on existing numbers. Recently I did one that suggests the number of individuals in a particular group will grow notably over the next five years. In the blog post where I shared these results, I included several caveats about the numbers, noting that changes in the way the information was reported in recent years could be artificially inflating the projected numbers.

A coworker who is a former journalist, and who is in charge of sharing pertinent items with our membership, wrote up a summary of my work. He focused on this notable increase, but did not include the caveats. His story was subsequently picked up by other news outlets, and got quite a bit of visibility by our standards.

I was given praise for doing newsworthy research, but I was ill-at-ease because I knew we had presented only part of the truth.

Now let’s talk about why.

Did my coworker leave out the caveats because he was motivated to present a particular angle? I don’t think so. I don’t question this coworker’s credibility or integrity, and though there are times when he works with our organization’s advocacy efforts, I believe he tries to take a fair and impartial approach to news items.

So why would he leave out the “buts”?

I think the answer is all about the scoop.

For a story to get attention, it’s got to contain newsworthy information presented in a clear and concise manner. News pieces are written for the lowest common denominator in the readership, so it cannot be overly complex. Caveats that dig into the nature of the research being done, how the data is reported, how it was analyzed, and so forth can be confusing to the reader, and can weaken the story overall.

In other words, journalists are motivated to oversimplify information in order for it to get attention and be understood. People want the black and white, so reporters sometimes have to turn up the contrast on a picture so there are fewer shades of grey.

I believe this is the nature of journalism, and that this has not changed over time.

The diversification of news sources today means there are more news outlets that are slanted in one direction or the other. And I am sure there is a wide range of editorial policies for such organization in terms of how much slant is expected of the stories that are produced. This is no doubt a part of the current landscape.

However, those that shout “fake news” and take a story that leaves out some pertinent information as evidence of slant fail to recall that oversimplification is perhaps a necessary evil of all journalism, and not proof of deliberate sway one way or the other.

Our world has become much more complex, and many of the topics getting focus these days are beyond the comprehension of most of us. Journalists are tasked with giving us the “Reader’s Digest Version” so we can be informed without going back to school to take statistics 101 or take a seminar on immigration law.

But glossing over details that are confusing and make the conclusions fuzzier is not always because they have a particular flag to fly.

Just something to remember…