By Cortney Marabetta, Communications Specialist
In August, the White House’s social media team raised eyebrows in some circles by calling out Republican Twitter accounts that were decrying President Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan. The team retweeted the complaining accounts and included publicly accessible data stating how much each person had forgiven in PPP loans. It was a fantastic response to the litany of complaint claiming that, among other things, ranchers and farmers should not be responsible for paying the student debt of Wall Street advisors and doctors – very culture-wars of the complainers. Presumably, according to the complaining accounts, ranchers and farmers should be paying off PPP loans forgiven in 2020, but nothing from a program intended to allow people to get good educations. And, of course, it was nice to see such blatant hypocrisy called out; too often, hypocritical statements by elected officials go unchallenged.
The larger problem, however, is that it was the White House social media team that did the calling out. America’s journalists should be calling it out. It should not take a social media team that’s tired of disinformation being ignored to correct the record. We should be able to rely on journalists to provide accurate information. Hypocrisy among elected officials is a problem for all of us, no matter where we stand on the political spectrum. You can learn media literacy and fact-checking tools (as we highlighted in the March issue of the Spotlight) and you can moderate your social media feed (as highlighted in the June issue) but ultimately, we rely on the accuracy of the information shared to us. This leads to a real conflict between journalists, corporate news outlets, and the truth.
A note on terminology: misinformation is, generally, incorrect information shared without the intent of causing harm. Disinformation is, generally, incorrect information shared to deliberately cause harm. While this distinction is pretty clear, different sources can use the terms differently; for example, the Pew Research Center survey used as background for this piece calls it all misinformation. In that light, we have chosen to use “disinformation” as the category term to refer to both mis- and dis-information, because any disinformation makes misinformation toxic. The sources used for this article are linked on our website for space, so we wanted to be clear that we’re using terminology a certain way.
In June of this year, the Pew Research Center published the results of a new survey of journalists, conducted in the first quarter of the year. Several of the questions clustered around the issue of disinformation, with some interesting results. Over 90% of the journalists surveyed reported that made-up information is affecting their jobs. Almost 60% of journalists reported that they had had conversations with colleagues about disinformation multiple times a month over the past year. Neither of those results are surprising in the context of a chaotic social media world that makes it much harder for people to recognize disinformation. It makes sense that as newsrooms contract and consolidate, journalists would look to social media as much as the rest of us do, and that they would be given false information in the course of following up on stories, on social media and off.
What’s concerning about this 90% statistic is that 26% of journalists, according to the PRC study, found that they’d reported on a story that contained false information. And, worryingly, only 8% of journalists surveyed say that news organizations do a good job at handling misinformation – in part because most journalists’ newsrooms do not have guidelines on how to handle disinformation. That might be why 11% of journalists reported they did not cover a story because they were concerned about disinformation. This is a huge concern: journalistic transparency and accountability standards mean leaving stories by the wayside. Journalists tasked with reporting what is accurately happening feel they cannot identify the extent of disinformation in a story enough to cover it. Given how much disinformation is explicitly political, we should all be concerned by the lack of coverage.
And it is intensely political. PEN America (an AFT partner) did a survey of journalists last year that included a question about which potential sources of disinformation are the most egregious cases. 76% of respondents said right-wing conspiracy theorists; 70% said government officials, candidates, or political organizations. Left-wing conspiracy theorists and foreign government actors didn’t even come close (at 35% and 30% respectively). Our entire political landscape is being reshaped by misinformation.
The increasing corporatization and concentration of newsrooms contributes to the problem. When we live in a world where media ownership is the province of a very wealthy narrowly defined demographic, the status quo power dynamic can create newsroom cultures, such as those of Fox News or Sinclair Broadcast Group (owners of KOMO), that disregard journalistic integrity and accurate reporting. Sinclair is particularly known for heavily-partisan “must-runs” – stories they mandate must be shown by the news channels they own – regardless of accuracy. Money also plays a role in another way: more and more legitimate news sites are paywalled, whereas organizations actively promoting misinformation are highly accessible.
There are some newsrooms that are taking real steps to combat disinformation. The Associated Press has a 12-person verification unit that investigates claims spread online, separate from their fact-check operation, and their reporters that cover disinformation as their beat, for example. But it’s not enough, in a world where online information spreads quickly, many news sites are paywalled, and journalists are reluctant to cover stories about disinformation. It leaves us, the people who rely on journalists giving us accurate information, without the tools we need to sort out the truth from the vast cloud of false information that envelops it.
It leaves the White House social media team as the bulwark calling out elected Republicans’ hypocrisy about student debt forgiveness. And that is not a channel most of the public will ever see.
In order to have a functioning, flourishing democracy, we must have a functioning news media that is willing to call out disinformation and reject it. Unfortunately, the collapse of the media landscape to fewer, bigger owners of larger channels, and the deprioritization of combatting disinformation from newsrooms and some journalists has left us in a situation where Americans do not have the ability to rely on the reporting we receive. The solutions to be found are not on a scale with the problem, but while we work for the big change we need (decreasing the number of outlets a company can own is one very important step; building tools and increasing staff to help identify disinformation is another) it helps to pay attention to where you get your news, how and if you pay for it, and whether you can spot errors in it. We work for the change we need, with the tools we have, and it’s most important we be aware that this tool is flawed. Not broken, yet; we can still repair it. That starts with using it thoughtfully and with care.
Works Referenced
The Brookings Institute, "Data Misuse And Disinformation: Technology and the 2022 Elections", June 2022
The Brookings Institute, "How To Combat Fake News and Disinformation", December 2017
The Brookings Institute, "Misinformation Is Eroding The Public's Confidence In Democracy", June 2022
Crosscut, "How Life Changed At KOMO When Sinclair Took Over", April 2018
The Hill, "When Disinformation Becomes A Political Strategy, Who Holds The Line?", December 2020
Nieman Lab, "New research shows how journalists are responding and adapting to “fake news” rhetoric", February 2021
PEN America, "Hard News: Journalists And The Threat Of Disinformation", n.d.
PEN America, "Pen America's Guide For Combatting Protest Disinformation", June 2020
Pew Research Center, "Journalists Sense Turmoil In Their Industry Amid Continued Passion For Their Work", June 2022