Priorities, lies, and journalism

Rather inappropriately in my view, while receiving service at a supermarket counter last week, I was asked if I was the guy “who writes in the newspapers.” Following my hesitant confirmation, I was then asked: “why don’t you people write the truth?”

I had only days before suggested at a media workshop that journalists were among the professional groups that people love to hate – if only because our journalism so frequently presents things people would prefer not to confront or asserts things with which they do not agree.

True, there is malpractice as well, but for the most part I think colleagues leave their homes in the morning with an intention to do a decent job. Political partisanship and entrenched belief systems do play roles both in what is produced and even more so in how people interpret the work we do. So, there is also that challenge.

Additionally, one of the problems you have when you live in a place, like here, where everything is a priority is deciding on what is most important at any particular time when you are called upon to draw attention to the things that should urgently concern us all.

So, often, implicit and explicit bias dictates both what is offered for consideration and how that is interpreted by consumers of content.

It’s as much a peril for newsroom journalists as it is for newspaper columnists and other contributors of media content – that “not telling the truth” is as much a charge related to omission as it has to do with acts of inclusion.

Then, when a decision is made, it is important to convince both yourself and others that there is sufficient justification for suggesting, for example, that the fact of climate change (its anthropogenic nature being the sole source of worthwhile contestation) is as important a subject in the public domain as the management of water supplies in your community.

Additionally, what is there to say that a single mosquito that can end your life is less important than the possibility of collateral damage occasioned by political shenanigans in the US, UK, or Venezuela?

That the unattended pothole in your neighbourhood that cost you a tyre and a rim, is of less immediate significance to you than the impunity of a state accused of genocide and unlawful occupation of the territory of others?

Or that the failure of the policing of criminal behaviour ought to be of greater priority than ameliorative/restorative measures that may serve as effective pre-emptive strikes on causative factors?

Such matters are among the challenges of conscientious people who not only populate news and op-ed pages but all other citizens and their leaders - as presumably guided and informed by people who are supposed to know more about them than the rest of us.

Against such a backdrop, I believe it is increasingly important to be able to sift the assertions of charlatans (of which there are numerous), outrageous liars, and the outright ignorant through a sieve of verification. It is clearly important to focus on the responsibilities of the consumers of such content.

For this reason, I have become quite an advocate of what UNESCO has been promoting for years now in the form of “media and information literacy.” In a sense, it is among the supreme imperatives of the principle of self-responsibility – the often-elusive notion that people have a role to play in determining their own personal and communal destinies.

This “demand side” approach to critically assessing news, information, and entertainment, is clearly the single most impactful response to the current blitz of mis and disinformation. It is the “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware) of the so-called information age.

I personally favour such an approach, since the more compelling lure of censorship remains the preferred option in too many instances. And when you add to this the fact that personal beliefs and convictions determine levels of “truthfulness” or “lies” what you are left with are rather oppressive conditions under which all ideas are left to contend, but only at the hands of people with clear views on what they hold as their “truth.”

So, yes, some of us are among those “who write in the papers” and there is often mis and disinformation to address. There are now some key players emerging on other, new platforms. To the extent that they consider themselves bound by similar professional values, they too play important roles.

There are many over the years who have contended that we are better off with such public communicators than without them. I happen to agree.