What a wonderful time it once was. In the morning, the New York Times was delivered to our doorsteps, bringing us all the news that was fit to print and in the evening the most trusted man in America, Walter Cronkite, summed it all up I the CBS evening news.
If we didn’t like what they had to say, we could read the NY Daily News or the newspaper started by one of America’s recently re-discovered super hero founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton, the NY Post. If CBS wasn’t to our liking, we could watch NBC or ABC.
The Federal Communications Commission had rules in place about media ownership, equal time, and the Fariness doctrine. Over the past few decades, especially as more and more news moved online, these rules have been relaxed, and it has become harder and harder to get fair and equal coverage.
Yet perhaps things were not as fair and equal as they seemed. Was the New York Times really telling us all the news that was fit to print, or just the news that its editors felt was fit to print? Was Walter Cronkite truly presenting an objective view of the day’s news, or were his broadcasts shaped by the opinion and biases of the writers and editors?
There is an old Ethiopian proverb, “Until the lioness tells the story, the hunt will always be glorified.” Was our news being shaped by a cishet white corporate male perspective, by what it chose to cover, chose not to cover and the way it presented what it did cover?
The Internet brought about important changes in whose voices got heard. Just about anyone could set up a blog and write their own commentary. People admitted, or perhaps more accurately, promoted their biases, and there was a belief that by doing so, informed readers could get a much more complete picture.
In 2004, I was credentialed as a blogger to the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Like several other bloggers, I had access to the proceedings and could write from my own point of view, expressing my biases, not having to please any editors.
As the convention was getting started, there was a breakfast for the bloggers. A guest speaker at was Pulitzer Prize winning political journalist for the associated press, Walter Mears. During the question and answer period, David Weinberger, one of the co-authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto, and a fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University asked Mears who he was supporting for president. Mears wouldn’t say, citing the importance of being objective. Weinberger responded asking how we trust Mears if he wouldn’t admit to his biases.
USA Today wrote about it in Blogs, journalism: Different factions of the write wing and years later, Weinberger expanded about it in a blog post, Transparency is the new objectivity.
Yet knowing a writer’s biases, whether they admit them or not, is only the starting point of understanding stories in the news. Last year, Factcheck.org wrote an article, How to Spot Fake News. It pointed out the importance of checking sources, digging deep, checking one’s own biases and other important ways to spot fake news. Unfortunately, most news consumers do not take the time to do this.
This takes us to the question of what fake news really is. In the Factcheck article, they refer to it as “a malicious fabrication”. Historians might put fake news into the larger historical context and call it propaganda. The phrase is now often used by some politicians to discredit anyone who writes something critical of them.
So the question becomes, how much of an issue is fake news? In his article “Is ‘fake news’ a fake problem? in the Columbia Journalism Review, Jacob Nelson writes,
“First, the fake news audience is tiny compared to the real news audience–about 10 times smaller on average… We also found that the fake news audience does not exist in a filter bubble. Visitors to fake news sites visited real news sites just as often as visitors to real news sites visited other real news sites.
This is not to say that people don’t exist in filter bubbles. In an article exploring fake news, Researchers Say They’ve Figured Out What Makes People Reject Science, And It’s Not Ignorance, Fiona McDonald writes,
The issue is that when it comes to facts, people think more like lawyers than scientists, which means they ‘cherry pick’ the facts and studies that back up what they already believe to be true.
This becomes a special concern for those reporting on faith and religion. Many of the narratives of our religious traditions are at best unverifiable and would easily be dismissed by non-believers. In my Introduction to the Old Testament class, we recently discussed some of the older stories, like those of the exodus might be considered fake news. I am finding myself in lots of discussions about the role of written texts in forming our cultural history and biases. They texts might remain valuable, even if they are not factual.
As an example, consider the story of Teddy Stoddard. It is a heart-warming story of a little boy and a teacher that believed in him. It gets circulated frequently on the Internet. It isn’t true, but as Carole Fader observes at the end of her article, “It obviously has had a real impact on many people — even if Teddy, Mrs. Thompson and their story aren’t real.”
Stories of our belief, whether they date back thousands of years or are more current stories about what we believe about our fellow humans are very powerful. Some stories feel like they represent some universal truth. Others reflect the cultural memory of one religion or another. These days it becomes more complicated to choose the stories we tell as our politics becomes more polarized and our society becomes more multi-cultural representing greater religious variations.
So yes, it was a much simpler time, when could get all our facts from a hegemonic filter bubble that gave us all the news that was fit to print in the morning and in in the evening, the most trusted man in America could tell us, “that’s the way it is”. Now, we need to choose which information we believe. We can do it to minimize cognitive dissonance, or we can do it to expand our understanding.
Now, more than ever, we need to find ways to help all of us expand our understanding.
Discussion: Religion 300 
Hi Aldon,
Enjoyed the commentary and thought the comments on bias were most appropriate. I would imagine that transparency for a reporter may not come so easily when reporting news objectively is the goal.
Edie
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