By Chris Collins
In the waning days of a difficult first year in the White House, President John F. Kennedy, an admittedly voracious consumer of media, was asked by a reporter if he still read as many newspapers as he had before he took office.
“I’m reading more, and enjoying it less,” Kennedy reportedly shot back tersely.
I know how you feel Mr. President — more than you realize.
I’ve been an active member of “the media” for going on 25 years, 17 of which have been spent writing a political column for this newspaper. I have written and read a lot of stories in that time, which I like to think has helped me develop some pretty good critical thinking skills, not to mention a “BS” meter which seems, at times, otherworldly.
And yet, these days, I’m having a tough time determining what is and is not “real” news.
It used to be a relatively easy task, which mostly involved sticking to so-called “legitimate” sources of news and information. I’m not entirely sure those sources exist anymore, because it seems like just about every story I read — mostly national, local not so much — has some type of ideological bent to it.
It’s been a problem for a while, but it really kicked into overdrive during this past year’s presidential campaign, which contained a miasma of misinformation bordering on the criminal. This cesspool of deception was churned even deeper by the emergence of social media, which morphed from being a source of information and entertainment to the primary vehicle for shooting this garbage around the world — long before anyone had the chance to even surmise if it was real.
I’m as much a part of the problem as anyone, I guess. I spend way too much time on Facebook. Twitter I could care less about, but I’m as big a FB addict as you are likely to find. Not only do I find the conversations entertaining, but I’ve found it to be an amazing journalistic tool which allows me to get a jump on a lot of breaking stories which otherwise might get missed.
That’s the good part. The bad part is what I’ve seen lately from a lot of good people — many of whom I respect — who have become so ideologically unglued by Trump’s rise to power that they are posting, and re-posting, a lot of stories which are either sketchy at best, or just patently untrue.
When I see otherwise politically intelligent people regularly sharing stuff from outlets like “BuzzFeed” — you know, the guys with the motto “report first, verify later” — it makes it real tough to take anything they say seriously again.
And forget about interjecting humor. It used to be you could have a little fun talking about this stuff, but not anymore. Even so-called “comedy” shows have an ideological edge that is unsettling, although I believe the sketch writers at “Saturday Night Live” have been doing their best work ever since Trump came on the scene.
Social media and pop culture aside, the larger concern is the increasingly muddy water which now passes for the 24-hour news cycle — a pool which becomes that much murkier every time a politician or one of their high-profile supporters invoke the phrase “fake news.”
We all know what that’s about. The easiest way to defuse a potentially damaging story is to dismiss it as pure fiction. It’s not exactly a new strategy, but one the present administration has become pretty good at executing. The problem is, if we allow that narrative to take hold, we pretty much short-circuit our best hope for preserving this democracy, which is a free press.
It can be argued that the press has done a pretty good job of short-circuiting its own credibility lately, and I’m sure that there are many who believe its comeuppance is long overdue. But those who hold that view should take a long look in the mirror, because, lest we forget, these guys are giving you exactly the kind of stories for which you seem to be longing for, at least if the ratings are to be believed.
Sometimes, we not only get the government we deserve, but also the media. But that does not change the reality that, now more than ever, people need to be informed, with real facts, not just ones which fit their personal political narrative. To get there requires a media more interested in policy than ideology, and more on information than entertainment — a standard to which we once aspired, but have these days failed to reach on an alarmingly consistent basis.
This needs to change, for the sake not only of the profession, but the increasingly confused and divided nation it should be aspiring to serve.
Chris Collins, who worked in local radio in a number of capacities, has observed political life in Franklin County for years. He also is a former staff reporter for The Recorder and a Greenfield native.