The Platte County Democratic Central Committee hosted three local journalists Feb. 24, at the Platte County Resource Center who spoke on the ongoing changes and threats to how the public gets their news and how to find the truth in the current political environment.
Lynn Horsley, a 30-year reporter for the Kansas City Star said this is a crucial time in the nation’s history. She said a new book by Watergate lawyer Jill Weinbanks talks about the similarities between the Nixon and Trump impeachments.
“They both said the impeachments were witch hunts,” Horsley said. “There were some real key differences and the main one was the media environment. Back then there were three TV stations and many newspapers and everyone had the same facts. And there was compromising going on in Congress. And now we just don’t have that, we have our own set of facts and it’s a viciously partisan environment.”
Horsley and speakers Bill Grady, a broadcaster for 40 years at KMBZ radio, and Julie Stutterheim, a journalist who works in marketing and communications, primarily social media, agreed that finding the truth in our polarized society is very difficult.
The year 1987 was a setback according to Grady as far as broadcasting because the Fairness Doctrine, which stipulated that equal and opposing viewpoints had to be represented, was eliminated during the Reagan administration giving rise to people on the right and left who used the media as a soapbox to espouse their personal views.
“There are people that will go home and watch either MSNBC with Rachel Maddow or Fox News with Sean Hannity and think they’re journalists, but they’re not,” Grady said. “Let’s understand that they have a point of view they’re trying to get across from their own political perspective And they’re not doing it straight down the middle and that’s the difference between journalists and somebody who’s putting out affirmations not information.”
To some extent Grady believes journalists are diagnosticians and when they cover a story and there’s some malfeasance and something doesn’t look quite right they should shine a light on it for the public to see.
“It’s not up to us to fix it, it’s up to the public,” Grady said. “It should be up to the consumer to make the decision on the information presented. Journalism is an exacting profession but what makes it different from medical or legal professions is that we don’t have to have licenses. If there is someone here in Kansas City who prides himself on the fact that he writes a blog out of his mother’s basement but he’s not accountable, that I think is the question you have to ask yourself when you’re looking for news sources — is this person accountable?”
Grady is now a part-time reporter for KCUR which is part of the University of Missouri system.
“If I’m misleading people or I put out false information the weight of the University of Missouri system is going to come raining down on me,” Grady said. “When I worked in commercial broadcasting it was the same thing, corporations would come raining down on me. So that’s what you have to ask yourself when you go to look for news and with the people presenting it is do they have accountability.”
For Horsley, truth is nuanced and depends on perspective.
“I covered countless city council meetings and if anybody tells you they have the absolute truth, they are probably lying,” Horsley said. “But you can seek out media outlets and products that are responsible and credible or you can seek out media outlets that are slanted and biased and that just confirm your own opinions. I would urge you to look for different sources. Look for open-minded journalists who speak to the different sides of a story.”
Stutterheim warned of the dangers of social media and how it rewards bad behavior, controversy and meanness. She said it runs off strong emotions such as things that make you cry or make you angry or surprise you.
“In reality there’s a complex process in the algorithm that determines what you see on social media, Stutterheim said. “But now imagine there’s a giant hand working behind the scenes at Facebook and the hand has the option of posting something that’s labeled interesting and something labeled boring. A celebrity dies is labeled interesting, someone that’s violent towards a group of people is labeled interesting, so the ones labeled boring are only seen by a handful of people. So how does the hand determine which button to press? It listens to all of us collectively.”
Stutterheim said Facebook allows viewers to interact with a story by liking, sharing or commenting on it.
“When you have an extreme reaction you’re telling the giant hand ‘this is interesting and now I’m going to show it to everybody I know so they can react to it too,” Stutterheim said. “The machine that runs Facebook doesn’t judge by the content of our character. The more followers you have and the more you interact with them the more you matter. When you react to a post with an angry face you’re actually helping that post be seen by more people.”
Horsley said one of the most important things to look for when seeking out truth in journalism is if the media source admits their mistakes.
“Most businesses don’t put up a big sign in their window that says ‘we screwed up,” Horsley said. “Newspapers do that everyday. Look for media sources that correct their information. Find out who is paying for this information. Is it 99.9% peer-reviewed scientists that say that climate change is real or is it the oil and gas industry. Is the study on tobacco paid for by doctors or is it paid for by the tobacco industry.”
Consulting multiple news sources is also important and with the diminishing ranks of journalists it’s important for people to demand accountability and inform themselves.
“Someone commented recently that we used to have several really good public health reporters in Kansas City and now there aren’t any and now we have what might very well develop into a global pandemic,” Horsley said. “If it does take off in the U.S. we’re going to need really good public health reporters. The ranks of national and local reporters are shrinking. It’s a very fragile and vulnerable situation and I don’t know the answer. I think we need a strong mainstream media to have a functioning democracy that’s strong and fair.”
After the Sandy Hook shooting Grady decided to do a story on gun show loopholes and how easy it is for people to get a gun.
He went to a gun show to see if he could get an assault rifle without presenting an ID. One of the vendors had an SKS rifle and Grady paid the $390 price.
“I said do you need to see my driver’s license and the vendor said ‘no,’” Grady said. “I had wired myself and the whole transaction was on tape. The organizers of the show were supposed to check the serial numbers on the weapons as people left and when I was leaving I held it up and asked if they needed to see the gun and they said, ‘no, you’re good.’ I got more feedback on this story than any others and the responses scared me more than any of the other stories I’ve ever done.”
For Grady the decimation of newsrooms all over the country is one of the greatest threats to freedom and democracy. He likes to quote espionage writer, Tom Clancy, who was asked what separates the good guys and the bad guys in the world and he responded with “the good guys are the guys who have a free press and free elections, the bad guys are everybody else.”
In 2011 Horsley wrote a story on the possibility of a single-terminal airport.
“I talked to a lot of people about this and a lot of passengers said they liked the old airport the way it is,” Horlsey said. “I think that story was important because it started a big citizen dialogue and raised awareness.”
She advises people to look for journalists who don’t insert themselves into the story, for stories that have different perspectives and cover both sides without opinion.
“Straight news is harder and harder to find, especially with a lot of these blogs,” Horsley said. “Anonymous sources should be used very rarely. The internet is full of anonymous sources. The constant drumbeat of fake news breaks down trust in all news. And there is still news that’s trustworthy. If you’re looking at social media and if a story is complicated check the information for accuracy before you post it, especially with breaking news. Breaking news is changing news and it’s often wrong. These are complex issues, bring some skepticism and try to locate new sources that are especially credible and responsible.”
Grady warns that partisan journalism is something that people should fear.
“If you’ve heard of William Randolph Hearst there are people who say if it weren’t for him we wouldn’t have had a Spanish-American War,” Grady said. “He was a real rabble-rouser and his famous quote was ‘It’s news only if I say it’s news.’ He wasn’t worried about the public interest or whether it was doing harm or about if it was news, just about if it generated revenue.”
Politicians are a privileged class of people on social media and abide by different rules than the general public. “Donald Trump believes he would not have gotten elected if it hadn’t been for Twitter,” Stutterheim said. “Since he’s been elected he tweeted 11,000 times and about half of those have been used to attack people, companies or other nations, while about 1,700 have been used to promote conspiracy theories.”
While social media governs what people post and use third-party fact-checkers to crack down on the spread of misinformation, they exempt politicians from the fact-checking because of the newsworthiness factor.
So even if a politician makes a statement or shares a story that violates community standards and there’s information designed to create confusion or the bullying of a private citizen or is offensive, Facebook still allows it on their platform if they believe the public interest outweighs the risk of harm.
“If a teenager on social media says something they could have their post removed or have their account disabled, while a politician who posted the exact same thing can continue to share even though one of these has significantly more influence,” Stutterheim said.
The defenders of this policy say it’s important to keep what politicians post for historical record and if they’re going to say something horrible or false it’s better if everybody sees it. Politicians are often rewarded with more views when they post something false. Scientists at MIT analyze stories and they found that stories that are misleading or wrong were shared six times faster on social media.
Fake automated social media accounts called bots are adding to the problem and many fake news retweets came from a coordinated campaign.
“In the last six months local sites have been cropping up and using paid ads under the guise of news stories,” Stutterheim said. “So far this has happened in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Maryland. The newspaper websites all kind of look the same and have generic names like the Prairie State Wire. They appear to be actual local news at first glance but they’re all run by the same company who is pushing specific politicians or a specific agenda.”
Stutterheim said if you see someone posting hundreds of times a day they’re probably not a real person. It’s possible to manipulate not only images but also videos. To find out if a story is fake, checking the comments is a good way to know.
“If somebody posts something that’s false post a comment instead of an angry face, which just tells the giant hand behind Facebook that it is interesting,” Stutterheim said. Everywhere you go on social media and everything you click on, your data is being collected. These platforms gather up your data and they sell it to micro-targeting firms using your past behavior to determine what will appeal to you. In the 2016 election Hillary (Clinton) ran 66,000 Facebook ads and Trump ran 5.6 million. Trump got elected because he ran the single best digital ad campaign that Facebook has seen from any advertiser, not just a politician. Be smart about how you react and know that your reaction in the click of a button can help spread false information.”
Horsley believes it’s still important to pay attention to your local newspaper and support your local news.
“Someone said we’re drowning in information and we’re starved for context and perspective. This political year I don’t think it’s ever been more important,” Horsley said.