In Defense of the Free Press

 

Welcome, Facebook friends (and my regular readers). I’ve invited my Facebook friends to view a message here about a particular concern regarding what is happening in our society today, but since what I have to say is too long for Facebook and not right for that platform, I’ve linked to my blog instead.

So, what am I concerned about? Let’s just call it disinformation, but it’s much more than that. I’ve been reading a book recently that is probably the most important book I’ve read in years (and I read a lot). It is titled “The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth,” written by Jonathan Rauch, who is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing writer at The Atlantic. Rauch and I have something in common. He comes from the world of journalism, which he describes as a world of ethics, truthfulness, and fact checking; of peer reviewers and editors; of foundational values that have been institutionalized. As for me, I retired earlier this year after working for 18 years as editorial director at BYU Studies, a fully source-checked, peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary scholarly journal. BYU Studies has very high editorial standards. So I know a bit about how to find good sources of information and how to recognize them. And I am concerned about many people I know who are either receiving and believing bad information or, worse, passing it along. 

So, what is this Constitution of Knowledge that Rauch writes about? First and foremost, it is a system—a system of thought and practice that helps us determine what the facts really are. It is supported by several institutions that have won hard-fought battles in the work of determining what is real or true and what is not. These institutions include journalism, academia, the courts, law enforcement, science, and intelligence agencies. You might say this is liberalism’s operating system, the social rules for turning disagreement into knowledge. When I mention liberalism, I am not referring to a political stance, but to our modern liberal order that provides a framework for capitalism and democracy, an order that is depersonalized (not subject to the whims of a dictator), decentralized (not controlled by one person’s or one organization’s prejudices), and rules-based (the rules having been established through hard-fought consensus).

This rules-based system for identifying truth is under attack in our time. Specifically, it is under attack from one particular politician. When you look at the institutions that Donald Trump and his followers are trying to undermine, you see the fundamental institutions that create and protect our system of establishing fact and reality: journalism, science, intelligence agencies, academia, courts of law, law enforcement. This is why Trump is so dangerous. In his narcissistic quest for power, he is eager to tear down the very foundation of our republic, the shared view of facts and reality that have held us together, sometimes barely, for 235 years. The fact that so many Americans are willing to buy into his project does not bode well for our future, but there is hope.

Significantly, this rules-based system for identifying truth is also under attack by social media. Much of the disinformation that is spread through social media is not merely attempting to get people to believe something that is untrue; it has a more devious aim. As Rauch puts it, “The firehose of falsehood aims not to persuade but to confuse: to induce uncertainty, disorientation, and attendant cynicism. A 2017 study found that 10 percent to 20 percent of Americans believed fake news stories which they were exposed to the year before; but for every gulled believer, two or three more people were unsure what to believe.” This method of sowing distrust and confusion was developed early in this century by Russian disinformation operatives. “The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda,” said Russian dissident Gary Kasparov. “It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” And since online sources of information are free and plentiful—and are not constrained by the ethical standards that guide real journalism—many people rely on untrustworthy media for their view of the world and are thus discouraged and misinformed.

This development dovetails with the demise of the free press in our digital world. There is a reason freedom of the press was enshrined in the Bill of Rights: “Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” A free press is necessary to rein in the tendencies of both government and big business to abuse their power. But the press is under attack in our day, and not only by demagogues like Trump who, echoing Stalin, declared that the press is “the enemy of the people.” Newspapers have traditionally relied on advertising revenue to support their journalistic mission. But with advertising dollars fleeing to online platforms, newspapers are struggling to survive. Local papers are going out of business in shocking numbers. And without local newspapers, local government is much more at liberty to abuse its power. The same is true at the national level.

So, my plea to you, my friends, is to support credible journalism, and support it financially. A few years ago, BYU Studies published an entire special issue (61.1) on good government. One particular article in that issue was written by Ed Carter, journalism professor and former director of the School of Communications at BYU, about how journalism contributes to good government. I recommend this article for everyone, but one particular paragraph had a great impact on me: “High-value journalism today generally requires subscription payment. For decades in the twentieth century, high-quality American journalism was largely supported by advertising revenues. Editorial content appeared to be free. With the introduction of the internet, news organizations initially made their editorial content freely available online. Some legitimate news organizations still do. However, digital advertising revenues today pale in comparison to the print advertising revenues of the previous century. While there is freely available information content via social media and other digital channels, the content produced by reputable journalists generally requires subscription revenue. So, news consumers who want to support good journalism should prepare to do so with their wallets.”

I took his advice to heart. I subscribe to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Salt Lake Tribune. I also check the Deseret News website daily, since it is free (and I support it through my church donations). I have also subscribed in the past to the New Yorker magazine (which does sterling in-depth reporting as well as reputable coverage of current events), and I have a short-term subscription to Mother Jones (a fiercely independent magazine with no corporate ties). I do this not only to support good journalism financially, but also because these publications are good sources of reliable information. They follow the journalistic code of ethics, which includes fact checking and issuing corrections when they get something wrong. CNN also fact-checks its content (as well as claims by political candidates) and issues on-air corrections. I find it ironic but not surprising that Donald Trump criticized CNN for broadcasting a retraction and even letting two employees go when one of its stories turned out to be untrue. He used this as proof that CNN is “fake news,” when CNN was actually doing what all reputable media outlets do when discovering a mistake. The New York Times even invites readers to alert them to any factual errors they may have published.

This is a hallmark of all institutions that uphold the Constitution of Knowledge. The system for establishing truth that has evolved over centuries and that is now under attack is self-correcting. Science, journalism, academia, the legal system, the intelligence community—they all consider themselves fallible and arrive at truth by opening their claims to challenge. As Rauch puts is, “They understand that their claims will and must be challenged; they anticipate those challenges and respond; they subject their scholarship to peer review and replication, their journalism to editing and fact-checking, their legal briefs to adversarial lawyers, their intelligence to red-team review.” But this whole system is under attack. I found it sobering that the publisher of the New York Times felt the need to write an editorial that appeared in the past week in the Washington Post, warning about the possibility that the U.S. might follow countries like Hungary and India in losing freedom of the press. We are already partway down that path.

So, if you are getting your information on current events from social media, please stop. There are no guardrails for this content. And if you are watching Fox News, please break the habit. Fox News is not just not credible; it is dangerously dishonest. If you are not financially able to support good journalism through subscriptions, here are a couple of decent free sources. Boston College history professor Heather Cox Richardson sends out a daily email titled “Letters from an American,” in which she covers the news of the day as well as pertinent events that happened in history on that date. She often calls out disinformation and puts today’s events in a historical context, and she always lists sources at the bottom of each email so you can check her facts yourself or get more detailed information. For public health information, especially about COVID and vaccine-related issues, Katelyn Jetelina, an epidemiologist, sends out a twice-weekly, fact-based email titled “Your Local Epidemiologist.” She summarizes data that most of us don’t know where to find. 

There are many other sources, but please, please support good journalism and reputable media. It is too easy to fall into the disinformation trap in today’s world. What use is the Constitution’s protection of freedom of the press if American citizens do not read what that free press is publishing? The Washington Post’s official slogan is certainly true: “Democracy dies in darkness.”