The Importance of Journalism in a Truth-Complicated World

The following was a midterm essay for the Media Criticism (FAMST70) in the Film and Media Studies department here at UCSB. The essay was a reading response to authors critiquing the news and social media landscape in America—especially in the Post-Trump Era.

Introduction: We Fall to the Low of our Institutions

It is incorrect to assume humans are fundamentally truth-seeking creatures. To assume

that, above all else, we prioritize and search for truth. Unfortunately, none of us fall

within this ideal; most watch the news and try to “stay informed” but remain passive

observers. Our relationship with the news and truth relies upon external structure to

deliver us with truth. We rely on journalism. We rely on journalism to inform how we

act, vote, and fight for, and so because there is such limited choice, we must guarantee

the highest level of integrity from our journalistic institutions. The institutions

themselves must respect the work and acknowledge the power they hold. For a long

time, they did, and while not doing perfect work, the American people could have faith

in these corporations—a strange phrase to say now. But in the past few decades, great

technological development has unsettling the economic base of these companies. Social

media (and the algorithms they are based on), along with weak government anti-trust

policy, has compounded to undermine journalism and our democracy. Social media

opened new channels for journalistic media to be shared, leading to parties outside the

newsroom controlling this distribution. Because of this move to the internet as the

primary means of consumption, algorithms now control the news. This opens the door

to hijacking and forces journalists to change the stories they write to maximize their

profits. This brutal combination of an economic push and a pull from government

offices with integrity degrading all the while poses a serious threat to our democracy and

future. The only way out of this problem is for journalists to maintain their integrity and

not waver on personal and professional ethics.

Section One: The Economic & Monopoly Problem

When assessing the state of any industry, the first place one must look—assuming a

capitalist structure—is the money. Where does it come from, the profits, hiring rates? If

we smell something rotten in our journalistic intuitions, we must look at the economics

that motivates every industry action. We see historic news giants acquiesce to the new

internet players that have taken control of our daily lives in a matter of years. It's

Washington that has caused this problem. They unlocked the door, then took it off its

hinges, letting journalistic integrity be carried out. One of the first safety nets to go was

any notion of anti-trust, any respect for the damage that could come from monopolies.

Roger McNamee observes, “Since the Reagan era, antitrust law has operated under the

principle that monopoly is not a problem so long as it doesn’t result in higher prices for

consumers.”1 Reagan’s economic philosophy consisted of deregulation, budget cuts, and

more deregulation to free the market because, of course, government is the problem.

So, under his administration, the government changed how it saw the issue of

monopolies. Companies were now okay to dominate market share as long as they didn’t

raise prices on consumers. Mergers have been allowed even when apparently

anti-competitive, and acquisitions, especially in the digital sphere, have been almost

completely unregulated. Facebook buys Instagram, one of its competitors, allowing it to

buy market share and spread horizontally, and Google buys what becomes AdSense.

This perfectly vertically integrates, allowing Google to control the profit and sale of ads

to sites across the internet, which its search engine directs us to. Focusing on the one

metric of consumer price ignores the risks posed to society when companies are

permitted to grow without limits. To quote McNamee again, “Election manipulation has

a cost. Reduced innovation and shrinkage of the entrepreneurial economy has a cost,”1

these are costs not passed onto the user’s wallet but their lives.1 When democracy and

free expression are funneled through social media algorithms, the value is gone as to be

seen; you must mold to it- you have all the freedom in the world to be silenced and

suppressed! So because of this lack of Congress’s disregard of anti-trust and FTC &

DOJ’s lack of spine in mergers and acquisitions, internet darlings have turned into silent

villains of democracy. We now have a few companies creating their algorithms in a dark

room without regulation that dictates how media companies act.

Section Two: Trapped in Algorithms

In Macedonia, teenagers spread fake news online to make money and buy BMWs. They

don’t do this to manipulate foreign elections—they couldn’t care less—but simply for the

profit. It just so happens that spreading sensational fake news on the internet is

incredibly profitable. Samantha Subramanian explored this world in 2017 in an article

for WIRED. In this article, she interviews Boris (19), one of the fake news profiteers.

He makes the following comment: “The media is washing our brains, and the people

are following like sheep.”2 Here is a kid who can see how attached people are to their

news and ideological content. He can see this, as he is the one perpetuating it, and it's

obvious that the negative messages get more clicks- returning him more money. The

internet simply prioritizes negative content. We become hooked on negativity, and

because social media sites prioritize time spent and engagement, their algorithms push

negative messages more. In The Washington Monthly, Roger McNamee describes this

effect in terms of emotions, “Algorithms that maximize attention give an advantage to

negative messages. People tend to react more to inputs that land low on the brainstem.

Fear and anger produce a lot more engagement and sharing than joy.”1 We are less

reactive when engaging our higher-level thinking, so engagement goes down. Even

simple positive messages illicit less reaction, which results in less time spent on the site

and less time spent with advertisements. Because profit is the only goal, every site is

interested in upsetting us as that is what makes them more money. But the issue goes

beyond an irritated population; this has real-world effects on politics.

McNamee describes how the two sides of Brexit campaigned on different emotional

grounds, and thus, one got picked up by Facebook's algorithm and the other did not.

The Remain camp appealed to reason and used logic to argue to stay in the European

Union. The Leave half used emotional appeals not based in fact, yet this was the one

“turbocharged” by social media sites. This applies to even our most prestigious

journalistic intuitions as, at the end of the day, they too, are motivated by profit. With

newsrooms drastically shrinking in size, even heralded names are under financial

pressure.3 So they have to mold to the social media algorithm game. They won’t go as far

as Boris, but they will push. They’ll push to become more sensational and ideologically

dependent to stay afloat. This move slowly happens until, as Subramanian says,

“ideology beat back the truth.” As our news organizations are forced to produce

increasingly sensational work for their ideological base, they are also put under pressure

from the government.

Section Three: The Government’s Hand

We have already seen how the government let the market “free,” letting the bull of GDP

growth loose in the china shop that is journalism. Letting capitalist interest and no

regulation fundamentally break the industry into thousands of pieces. From fine china

to clay dust, but what happens when the government puts its hand on the scale and

directly begins to collude with the media for control of the narrative?

In coverage of the Iraq war and Guantanamo Bay, networks often bring in military

advisers. Previous armed forces members to speak on these technical matters with

authority and inform the American people of details only experts could know. The State

Department knows this, and so over time, the Pentagon began to recruit potential

analysts. In a piece for the New York Times, Barstow exposes how they recruited over 75

analysts “described as reliable ‘surrogates’ in Pentagon documents.”4 Analysts were

ex-military and often held jobs in the military-industrial complex, working to win

Pentagon contracts. They were indoctrinated then insentives to speak positively about

the government’s wartime policy. Staple cable networks with strong ethos were being

controlled by the government through experts. Barstow describes communications

between the Pentagon, its analysts, and the network to offer exclusive insight and tours

of bases and facilities. The Government would allow access and, in turn, get positive

coverage, revealing a “symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between

government and journalism have been obliterated.”4 These “journalists” are completely

at the whim of the State Department, only working in the interest of their own career.

Feeding lies to the American people drumming up support for a war that will only leave

Americans and Iraqis dead; these people that would otherwise not be in conflict. Getting

people to buy into an unjust and unjustified war, thereby encouraging war hawk policy

to boost the war industry was effective too. The result was measurable and when

support was lacking—when eyes began to open—the Pentagon made sure the

mainstream news would shut them.

Speaking on a conference call with the selected military analysts a US General Conway

said the following: “The strategic target remains our population. We can lose people

day in and day out, but they’re never going to beat our military. What they can and

will do if they can is strip away our support. And you guys can help us not let that

happen.”4 To have a US General show blatant disregard for the lives of American

soldiers and instead only care for support of this forever war is dystopian at best. The

focus on fabricating support for a pointless conquest and then asking the media to

support it is worse. The fact that they do so is the worst. News media perpetuating

government talking points, singing the perfect tune, not missing a beat. This shows

complete disregard for journalistic standards and even personal moral character. We

have fallen far. Yet the truth may still be found. Change is possible, though it will be a

fight.

Section Four: Who Moves First?

It has now been made clear how poor economic incentives, monopoly building, and a

mainstream media complicit in serving the government’s agenda has led to a great

decline in the news as a truth-first endeavor. Urgency is rising, commercialization and

commodification of news has already begun to corrupt elections and public votes, it's

about time for change, so the question becomes: what player moves first? The

government surely won’t change on its own.

4. David Barstow, “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” The New York

Times, April 20, 2008, https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html.

FAMST70 W24 Baden Rosales 8

Do we ask the people to hold its government and media accountable? Yes, but this is not

the first step, as they are reliant on these bodies and can hardly protest when no options

exist. So then we find ourselves arriving with the journalists themselves. The

mainstream has fallen from what would be considered even passable journalism

integrity—especially on network’s cable channels. We must ask and hope that journalists

may keep one another accountable. Resist the temptation of the comfort of conformity

and speak out because “the struggle is worth it: traditional news values are important

and they matter and they are worth defending,” the new digital age offers us the power

to take on the world’s “old hierarchies”.2 Viner urges us and his peers to fight for a

“strong journalistic culture” and build a business model that puts the public first.

Reform our institutions to prioritize the common person and offer them enough

reliable, relevant information so we can build a critical public. The alternative is a

misinformed mob of ideologues. An organization of such nature is possible. We find

such groups not in the mainstream but in independent channels. The cutting edge has

moved from the largest to smaller newsrooms that can maintain a focused mission.

Ones that were built on real values and respect for the job of a journalist.

Amy Goodman features prominently in the documentary All Governments Lie (2016).

Goodman founded Democracy Now off acclaimed journalists IF Stone’s idea that a

newsroom should be a “sanctuary of dissent.”5 Democracy Now is an independent news

organization that to this day does not accept money from advertisers, instead relying on

subscriptions and donations to carry the message. It is safer from outside influence than

mainstream media. This is illustrated plainly in how, just days after two Reuter

journalists in Bagdad were killed by the US military, raining bullets from a helicopter,

Democracy Now was able to report on the story. They reported on the story in 2007

when most of the mainstream media took three years to cover it; they bought the

government’s version that said they were killed in a firefight. Because Democracy Now is

independent, they can openly criticize and break the gridlocked culture in US journalism

that says you must support the Pentagon. Support the war; support our hawkish foreign

policy; “conservative” or liberal it’s the same talking points. Amy Goodman compares

this system to that of an authoritarian with no free press, “We don’t have state

media-but how much different would it be [if we did.] I think the media can be the

greatest force of peace on Earth. Instead it's wielded as a weapon of war, that has to

be challenged.”5 It’s not a crazy sentiment to consider as we have seen with how most

media is willingly controlled by the government then forced to obey the

pseudo-oligarchy of Zuckerberg, Bezos, Pichai (Google), and Cook (Apple). But it is the

notion echoed in the last half of the quote that is maybe most important: to consider

what journalism could be and to reckon with what it has become.

Small, independent, journalism is succeeding where large conglomerates are failing. It is

possible to do good work, to be responsible, and maintain integrity. Journalists must

keep each other honest fight for the values of the profession that have been stripped

away in recent decades by its turn to entertainment. Fight for what we know to be true

and best not catering to once audience and shareholders but facing the American people

and delivering nothing but the hard truth.

Conclusion:

We don’t always want the truth, but we do require it. Society needs purveyors of truth

interested only in the selfless service of one’s community, country, and planet. This used

to be the job of the journalist, but as time has gone on, as outside influence of

advertisers, government, and algorithms join the party the truth is stomped out. It's still

possible to find good journalism–especially in the independent arena–but we need a

radical mentality shift starting in the mainstream news outlets causing this problem.

The change has to be internal from journalist to journalist because raising ethical

standards will drain the sludge of false narratives, thus exposing the flaws in

government practice and economic policy. Without strong journalism, we can’t make

informed decisions, and thus democracy becomes but pageantry. If our news is weak

then so are we, so is the country. Strengthening our journalistic institutions builds every

American up and taking active public steps can begin to rebuild the trust in news media

needed for healthy conversation. After all, it is dialogue and conversation that can heal

wounds and propel the nation further; it is necessary for progress and change.

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Works Cited:

All Governments Lie: Truth, Deception and the Spirit of I. F. Stone. Film. Canada: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 2016.

Barstow, David. “Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.” The New York Times, April 20, 2008. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/us/20generals.html.

McNamee, Roger. “How to Fix Facebook Before It Fixes US.” Washington Monthly, January 9, 2022. https://washingtonmonthly.com/2018/01/07/how-to-fix-facebook-before-it-fixes-us/#.WlOtmZOJ30A.facebook.

Subramanian, Samanth. “The Macedonian Teens Who Mastered Fake News.” Wired, January 8, 2020. https://www.wired.com/2017/02/veles-macedonia-fake-news/.

Viner, Katherine. “How Technology Disrupted the Truth.” The Guardian, July 12, 2016. https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/jul/12/how-technology-disrupted-the-truth.