Several years ago, when I was going through the certification process for the PEARL World Youth News Organization, an AP-Reuters-style news affiliate for high school students, I had to complete some reading assignments, one of which was a code that journalists should live by. It emphasized the importance of telling the straight facts, without spinning or misrepresenting them. The reason: as journalists, the public looks to you for information.
If we don’t give them the truth, who will?
It is alarming how often the defense of semantics is exploited when a journalist or newspaper or reporting group or even politician is caught in a lie. They will mince words to try and wriggle their way out of trouble, but only end up wriggling their way out of credibility and integrity. But once you lose the trust of the public, BOOM! It’s over.
Forget the Pulitzer Prize. You will forever be branded as untrustworthy and as a cheater.
And when your livelihood depends on people turning to you as a trusted advisor, you cannot afford make that mistake. You just can't.
Literally.
I must applaud wikipedia for instituting the “citation needed” element to their sites. It forces accountability upon the opinionated irresponsible. And if there are no citations for specific statements, the site informs the reader. In language, as in currency, there should always be something of substance backing up what is circulated.
I saw this because to me, false- or misinformation is one of the greatest crimes of current society. Commentators on nearly every subject are the greatest perpetrators. They will exaggerate the facts, omit damaging arguments, and present complex, convincing arguments on fallacious assertions. The uninformed reader or viewer is helpless against this onslaught of counterfeit reality.
And often the excuse for misrepresenting the facts is, “Well, they know that I’m kidding,” or, “look, I’m not a professor, I’m just giving my opinion,” or, “it’s a radio show! They don’t want to hear the boring facts. I’m just spicing them up!” As media consumers, we need to differentiate between satire, which is useful in its own right, exaggeration, fallacy, omission, and outright distortion of facts.
The aforementioned excuses are common symptoms among politicians, who will say just about anything to gather a following and when they are exposed will spin the story to do some “damage control.”
A truly talented commentator does not need an image consultant because he is always honest, even if the truth is less exciting, and honesty is a winning quality.
If we keep this in mind when we are the ones holding the information, we will succeed as writers, educators, and scholars.
So true about journalists. They need to supply the facts; they are called newspapers not opinionpapers.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant way to present the consequences of dishonest or misleading writing. So true that politicians are the biggest contributor to misleading info.
ReplyDeleteI read the first lines and of course said "China is not that cool"... but your paper is rock solid. I liked the views and the formatting. Also I liked that you used my previously created tag.
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