How do public interest media – the kind that publish information and points of view on important issues that affect policies, lives, and livelihoods – stay independent?

How neutral should public interest journalism be in the face of blatant manipulation, misinformation, and lies?

How accountable should social media be for misleading or provocative content?

As Michael Goldfarb points out in “Trump was no accident. And the America that made him is still with us” (The Guardian, 8 November 2020), “Media is the second stream that helped create the Trump presidency. The ‘siloing’ of American society has long been noted but just how incomprehensible people had become to one another after a quarter of a century and more of being in such different media environments overwhelmed the anti-Trump side.”

The detrumpification of both legacy and social media is imperative if American society is to rebuild itself along the lines envisaged by President-elect Biden.

Part of the problem lies in newsroom practices. In “A Reckoning Over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists” (The New York Times, 23 June 2020, Wesley Lowery writes, “Neutral ‘objective journalism’ is constructed atop a pyramid of subjective decision-making: which stories to cover, how intensely to cover those stories, which sources to seek out and include, which pieces of information are highlighted and which are downplayed. No journalistic process is objective. And no individual journalist is objective, because no human being is.”

It’s a fair point, except for the long-held expectation that journalism worth its salt will be honest, balanced, and transparent. Over many years, and not just in the USA, that notion has been trashed over issues such as war, racial justice, migration, and the climate crisis.

Trump led the way, denouncing and denigrating traditional media. He helped corrupt social media, developing echo chambers of supporters, including influential conservatives and ordinary supporters who claimed that mainstream news sources distorted Trump’s truth. An organized network of far-right groups amplified that message on and offline.

Simon Houpt in “The rise of Trump fact-checks exposes the media’s built-in vulnerability to misinformation” (The Globe and Mail, 11 November 2020) observes, “Mr. Trump has exposed the vulnerabilities of our information ecosystem. What are we willing to do to fix it?”

It’s a great question! Who will make it happen?

Photo: Antonio Guillem/Shutterstock

In ordinary times, for that to happen the media must also be free and fair. But these have not been ordinary times. Until very recently, the news media have been hobbled and fettered.

The USA is a country riven by political and social divides where it is difficult, if not impossible to communicate a vision of a world in which basic human values matter. A world in which “government of the people, by the people, for the people” actually means all the people. Not just a minority intent on grabbing power and wealth to the exclusion of millions.

That famous quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address comes immediately after his call for “a new birth of freedom”, which the lawyer in him knew would have to stand on genuine equality of opportunity and respect for human dignity.

Over the past four years, respect for other people has been thrown out of the window. Highly partisan media discredited “news” by conniving at injustice, pouring scorn on the truth, spreading disinformation and in certain cases inciting hatred and division. Social media were used to discredit, to plant rumours and lies, to tarnish reputations, to instil confusion and fear, and to manipulate the democratic process. And investigative and reputable news media were attacked and discredited as sources of credible and trustworthy information.

Yet the people’s freedom equates with media freedom, and November 3 is a long-awaited opportunity to begin restoring credibility. Those in charge of public interest media, and those who run local newspapers and community radio stations, have a role to play in democratic accountability. A return to basic principles of openness, fact-finding and transparency are vital. Those elected to government must also respect these principles as essential to democracy.

“A new birth of freedom” requires a press free of government interference, free of corporate bias, free to challenge and dispute. It requires journalism that is candid and honest, investigative journalism that tells it like it is, and day to day reporting that is fair and balanced.

A famous quote by the widely respected broadcast journalist Walter Cronkite, once called the most trusted man in America, says it all: “Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy, it is democracy.”

Day before the election. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash