The Whole Truth

Two stories caught my attention over the last week. On Sunday, 60 Minutes ran a Bill Whitaker piece on the dangers of reporting facts in the Philippines since Rodrigo Duterte became president. Maria Ressa, who runs a news site call Rappler, has been harassed by police and by Duterte supporters alike–not for running opinion pieces that disagree with his policies, but for reporting facts about the human costs of Duterte’s war on drugs. Her reporters have been threatened with murder and rape. Duterte has been so irked by Rappler coverage that he has created a ministry that reports only government-approved “news” on social media, decrying everything else as “fake.”

Sound familiar? How sad that we live in a world where any reportage of facts that cut against a preferred narrative results in the rejection of the facts–and the media outlet reporting them–rather than the preferred narrative.

Closer to home, the week before that, the Northwestern Daily, the student newspaper of Northwestern University, apologized for coverage of students who protested the appearance of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had been invited to speak by Northwestern’s College Republicans. A photographer took a picture of a student protester who later tweeted that she didn’t want to have her picture on the site. She found Sessions’ political beliefs and campus speaking engagement genuinely jarring, and accused the newspaper of capitalizing on the “trauma porn” of students who felt like she did. The paper took down the photo and apologized for running it, a decision widely mocked in the world of journalism.

As a recovering journalist, I often thank my lucky stars that my career path eventually led to teaching. I cannot imagine a field more beset by financial worry and political angst than journalism. What’s happening in the Philippines gives us a cautionary tale about autocrats who seek to suppress the freedom of the press. The Daily’s issues illustrate the importance of teaching journalists to report facts even when they’re uncomfortable–even when peers may face discipline for breaking campus regulations regarding protests.

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6 Responses to The Whole Truth

  1. Gracie Rowland says:

    In the modern age, suppression of the press has become commonplace, and the Duterte situation exemplifies this perfectly. The world of journalism is dying, and the only cure is clear truth. News stations in particular have become riddled with bizarre headlines and suppression of fact. 24 hour news stations lead to a constant need of news, which leads to a constant presentation of opinion as fact. The accuracy rate of many common TV news stations such as Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC is appalling. I think that the current widespread political bias in the world of journalism is absolute trash. There is a clear place for personal opinion in the place of news, but when fact and opinion blend into one there’s a definite problem.
    Pew Research center has some cool statistics on this: https://www.journalism.org/2016/07/07/trust-and-accuracy/
    https://www.people-press.org/2009/09/13/press-accuracy-rating-hits-two-decade-low/
    As for the Northwestern article, I hope that the girl who opposed the publishing of her picture understands what the hell a protest actually is. It’s a public (emphasis on public) display of indignation, and her willing participation in the protest existed as a marked acceptance to public view. I’m also kinda disappointed in the Northwestern newspaper staff for taking down the picture. Journalism is founded on the principle of raw truth, and the categorization of the picture as “trauma porn” is absolutely ridiculous.

  2. Andie says:

    I used to have a friend who lived in the Philippines (haven’t talked to her in a while, though), and I remember her being really scared when Duterte was elected president. The lack of accurate news coverage just serves to justify that: when a government begins to control what knowledge its citizens have access to, the power of the people will slowly diminish. I wish that the reason why freedom of the press is so important was more widely-known, so that maybe hearing that governments are controlling news media is a little more jarring. We’re becoming desensitized: it’s now all too common to hear about in countries such as China, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba (https://cpj.org/2015/04/10-most-censored-countries.php is a convenient list published by the Committee to Protect Journalists with more countries with more countries, as well as their specific policies). At home, discreditation of the media by government officials (found especially in the popularization of the term “Fake News” by you-know-who) is a problem as well. I agree with Gracie in that the presence of political bias among different news outlets has only made it worse. Charts and graphs with inaccuracies and/or misleading details published by Fox News especially were common examples of what not to do in the Statistics 1 class earlier this year. These should be called out. Presence of bias should be called out. Grey area between someone speaking their opinion and someone reporting facts should be called out. And, again agreeing with Gracie, these callouts should be public: anonymous protests rarely mean much. If that weren’t the case, petitions would be pages of tally marks rather than names. Exceptions would be with anonymous polls, perhaps, but those are more displays of statistics than active protests. Or the white-hat hacking group Anonymous, where the identities of each member is unknown, but their protests are action along with displays of opinion. The difference between these instances and the Northwestern student’s case was that their form of protest demands their names and faces be attached. Anonymous polls are simply a third-party’s display of people passively having an opinion, and Anonymous’ actions are actual destructive action against entities. If your protest is only a display of opinion, that means inherently you are willing to attach yourself to it. That isn’t “trauma porn,” that’s just how you show that something means a lot to you.

  3. Auriel Q says:

    I was in the 8th grade when the 2016 election craze was consuming every outlet of media. I never took research seriously then because of how young I was and politics were (blindly) a serious topic to me but this goes to say that I repeated what family members said more than anything. However my teacher gave the assignment of researching the candidates and having a debate for the side that you agreed on during your research. I thought that would be easy enough and I was more than wrong, because each and every article carried a contradiction or an obvious bias towards one side. I felt that I had to choose which article presented facts correctly rather than consuming information just as it was presented. I mean it is never correct to just take things as is, however, the amount of dodging I had to do in order to find some sort of seamless facts was so incredibly awful that my 8th grade self couldn’t choose a side. I unaware of how to research properly.Now I am not trying to say that opinion pieces are bad but what I am saying is that the line between what is fact or just a very sided opinion is so smudged that with a normal reader or someone not as educated on the topic it could change their whole opinion. (This kind of branches to another topic but this definitely needs to be said here. If media continues to go out in this pattern then I feel that it is imperative to teach the youth of proper research because the only thing that I was taught was not to use Wikipedia and that anything with “.org” was a-okay)

    With that being said I think as time progresses there is no longer an emphasis on the culture of informing the world but rather trying to get the world on YOUR side. This goes with large leaders of course trying to suppress individual thoughts in fear of retaliation, but it also goes to even individuals being uncomfortable with how information was laid out about them even if they are true.( just like in the article of the protestors) Information is wonderful and the truth is even better, so I could not fully understand why someone would not want to be a part of it because when people understand the facts then that allows for so much growth and great change because people actually know what the *heck* is going on.

    I also would love to know what “trauma porn” even is

  4. Josh Bates says:

    In America, we hold our freedom of speech above all else, commonly regarding it as if we had found Plato’s god of ultimate truth. It is the very base of our society, even seeping in almost every sense of our lives. It has even found itself into almost form of literature produced not only in America, but in the entire world. There is a reason that we put it first because millions have fought for it and died by this idea. Many Americans get a red, white, and blue boner from just thinking about making a trip to the polls, and to act any less would be almost sacrilegious. Well I am about to commit American blasphemy because I believe that the first amendment is dangerous and not as strictly limited as it should be. The freedom of press, the freedom of speech, the right to protest, along with others are all rights that are given to funnel to the right to vote. They are put in place with truly good intentions, for they were meant to be used as a means of changing opinions, therefore changing the polls and hopefully improving the government. These things might have worked in the relatively small city states of Athens where a direct democracy could have plausibly have worked, but America is not, and has never been, this. America has always been a democratic republic, meaning that citizen participation is far from direct. A democratic republic attempts to take the capitalistic idea of competition and apply it to politics, in hopes that it would result in the people always getting the best “product” or candidate. Yet this idea fails in a way, because in a capitalistic market, companies have to be consistently good to continue receiving business yet politicians only have to appeal to voters while running, leaving them open to empty promises or even flat out lies. This is not to mention the fact that presidential elections are not even based on popular vote. This, combined with the monetization of the press, has reduces the “duty” that the press has to the citizens. This instead leaves them open to report upon whatever stories they feel will make their bank accounts the largest. This is not to say that the press had no place in America, or that the press is not important. Instead, it is a sad destruction of journalism because the stories that result in the most attention are the ones that strike fear into the heart of the readers, not the ones that are necessarily the most true or important. This results, not in the press being powerless, but in their affect being one that is commonly negative instead of positive as they stretch facts or neglects information to create the story that they desire. Although they way that the press has been sensitized in the Philippines is an act of tyranny, the press should face much stricter regulations than it currently does. I believe that the more freedoms we are given, the closer we edge to anarchy, and by giving profiting companies the power to instill fear in citizens, the country is bound to be divided and drowning in political chaos, as facts become a thing of the past and logical fallacies are the new-age tools in our debates.

  5. Jesse Tran says:

    Nowadays, a great deal of journalists and reporters mask the truth out of fear of being judged or ridiculed. I understand if their life is threatened, yet I feel that the news can continue to be publicized. Most news stations have grown a reputation of reporting fake news and insignificant topics, and I feel that is due to my initial statement. People seek the truth especially whenever it pertains to an issue that piques them. Unfortunately, close-minded individuals search and recognize only what supports their beliefs. Despite this, journalists should not report fallacies to please or comfort those of whom they speak. Additionally, current reporting is scattered with unbelievable amounts of opinions from biased reporters whenever the report attempts to come off as completely objective. Similar to Gracie’s statement, there is a distinctive place to hold one’s opinions and the story’s truths. It is outrageous how we have began to drift away from staying genuine to remaining true.

    Also, when it comes to the Northwestern article, the girl is being ironic. She goes out of her way to protest publicly her opinion on Session’s appearance; however, she feels disrespected for being a face for it on a report. I respect the reporter for taking down the photo, but the lady’s claims were a reach.

  6. Andrew says:

    This issue is one that is truly concerning, and I really feel what Josh says when he states, “The freedom of press, the freedom of speech, the right to protest, along with others are all rights that are given to funnel to the right to vote. They are put in place with truly good intentions, for they were meant to be used as a means of changing opinions, therefore changing the polls and hopefully improving the government. These things might have worked in the relatively small city states of Athens where a direct democracy could have plausibly have worked, but America is not, and has never been, this. America has always been a democratic republic, meaning that citizen participation is far from direct. A democratic republic attempts to take the capitalistic idea of competition and apply it to politics, in hopes that it would result in the people always getting the best “product” or candidate. ” We really need to believe in our rights, and we should not let anyone else take them from us.

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