Media Culpa? Don’t hold your breath. Creating Fake News is the Business Model

The news media certainly love conflict; political conflict, class conflict, war, sport, gender, town and country, corporate takeovers, it doesn’t matter much what it is as long as there’s conflict there’s a story. The old adage, ‘if it bleeds it leads’ still holds true, but for non-violent news the closest thing to blood is violent disagreement.

In public debates the news media has traditionally championed its role as a referee of public squabbling, or side-line commentator, promoting its neutrality or objectivity as a credential. But with online communication and the emergence of the active audience, social media, and the increased speed at which conflict can be reported the media is taking its role in another direction. Rather than explaining and exposing conflict the news media has increasingly taken on the role of cheerleader, choosing sides, and rallying and amplifying support for one side or the other. But this is not harmless entertainment. It often amounts to unwarranted and irresponsible disruption of public debates.

Of course, such partisanship on the part of the news media is not new, the problem is now the scale of media partisanship, its amplification through permanent connectivity to online and mobile technology and its normalisation in the practice of journalism. Rather than reporting on conflict, the media creates conflict or deliberately makes it worse by exaggerating, misrepresenting or falsifying information (i.e. lying).

When the consequences of this practice become apparent, or the news media choose the wrong side – Iraq War, anyone? Climate change? Jennifer Aniston’s pregnancy? – the media neither acknowledge, accept the influence of their contribution or apologise for stirring up and contributing to the situation. For the media there is always another conflict to buy into, and so the cheerleaders move on to another game, adopt another rallying cry and stir up conflict elsewhere.

What’s worse the news media often switch sides and change positions without acknowledgment or explanation. The media as a shape-shifter in public discourse is a development in its role.

The shifting positions of the news media, especially in relation to political, economic and scientific issues, are alarming because despite criticism, falling confidence and the increasing alternatives available journalism maintains substantial authority and credibility. Journalists continue to have privileged access to places and people, and an authority that even experts in specific fields do not have. The legitimacy of the media built up over the 19th and 20th centuries might be declining, but it still exists.

Most significantly the media and individual journalists rarely explain and rarely apologise for  inadequacies or failures in reporting, for getting things wrong, for mistaken identity, for reputation damage,  for misleading headlines or ambiguous content.  While there remains the potential for people to sue for defamation, such litigation is costly – as even the case of Hulk Hogan showed. There are regulatory mechanisms for complaints about media reporting but they are slow, bureaucratic and time consuming, and by the time a ruling is made any corrective action is disproportionate or ineffective. Professional organisations that media workers belong to have lofty ethical codes, but when trangressed there is little enforcement of these codes through the application of punitive measures.

No other profession with such reach or influence is so protected by the systemic failure of scrutiny, legislative limitations and its own culture of acceptance and justification of miserably low standards. But don’t expect the media to accept any criticism of its practices – anyone who dares to suggest the media are irresponsible is liable to be visciously torn down, accused of bias themselves or simply ignored.

And then there’s the ultimate media magic trick. Redirection. Look over there! A fight!