News editors deal with a dilemma almost every single day: when a politician or any public figure tells untruths, should they label their words clearly as a lie? The answer should be obvious: news is in the business of reporting the truth, and so a lie should be called as one.
But when was the last time you saw a newspaper headline, a TV news story, or a website story clearly labelling an untruth? Especially if the lying individual is part of the ruling party?
Newspapers, TV channels and websites don’t use the word ‘lie’ to describe a politician’s lies. But they often don’t use less clear words either, such as ‘untruth’. Instead, they sometimes use the word ‘controversial’, which is neither here nor there. This is especially true for lies by politicians of the ruling party.
Don’t take my word for it. Type the name of any well-known political leader and the word ‘lie’ into Google or Bing and look at the results. You will find many hits. Look however, for the number of respected media organizations that come up. My bet is that you won’t find any. Or even if you do, these will be exceptions.
What does this mean?
That politicians don’t lie?
Of course, politicians lie! It’s pretty much well-established that they do, and regularly at that. It seems to be in their job description. There are exceptions, but that’s the point: they are the exception, not the rule.
So why doesn’t the media label lies as lies?
I’m referring here to statements that are definitely lies.
To be clear, I’m not referring to:
half-truths
mostly-false-but-partly-true words
bullshit, which has no relation to the truth whatsoever.
PolitiFact, based in the US, has a Truth-O-Meter for every fact-check they publish. The ratings on this meter range from ‘True’ and ‘Mostly True’ to ‘False’ and ‘Pants On Fire!’
As Aaron Sharockman, the executive editor of PolitiFact states, doing a fact-check for a political lie can be very hard. It can take several days, mounds of research, phone calls, field visits and interviews. (Reporting the truth takes time.) It’s the same experience we’ve had at BOOM and FactChecker.in.
But I’m not talking about difficult cases, but those clear lies, the ‘liar, liar, pants on fire’ ones. Such as US President Donald Trump’s famously false utterances. Or the many clear lies by various members of India’s government.
So back to the question. Why doesn’t the media label lies as lies?
At least in India, there are three broad reasons for that.
They support those in power.
Journalism organizations are supposed to be watchdogs. But many powerful news organizations are more like lapdogs of those in power. They have no problem attacking those in the opposition, but ask them to keep the government accountable? They won’t do that.
In other cases, they are literally owned by political parties. Or by companies that are close to the government.They are censored, directly or indirectly.
Newspapers in India depend on the central government or state government for advertising revenue. However, even newspapers for whom this revenue is not significant can be pressured through other means. Television networks cannot operate unless they get a license. Even if they are already on air, they can be shut down or lose guests for their shows, or even sponsorship. Thus far, only websites can operate without restriction, but the government is making moves to alter this state of affairs.
They operate under a flawed journalistic model.
In an effort to be objective and neutral, journalists like to get ‘both sides of the story’. This system of getting all perspectives works effectively in most cases, but in the post-truth era, it just doesn’t work. This tendency of the media’s is called ‘false balance’ or ‘false equivalence’. Or even ‘bothsidesism’.The Wikipedia entry on this states:
“False balance…is a media bias in which journalists present an issue as being more balanced between opposing viewpoints than the evidence supports.”So when you have an editor who cannot see beyond false balance, weird things can happen: When a politician lies, reporters will find someone to criticize that lie and then, incredibly, someone to support the liar by saying it was not a lie.
They then report the issue as a battle between two perspectives. When in reality, it’s a choice between denouncing a lie or upholding a falsehood.In this process, the truth is the casualty.
The problem with this situation is that it is really easy to get used to lies. So used to them, that we begin condoning them regularly. Even worse, we start believing them to be truths.
No democracy can function well without a media that unflinchingly and routinely identifies lies and reports them as such. Until then, we will continue to be, as a memorably phrase goes, a “50-50 democracy.”
Image credits:
Main image by Pelle Sten. (I cropped the image.)
GIF: From the TV series, House, M.D., the medical whodunnit modeled on Sherlock Holmes.
PolitiFact image from Poynter.org.
If you liked this piece, please consider sharing it. You can also sign up to receive this weekly newsletter.