Once, in the pre era before social media—or before smartphones, or the Internet—there was a time when journalists were trusted, Fergus McIntosh, the head of The New Yorker’s fact-checking department, writes. Back then, everybody read muscular daily newspapers and watched straight-down-the-line TV reporting.

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Once, in the pre era before social media—or before smartphones, or the Internet—there was a time when journalists were trusted, Fergus McIntosh, the head of The New Yorker’s fact-checking department, writes. Back then, everybody read muscular daily newspapers and watched straight-down-the-line TV reporting. When citizens had to make political decisions, a robust social contract with the media insured that they were well informed; even if they couldn’t always agree on what to do or whom to vote for, they could rely on a shared set of facts. “But then something changed: people stopped paying attention to the news, or decided that they didn’t believe it anymore. They got distracted by podcasts, Facebook, and Twitch. They became ill-informed, and started to act against their best interests. The media decayed and fragmented, along with the nation. Opinion and news became indistinguishable, misinformation ran amok, and that is how we came to live in the post-truth world,” he continues.
This story is not unsupported. Trust in many institutions has fallen over the years, but in journalism it has plummeted. At the same time, large swaths of the industry have been on the retreat, racked by dwindling advertising revenue, hostile governments, and declining audiences.
“Fake news” is not a new concept, but many Americans now register displeasure with inaccurate or unverified information on social media, and a majority now think that somebody, perhaps even the federal government, should do something about it. There seems to be widespread recognition that bad facts are bad news—globally, fears of an “information war” are rising—and, despite endemic skepticism and distraction, there is an enduring thirst for reliable information. The question is, where can it be found, and how can its purveyors make themselves heard amid the noise? Read more about the necessity of rigorous fact checking to establish trust between readers and journalists.
 

 

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