The U.S. is deeply divided about public
policy and society’s values. The media, the supposedly neutral
chronicler of events, is caught in the crossfire and losing public
support.

In a rapidly changing news world, many
people believe that newspapers and electronic media are biased. They
have doubts if there is any reliable source.

Politicians view the media with
discomfort and even hostility. As has always been true, some of them
object to the scrutiny of an independent media, failing to understand
its essential role in a functioning democracy.

Gov. LePage openly wishes for the
demise of newspapers. President Trump labels any report that
displeases him as “fake news” and uses Twitter to circumvent the
media.

Trump is a denizen of the electronic
media world. He openly says he intends to go around the traditional
media by his use of tweets. His approach inevitably stimulates his
opposition to resort to the same strategy.

The media is supposed to represent the
voice of the people in the political process. But something has
happened to that voice. The people themselves trust it less. At
either end of the political spectrum, partisans believe only sources
whose bias corresponds with theirs.

Newspapers, once dominant, and the
three television networks had a financial incentive to be neutral.
That way they could attract and retain the widest audience. But
cable and the Internet greatly expanded access to news sources and
opinion.

Unlike traditional media, where an
editor could require evidence to back up reports, blogs and social
media publish unproven assertions as if they were fact. Readers and
viewers have no way of being sure of accuracy, contributing to the
falling confidence in the media.

Reliable, objective reporting is harder
to find. Much of the media resorts to relaying two sides of an issue
and lets that serve as objectivity. Relatively little reporting
independently seeks evidence to examine partisan assertions.

The result is that much news is really
opinion, not fact-based. Opinion articles, which should be supported
by facts, can be untethered to reality while asserting its author’s
beliefs as if they were fact.

Even more of a problem is the
intentional statement of facts as news when the author knows it is
false but uses it to support a viewpoint or political position. The
Data and Society Research Institute has recently published a report
detailing how this is done and by whom.

Take a conservative column about
Trump’s Warsaw speech that you may have read. The president
defended the West and hailed it as a notable civilization worth
saving. The author, a blogger, said Trump’s words were cheered,
“while American leftists writhed in torment before their heads
exploded.”

The mainstream media had barely covered
the content of his speech. If there was a “leftist” reaction, it
was in the same social media world in which the author lives. In
that world, such extravagant language promotes division. Because
millions participate, it creates a problem for the more responsible
media.

Daily newspapers have a news cycle with
deadlines. For cable and the electronic media, there’s no cycle
and a strong desire to scoop the opposition by getting a story out
first. Events are subject to exhaustive interpretation before they
happen, when the consumer could know the truth by simply waiting a
couple of hours.

The goal is to commandeer the media by
the scoop and posting attention-grabbing headlines, even if they are
knowingly false. That’s fake news, but successful clickbait. It
matters little if this “news” can later be proven wrong; the
initial report leaves a lasting impression.

Is the traditional media, trying to
report objectively, doomed to disappear under a wave of opinion-based
news? Not necessarily.

London’s Financial Times columnist
Gillian Tett finds that her paper plus the New York Times, the
Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal are all holding their own
or gaining. These newspapers have experienced staffs that can seek
the truth and provide “real news.”

The model for journalism should not be
a balance between conservative Fox News and liberal MSNBC. Few
people have the time to watch them both, so they choose to get their
news and comment in line with their own bias.

Fact checking, a growing form of
journalism, is a better answer. Reporters search out facts to
validate or reject major public claims. This approach is growing.
More than 190 fact checkers from 54 countries met earlier this month
and adopted a code of principles.

Facts, consistently pursued, may be
ignored or ridiculed by partisans, but they are the best answer to
fake news.