I think I’ve watched more television news and read more news articles in the last 10 days than I have in my entire life. I didn’t really plan to be glued to the TV from November 3 to November 8 this year; it just kinda happened. Half of it was me not wanting to miss anything, wanting to be at the front of the action, but the other half of it was me understanding that I would have no idea what was happening unless I watched. After my week of intense news watching and listening, I think it’s safe to say I’ll never go back to not paying attention. I’ve been reading The New York Times nonstop, listening to podcasts, watching ABC News, and a lot more; and I don’t really anticipate any of that coming to a halt.
A big story that I’m sure you’ve been hearing about is Donald Trump’s erroneous assumptions about voter fraud in this election, which by the way, are based on zero evidence. The Guardian described his claims as “massive implications [with] absolutely no foundation.” Which is correct — Trump’s claims about “illegal votes” are completely legal votes; Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar publicly stated that “we [Pennsylvania] have very strong processes in place that make sure that voting integrity and security are constantly followed by every county in the state. Our voting systems and our databases make sure that no voter can cast more than one vote — it literally has a hard stop should anybody even try. County officials take this so seriously … no matter how you chose to vote this year, every method is incredibly safe and secure.” There’s absolutely no evidence of mass amounts of voter fraud in this election.
Even if you support Donald Trump, it would be completely baseless and ignorant to claim that he is correct in his allegations. Doing so would mean a complete lack of belief in the truth, which seems contradictory to say because the truth is the truth, and it’s not something people tend to believe in or not. As a young student journalist, this worries me, because to me it seems so easy to be able to understand the truth — read articles from a diverse number of credible newspapers and/or news organizations and then make my own conclusions. But a part of my natural human ignorance is believing that everybody was raised with this skill.
We were all raised in different households under different guardians or parental figures. Inevitably, we’ve all been raised with vastly different political views, largely inherited from our guardians or role models, which for me are my parents. If my parents were Republicans, I would probably identify with the Republican Party right now. If my parents were Independents, I would probably be an Independent voter right now. And those inherited political views are only enhanced by the internet. In the Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, Rashida Richardson and Justin Rosenstein explain that “we all simply are operating on a different set of facts. When that happens at scale, you’re no longer able to reckon with or even consume information that contradicts that worldview that you’ve created. You start to think, ‘How can these people be so stupid? Look at all of this information that I’m constantly seeing. How are they not seeing that same information?’ And the answer is, ‘They’re not seeing that same information.’”
This fact that we’re all seeing different versions of the truth is only enhanced again, not only by the internet, but by actual news organizations. You probably know what I’m going to say, but Fox News has continuously shown a bias toward portraying conservative viewpoints. And that’s no secret — it’s a widely known concept that Fox News tends to side with more Republican viewpoints and organizations like NBC tend to side with more Democratic viewpoints. I would argue that this isn’t a problem. News organizations and reporters are not free of bias and never will be because they’re human beings, and as humans we have an extremely difficult time looking past our biases, even in the face of truth. That’s why it’s important to look at many different news organizations instead of just one.
But there’s a bigger problem with news organizations like Fox News. Like I said, it doesn’t matter that Fox News has a bias towards Republican viewpoints. The problem is that Fox News favors Trump, a singular person. And it wouldn’t matter if Trump was the polar opposite of what he is now — the fact that the news is favoring a singular person at all, especially the president, is what is the problem. In this context I define “favoring” as “making someone look good no matter what.”
Now I will say that I was impressed by Fox News’ coverage of the election. CNN reported that Fox News was “the first to project Biden as the winner of the pivotal state of Arizona, a decision that inspired fury inside the White House and Trump campaign. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, contacted Murdoch [owner of Fox News] after the call and other Trump aides contacted Fox personalities to complain.” As you would expect, it’s just comical to me how politicians and the Trump administration in particular are so angry at their precious Fox News for stating the truth. It seems like Fox News has been making strides towards portraying the truth, even if that means making Trump look bad (oh, how terrible!). But again, they should’ve been making those strides for the past four years, and the fact that they only seem to be starting now is extremely unprofessional.
The same way that The Stute doesn’t work to make Stevens administrators “look good” is the same way that credible and well-known news organizations don’t work to make the U.S. president look good. For example, The New York Times’ election debate coverage that they portrayed via Instagram posts is a great model because they fact checked each candidate — both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. They didn’t favor one or the other in an effort to make one look good over the other.
The news works independently, and it must serve as a monitor of power. Though I support Joe Biden, I don’t expect the organizations I get my news from to put him on a pedestal. In fact I don’t want them to do that at all. I want them to fact check him, to be critical of him, to give me the plain truth so I can form my own opinions. That is the purpose of the news, and if you’re only following organizations that paint a pretty picture of the people you like, you’re not getting the truth.
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