Yesterday, my friend Alex told me how his social media feed is filled with posts about how Europeans are being disabused of their perceptions about American being crazy and problematic – largely because so many of them attended World Cup games and had positive interactions. The classic concept behinds foreign exchange programs is timeless. Traveling and mixing corrects misperceptions and breaks down walls. Travel and especially sojourning has the power to erode the perception of “other.” Turns out we’re all human and relating isn’t as hard as it sometimes seems.
On the very same day, some French friends – Sylvie and Eric- who we see each year here on Patmos told me, “The sentiment is changing from ‘America is crazy’ to ‘Americans are crazy’ – and that’s a real problem” Coming from a couple who speak perfect American English, who both had a full career with Proctor and Gamble and visit friends and family in the United States regularly – I took notice.
Alex took the view that the mainstream media is misleading Europeans and fomenting hatred. There could be some of that – our media whips people into frenzies however it can and we know from social media algorithms, nothing creates engagement like rage.
I think it’s not an either/or situation. Sure, people who made the journey to the US for World Cup got to see real Americans and have positive experiences. That’s generally what happens when we travel – we see people’s humanity.
But the entirety of Europe can’t come visit the United States or vice versa. And let’s be real – if I were French, or Greek, or German, or really from any EU member-state or even the ones that aren’t EU members – I’d think America has gone nuts. Our foreign policy, actions in the world, aggression towards allies, accommodation of authoritarian leaders, protectionism, unilateral actions…. it’s not the America on which the world order since – and even prior to – Word War II has been built. Politically, we’re a frenemy at best.
It should be obvious to anyone following American politics that we’re very divided right now. Just like Putin doesn’t represent the average Russian and Netanyahu has as many or more detractors than supporters or Keir Starmer couldn’t stay in office – the gap between leader and people can be significant. It also doesn’t take much looking at what goes on in the United States to think our country is in serious tumult and destabilization – because it is. If Europeans think we’ve gone crazy, they’re not necessarily wrong.
I don’t feel like our society makes sense right now and it leaves me uneasy. How can I tell my French friends their concerns are ill-founded. Because believe me, they wish they weren’t. I think it’s important to remember our European allies may not always agree with the United States – yet despite their occasional and incidental gripes, they have always valued a healthy, strong United States that brings stability to Europe and the world. There’s room for alarm.
For years I have missed the well-moderated, striving-for-balance journalism of which I was born into the tail-end. Just as my earliest memories include a rotary-dial phone, but my classrooms from second-grade on had desktop computers and later computer labs – I fleetingly knew a world of CBS and Walter Cronkite, but by twelve was firmly in a world being shaped by CNN and Wolf Blitzer.
My college involvement in The Daily of the University of Washington with a publisher/advisor with old-school ethics and an undying belief in balanced journalism shaped me. Oren Campbell hammered home tenets of the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics such as publishing corrections as prominently as the errors and that the newspaper is obliged to cover itself when our events and workings were of public interest. If we didn’t interview people with alternative perspectives or didn’t round out a story, Oren let us know – usually via the “marked copy”, an actual newspaper on which he wrote his comments and corrections (often in red ink) AFTER it was published (he wasn’t allowed to edit our content before publication, but he could use our mistakes and successes to teach us the next day).
In short, I was schooled in the best principles and ideals of journalism.
Undoubtedly, CNN was the beginning of the end of Oren’s world. The three networks – four as Fox got its legs in the late 80’s – had limited airtime for news. For decades, the networks were forced to cover only the biggest events. Because there was always more to cover than time available, opinion was minimized. They collectively agreed the best information possible – the bullet points of what helped people understand the big events of their world – was the best product – the best use of their limited analog bandwidth. For people who wanted more detail, local TV news and newspapers got more granular. But again, bringing you the world including sports, features, ads and coupons in maybe 20 pages of broadsheet required lots of discretion.
The most pervasive, yet often unnoticed form of bias was in SPJ nomenclature The Bias of Placement. Only one story can be the lead – or “1/1” in newspaper terms. No matter what anyone did, someone had to decide what the single most important thing in the world was each edition or broadcast. The choice reflects the inherent biases of the editors and producers.
CNN had to fill 24 hours a day of content. That didn’t just open the door to covering more around the globe, but to a highly effective ratings booster involving lower costs and effort than expanded coverage: opinion. Talking heads went from something previously reserved for The McLaughlin Group and Meet The Press to part of everyday news broadcast. It worked because rage fuels engagement. It also created a template for competitors. If CNN could become a home to angry liberals, then there was room for Fox to become home to angry conservatives and others to find their positions further up or down the political spectrum.
News moved to infotainment and dissonance between versions and opinions fractured public consensus. There is no Walter Cronkite in a world when we no longer agree on what constitutes news or even facts. It became too difficult for anyone to sort through – even with the Internet as a tool capable of research and fact checking. We entered the world of the unreliable narrator.
Social media is the amazing double-edged sword. It gives anyone and everyone a microphone and spotlight. Anyone can contribute. People with good information to share now can. So can people with bad information and crazy ideas. There are opportunities for legitimate sources to share quality information that Walter Cronkite’s producers would necessarily have had to filter out. Or that CNN and FOX News producers wouldn’t want for their base. Social media has the power to level the bias of placement and unseat the unreliable narrator.
Only it’s even more unreliable because it supports a cacophony of narrators with no moderation. Moreover, algorithms figure out what motivates each user and optimize for engagement, not education or responsible social participation. Algorithms are, to use my kids’ term, “Rage Baiters.”
And no one, anywhere is like Oren championing corrections as prominent as errors and marked copies with the red ink of shame (“What will the reader think?” “Will the reader appreciate our self-indulgent humor?”)
It seems to me conundrum we face is not that good information isn’t out there – it’s that it’s too hard to pinpoint and even harder to trust. We’re caught between a media that moderates and filters with often unreliable narrators and the cacophony of social media in which it’s extremely challenging to sort the wheat from the chaff. With social media, you can learn about anything – you just don’t know if what you’re learning is credible. You don’t even know for sure the person sharing with you is human or not a foreign spy agency.
It turns out Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather after him weren’t necessarily helping us see our world better than the media of today. They were giving us a manageable, digestible version of the world that society could buy into. They walked the line of keeping us informed and keeping us together. they left a lot out. Sometimes they gave certain sources more credit than perhaps they were worth. Other times, the didn’t hear important voices. Their organizations were made of people who made mistakes and had biases. They were always unreliable narrators given a lot of trust. Only, by and large, they believed as Oren did that they were making their mistakes in the service of the public interest. Understanding the world would always be unattainable – so they would help us make sense of some important events and when those didn’t make sense like when JFK or MLK were shot – they held the public’s hand.
Today, as soon as something tragic occurs, the media moves into analysis and blame. Horrors are parlayed into rage, ratings and engagement. Tragic moments aren’t given their due. No one today says what Cronkite tacitly did – some things can’t be explained. We don’t know why – we can only observe as events unfold. Some things are too horrible and we just have to sit with them.
It was honest. It worked because it reflected how people felt.
These days, half the “news” stories I see are sheer conjecture, “This is what happens if….”; “Oil could hit $X per barrel by the end of the week”; “What happens if X occurs?”; “So and so is sounding the alarm about….”. These are not actual events. It’s not reporting. Oren couldn’t keep stock of enough red pens to meet the demand. This is anxiety-driven or driving content. This is infotainment.
Alex is right that there are good people with good information on social media. There are smart people who have a forum to share. Just as many are peddling crazy theories, unfounded conclusions, ill-considered opinions and misinformation.
Where does that leave “The Reader”? Where does it leave our heroes, Oren Campbell and Walter Cronkite?
All are lost in the desert.
It turns out not necessarily through their virtues – though they had some – our heroes were able to shelter us from the sandstorm. They weren’t necessarily better journalists than anyone today, they were effective and relatively virtuous gatekeepers back where there were gates to keep. They balanced our need for information with social cohesion. Their actions weren’t as heroic as it might be nice to portray – because in an analog world, infotainment wasn’t a real possibility.
There is no going back, but I wonder if knowing what went right might help us find solutions to what’s gone wrong? Is there a way to give more people voices without creating The Great Chaos Under Heaven? Is there a way to bring credibility into what is effectively an unregulated information market? Are there values that can be transmitted to a new age? Can we be reminded to try to objectively report on our own drama and failings? Like the Bias of Placement, can we acknowledge our unsolvable moral dilemmas and find a way to live with them as best as possible?
I suppose I can take a page from Cronkite’s book and recognize we can only observe as events unfold.
