Public debate can be poisoned by media distortion, enabling untruths to be spread and affecting people's understanding of politics.
Media organisations, including broadcasters and the press, can be a channel for misleading people. They can disseminate distorted messages for different reasons, political or financial, using all the techniques referred to earlier: outright lies, half-truths, and selective quotation of statistics (6.4.2.3). Sometimes they are doing so to further the interests of the owners, as referred to above (6.4.3.2).
Examples of distorted reporting
Media organisations often select stories on the basis of pleasing their target audience. In November 2020, when Donald Trump was falsely claiming that he had beaten Joe Biden, Fox News feared losing viewers by airing truth about election:
“What Fox’s loyal viewers wanted to watch — and what Fox News was willing to do to keep them — emerged this week as a central question in a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems.”
“…the Dominion filing also lends ammunition to their long-held argument: that Fox allowed the false claims to air because it was fearful of losing viewers to Newsmax, an ever more pro-Trump news channel.”
News media constantly seek sensation, giving a misleading impression of reality. The history of dog bite misinformation in uk news media and public policy, for example, showed that “Dog bite fatalities are subject to overrepresentation by the media, which increases the perception of risk by the general public. This manifests in hysteria, which is acknowledged and affirmed by the government through legislative change.”
It is profitable to peddle anger. In an article on The meaning of One America News Network, The Economist mentioned some extraordinary items of fake news but focused on its business model:
“Its reports suggest that the coronavirus, whose seriousness it considers exaggerated, may have been developed in a North Carolina laboratory”
“Thrillingly angry talk-shows are not new to the American airwaves. They became a fixture on radio after the abolition in 1987 of the Fairness Doctrine, which had required broadcasters to give equal treatment to competing points of view. As America was criss-crossed with cable and audiences got access to hundreds of channels, television networks found that they, too, could get higher ratings by zeroing in on one group—conservatives, say—than by trying to cater to everyone. As a bonus, it turned out that opining was cheaper than reporting. Advertisers preferred the more opinionated channels too, within reason, as they were able to tailor their ads to more specific audiences.”
Some stories are totally irresponsible. In a spectacular example of ‘fake news’, as reported in a Guardian article How technology disrupted the truth, the Daily Mail reported that the prime minister, David Cameron, had committed an “obscene act with a dead pig’s head” – yet it subsequently admitted that it had no proof.
The media pick and choose what to report. Two newspaper headlines on Thursday March 16 2024 for example, reporting on Jeremy Hunt's pre-election budget for the UK, showed a big contrast between the first, which supported the government, and the second, which was critical:
The Sun headline was “Tanks a lot: Drivers save £100-a-year average after 12p rise axed”.
The Daily Mirror headline was “Pots for the rich: Hunt's £3.8bn pension gift to wealthy but nothing for public sector workers”.
Many other newspapers reflected on the mixed nature of that budget, which included some eye-catching giveaways but was unable to conceal a rising total tax burden. They warned that it would be insufficient to turn the tide of unpopularity which had engulfed the government (which proved to be an accurate prediction, as voters rejected the Conservative Party).
It is not easy to correct fake news
Politicians who protest about being misrepresented risk drawing further attention to the subject, and a detailed denial always looks more complex and devious than a swift false accusation.
The legal system is too slow to provide an effective remedy against misinformation in an election campaign. And it is expensive to sue an individual or organisation for defamation (5.2.4).
The British Advertising Standards Authority is not allowed to make rulings in political matters, as it explains on its website. There would be a risk of politicising it and its slowness would make it impractical.
If media organisations are mostly free from censorship (as is preferable if they are to play a full part in public debate), education in critical thinking is people’s only protection against misinformation – as discussed later in this chapter (6.8.1).
(This is an archive of a page intended to form part of Edition 4 of the Patterns of Power series of books. The latest versions are at book contents).