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Journalism Studies
ISSN: 1461-670X (Print) 1469-9699 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20
Truth is What Happens to News
Silvio Waisbord
To cite this article: Silvio Waisbord (2018) Truth is What Happens to News, Journalism Studies,
19:13, 1866-1878, DOI: 10.1080/1461670X.2018.1492881
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1492881
Published online: 06 Jul 2018.
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TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS
On journalism, fake news, and post-truth
Silvio Waisbord
Here I propose that the phenomenon of “fake news” is indicative of the contested position of news
and the dynamics of belief formation in contemporary societies. It is symptomatic of the collapse of
the old news order and the chaos of contemporary public communication. These developments
attest to a new chapter in the old struggle over the definition of truth—governments waging propaganda
wars, elites, and corporations vie to dominate news coverage, and mainstream journalism’s
continuous efforts to claim to provide authoritative reportage of current events. The
communication chaos makes it necessary to revisit normative arguments about journalism and
democracy as well as their feasibility in radically new conditions. Conventional notions of news
and truth that ground standard journalistic practice are harder to achieve and maintain amid
the destabilization of the past hierarchical order.
KEYWORDS Fake news; post-truth; journalism; public communication
The Uses of “Fake News”
Are we living in a time of post-truth? Is fake news a symptom of post-truth? What is
the responsibility of journalism when truth is threatened, twisted, and torn to pieces? What
is new about these developments anyway? These questions have recently received an
extraordinary amount of attention. A surge in questions about truth and reality was
driven by media revelations of “fake news” during the 2016 US presidential election.
Mentions of “fake news” spiked in the news during that period (Carson and Titcomb
2017; Media Cloud 2017). Relatively esoteric questions about truth-telling, philosophical
realism, and mass deception suddenly gained currency in public debates. Matters often discussed
by scholars and journalism critics entered the mainstream of public commentary.
Virtually everyone, no matter their area of expertise, had something to say about novel
forms of propaganda, news deliberately produced to trick public opinion, and beliefs
grounded in invented facts (Gross 2017; Lockie 2016; Sismondo 2017).
Like other buzzwords, “fake news” is semantically confusing (Corner 2017; Tandoc,
Lim, and Ling 2018). In the past, scholars had used it to call information that adopted conventional
news formats to make satirical commentary, as in the case of late-night television
shows, as well as tabloid journalism that walked a fine line between reporting reality and
making wild claims (Hartley 1996). Recently, “fake news” has been primarily used to refer
to content featuring the style of conventional news intended to deliberately misinform.
This version of “fake news” fundamentally refers to fabricated information that astutely
mimics news and taps into existing public beliefs to influence electoral behavior.
Massive amounts of newsy fictions were distributed online, particularly on social media,
during electoral contests in several countries. Understood as information divorced from
reality, fake news is not new. Deceitful information wrapped in news packages has a
Journalism Studies, 2018
Vol. 19, No. 13, 1866–1878, https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1492881
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
longer history than news consciously produced to represent real events. News that falsely
portrayed or simply invented facts were common early forms of news and journalistic practice,
particularly at times of high anxiety, crisis, conflict, and revolution (Chen 2017; Kiernan
2017), before the modern creation of news. Nor is misinformation aimed at profiting from
ignorance and prejudice for political and economic gain new. Lies and distortion in interpersonal
communication are as old as rhetoric; large-scale propaganda is as old as modern
mass persuasion.
What is different is the speed, scale and massive proliferation and consumption of
false information disseminated on dominant digital platforms such as Facebook and
Twitter. Information unvetted by conventional news organizations has gained wide presence
in widely popular platforms and is easily accessible. States and intelligence agencies
swarmed social media with misinformation aimed at generating confusion and swaying
public opinion and electoral results (Bennett and Livingston 2018). The battle for public
mind gained new dimensions. As pieces of propaganda, fake news is not only produced
by states. Enter new developments that perfected and profited from propaganda and misinformation.
Enterprising actors full of business imagination reportedly made healthy
profits by churning out imaginary news that tapped into the naivete of US voters. Ordinary
citizens contribute to misinformation by curating and sharing trash information.
Yet “fake news” is more than an old deception strategy retrofitted for digital times. It
also became a trope used by right-wing politicians, commentators and activists to castigate
critical news organizations. In the United States, conservative news sites and bloggers have
often used “fake news” to disparage “mainstream” news organizations that investigated
wrongdoing during the Trump campaign and administration. “Fake news” mutated from
a trendy moniker to describe an insidious form of propaganda to an epithet to beat up
“liberal news.” A notorious, indefatigable tweeter, Trump mentioned “fake news” more frequently
than his campaign talisman “build the wall” since he first used it on December 10,
2016 (Singer 2017). In January 2018, Trump turned “fake news” into a stunt about an
“award” that attracted press attention on his antics and played to his political base. The political
weaponization of “fake news” spread to other countries where leaders have used
similar rhetoric to dismiss press critics (Erlanger 2017). Conservatives’ appropriation of
the term prompted Facebook to stop using “fake news” when confronted with a major
reputation crisis after the 2016 US election (Oremus 2017).
We should not, however, rush to conclude that “fake news” is the defining trend in
contemporary news. Sweeping pronouncements about “fake news” and “post-truth”
need to be approached gingerly. Different trends and forces are at play. One could legitimately
argue that certain brands of journalism around the world are more careful with facts
than ever (Glasser 2016). Globally, the upsurge of quality investigative journalism (Schiffrin
2014), data journalism, and the fact-checking movement (Graves 2016) indicate growing
interest in news that carefully document reality. In fact, the “fake news” phenomenon
exists largely outside mainstream journalism.
By the same token, it is foolish to suggest that “post-truth” is also the defining condition
of public communication. The notion we live in a world of absolute relativism is a
postmodern folly. Tell that truth is relative to brave citizens and journalists who speak
truth to power, especially amid threats and violence. Also, the vitality of human rights
movements around the world suggests that truth-seeking remains a rallying cry for
those who fight to hold power accountable with facts, information, and conviction
(Tumber and Waisbord 2017). Philosophical relativism and post-truth rhetoric seem
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS 1867
intellectual luxuries to those who struggle for accountability and transparency. No doubt,
these are odd times for news and truth. Old dividing lines in the critique of the press
and its relationship to truth are blurred. In the United States, some of the loudest voices
against the “corporate news industrial complex,” an old rallying cry of the radical left, are
on the right. Social constructionists and postmodernists march in support of scientific
facts against the conservative onslaught on science. The radical critique of realist journalism
overlaps with the reactionary critique of scientific knowledge for both essentially argue that
journalism presented a warped view of reality.
These developments reflect seismic changes in public communication—the end of
information scarcity, multilayered news and communication environments, and the
active role of publics in news production, access, and use. The dynamics of news and information
are not controlled by journalism, if they ever were. Journalism is a fragmented,
complex, open-ended institution. This situation can be better described in terms of disruption
rather than ordered, unified news, journalism, and publics. In divided democracies, traditional
boundaries in media content are becoming blurred. “Information disorder” (Wardle
and Derakhshan 2017) defines the current times.
Journalism as a single institution cannot possibly control this environment. Certainly,
individual news organizations have the power to determine what they publish and what
norms should be followed, as they struggle to reassert their position as a “news authority”
in a crowded landscape of information flows. However, they cannot control public
expression in the contemporary digital environment. The main lesson from the torrent of
analysis and commentary about news and post-truth is that journalism’s position should
be reexamined in this context. Neither fake news nor post-truth is strictly about journalism;
instead, it is indicative of fluid conditions in public communication across the globe that
have destabilized modern assumptions about news and truth.
Here I argue that the phenomenon of “fake news” is indicative of the contested position
of news and the dynamics of belief formation in contemporary societies. It is symptomatic
of the collapse of the old news order and the chaos of contemporary public
communication. These developments attest to a new chapter in the old struggle over
the definition of truth—governments waging propaganda wars, elites and corporations
vie to dominate news coverage, and mainstream journalism’s continuous efforts to claim
to provide authoritative reportage of current events.
My reflections grow out the dissatisfaction with a line of argument that fundamentally
approaches “fake news” and “post-truth” as matters of incorrect knowledge and innocent
readership (PEN America 2017; Hunt 2016). As soon as revelations of fake news came
out, many observers reacted by calling to fight misinformation and ignorance. Suddenly, it
seemed as if everyone had enthusiastically embarked on a struggle against deception, with
more crusading spirit than the Lincoln brigade. Educators urged to step up news literacy
efforts in order to equip news consumers with critical skills in order to address the
problem (Richardson 2017). Journalists and public officials demanded social media companies
to clean up their sites, monitor content with the public interest in mind, and tweak
algorithms. The US Congress conducted hearings on mass propaganda and infiltration
during the 2016 presidential election. The CEOs of Facebook and Twitter vowed to preserve
“free speech” while promising to weed out deceptive content. News companies showered
audiences with easy-to-follow guidelines to detect fake news. This line of argument builds
off the “information deficit” argument that attributes factless attitudes and beliefs
1868 SILVIO WAISBORD
(“misinformation”) to the absence of correct information. On the basis of this premise, it recommends
“news literacy” to overcome misinformation.
Instead, I argue that the problem is more complex. It is not primarily about journalism’s
ethical behavior or misinformed and naive citizens. Addressing these issues would not
tackle “fake news” or “post-truth” which are not passing fads (Renner 2017). Misinformation
and contested truths are constitutive of today’s dynamics, multilayered, chaotic public communication.
The fundamental challenge is the transformations of the public sphere driven
by the digital proliferation of opportunities for public expression and identity communities
with different epistemologies in their engagement with news and information.
The Collapse of the Technocratic Liberal Dream
The question of truth in journalism is famously complex. To paraphrase Hannah
Arendt’s observation about truth and politics, the story of the conflict between truth and
journalism is an old and complicated one. It has been examined from multiple approaches
informed by myriad ethical and philosophical perspectives (Arendt [1967] 2000). In light of
this rich tradition of scholarly reflection, what’s new about post-truth? Is it just a trendy
concept to refer to matters long discussed by media ethicists about journalism’s modernist
ambitions? Is post-truth just non-sense—a pseudo-fancy way of calling the impossibility of
agreement over reality and epistemology?
Post-truth is not about the relationship between specific forms of news reporting and
reality. It does not deal with whether journalism rightly claims to represent reality accurately
or, instead, conveys an incomplete or incorrect snapshot of the world largely
shaped by reliance on official sources and public relations copy.
Post-truth signals the collapse of the modern project of disciplining knowledge by
promoting the scientific model as the only legitimate knowledge. In twentieth-century
United States, this ideology was grounded in the liberal-centrist faith in the triumph of
an open mind (Backhouse and Fontaine 2014; Cohen-Cole 2014) to manage reality and
speak authoritatively about public affairs. It reflected elite consensus on fundamental
political and policy issues during the early post-war period. The underlying premise was
a post-ideology mindset that supposedly superseded the toxic ideologies responsible for
the cataclysm of World War II. Post-ideological knowledge was anchored in scientific principles
to define truth-telling. It was embedded in Enlightenment principles of science and
reason as central to a modern, prosperous, ordered society. Scientific truth became a core
component of the post-ideology doctrine during the Cold War at a time when elites viewed
science as central to statecraft, capitalist progress, the defeat of fascism, and the containment
of communism. It assumed that scientific rationality is the optimal approach to
define truth and supersede ideological battles.
The hegemonic position of this vision at the heyday of the Cold War demanded
certain social conditions. Elite consensus over fundamental political, economic, and
social matters was necessary. The central role of science in the emerging industrialdefense
complex and economic prosperity sustained the legitimacy of scientific knowledge,
too. Information scarcity, shaped by technological limitations and market barriers,
solidified the hegemony of the “regime of truth” grounded in scientific principles. In this
context, the ideal of “professional journalism” gained traction. Journalism sought to be considered
a full member of the dominant system of truth-building by walking closely to
middle-of-the-road elite politics. It claimed the mantle of scientific realism to ground its
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS 1869
approach to truth-telling—focusing facts, utilizing quasi-scientific methods, and bracketing
ideology and subjectivity. A pyramidal system of mass production and distribution of information
helped to bolster professional aspirations. A hierarchical division of knowledge with
elites and scientific experts atop also provided the necessary sources of information to
sustain realist reporting.
During the past decades, however, a combination of developments has chipped
away the foundations of this post-ideological, science-dominated order. The slow decline
of the mythical center of US politics, the weakening social position of experts, the rise of
partisan-divided trust in facts, statistics, and journalism, and the politicization of science
attest to the passing of the technocratic liberal order (Gauchat 2012). The popularity of
the internet eroded the vertical structure of knowledge production and dissemination
that was central to sustaining the myth of the post-ideological era. Its networked structure
undermines core aspirations of a unifying, top-down post-ideological project for it offers a
more flattened structure with multiple nodes of information and expression.
Radical changes in the structure of public communication facilitated the rise of “epistemic
democracy.” Counter-epistemic communities are everywhere. Multiple, contesting
forms of knowledge vie for public attention, legitimacy, and power. Knowledge boundaries
are fluid. Scattered communities of belief anchored by common allegiance to politics, ideology,
and religion as well as socio-demographic variables (e.g. education, lifestyle, and class)
have endless opportunities to communicate in digital platforms.
These new conditions rendered visible old and new counter-epistemic positions that
reject the scientific paradigm. A variety of communities push different brands of scientific
denialism in the vast digital landscape (Alumkal 2017). They espouse convictions that contradict
accepted arguments among scientists, historians, policy specialists, and other
experts. To mention a few examples: With a mix of conspiracy theory and pseudoscientific
jargon, AIDS denialists contradict standard scientific conclusions about HIV transmission,
prevention, and care (Kalichman 2014). Fluoridation denialists and vaccination skeptics
reject scientific consensus on the positive impact of both interventions with an odd
brew of false data, wannabe-experts, and misrepresentation of findings and conclusions
(Barraza, Orenstein, and Campos-Outcalt 2013). Climate change denialists use similar
tactics to question scientific consensus on the state and the causes of environmental
changes. Amateur historians and ordinary citizens challenge the existence of well-documented
genocides. Reasons for embracing anti-scientific conclusions vary across issues
and cannot be accurately summarized here. From religious convictions to partisanship,
several factors explain beliefs and behaviors about a range of issues—from climate
change to energy efficiency (Flynn, Nyhan, and Reifler 2017; Hansson 2017).
Different forms of science denialism and skepticism reject core premises of the scientific
paradigm—how knowledge is produced, analyzed, assessed, and tested. They doubt
scientific facts and conventional forms of verifiability and falsification to demonstrate
and support their own ideas. These are later-day incarnations of unreason, zealotry, and
conspiracy theories found around the globe that remain relatively impervious to science,
corrections, and education.
In the United States, these arguments are as old as the republic in a country with a
long tradition of crackpot ideas and collective delusions. Today, such belief communities do
not only share ideas in alternative communicative spaces. The collapse of news gatekeeping
opens the floodgates to information and misinformation, truth and lies, scientific and
unscientific knowledge, facts and fiction. Social media platforms and search companies
1870 SILVIO WAISBORD
provide plenty of space for epistemologies with varying relations with reality. More interested
in traffic and profit than in channeling scientific ideas, they offer opportunities to disseminate
content disconnected from scientific truth-telling.
Anti-scientific arguments are not just the natural outcome of the unobstructed circulation
of ideas on the internet. They also demonstrate the interests, power, and shrewdness
of merchants of doubt with the soul of casino owners. With big pockets, they continuously
disseminate falsehoods through a complex architecture of communication institutions—
think tanks, conferences, legacy media, and social media (Mooney 2007). Messaging strategies
are similar, too—sowing doubt, creating confusion, offering seemingly impeccable
facts, connecting dots in conspiracy webs. The goals are comparable, as well—mobilizing
publics, making money, increasing membership, and winning elections.
It would be an exaggeration to argue that this information (dis)order is absolutely
egalitarian. Huge disparities still remain in terms of presence, visibility, scale, and reach
of particular ideas. To recognize profound changes and multileveled flows does not
mean that information democracy has arrived. However, more horizontal dynamics and
multiple flows of information in public communication foster skeptical, dissident, and critical
views that do not conform to the premises of scientific knowledge or the foundational
elements of journalistic epistemology.
Under these conditions, truth is fragmented. Truth as intersubjective agreement on
conditions for the production of knowledge is possible only when publics have shared epistemologies.
In his landmark study, sociologist Shapin (1994) shows that the rise of scientific
truth demanded certain social conditions, specifically trust, civility, and respect among
scientists. One could argue that as long as similar conditions are absent among mass
publics, the truth is always disputed. Without sharing a common epistemology—a way
of producing and conversing about knowledge, facts, convictions, errors, there are competing
forms of truth-telling anchored in different premises. Post-truth communication
denotes the perennial absence of conditions for citizens to concur on objectives and processual
norms. When expression blossoms, truth inevitably becomes contested.
Certainly, this is not new. We have not left behind a world of epistemological agreement
among ordinary publics. Recent political events, however, have magnified social and
communicative rifts driving post-truth politics. Truth becomes a matter of personal and
group convictions rather than something that resembles the scientific orthodoxy of
shared procedures and verifiable statements about reality. Opportunities for multiple perspectives
have been levelled in the wide digital world. Truth, whether determined by the
conventions of the scientific paradigm or through intersubjective agreement, is just one
possible option. In the chaos of public communication, as Mersault’s counsel in Albert
Camus’ The Stranger observed, “everything is true and nothing is true.”
This may not be news for anyone already on the camp of social constructionism:
Truth-telling is a complex, dynamic process; truth is elusive, endlessly debated. What is
new is raising awareness about the consequences of relativism for journalism and public
life. It shows the endurance of subjectivity and the diversity of epistemological norms
and values. It reveals the enormous challenges for Habermasian aspirations for truthtelling
as a collective project guided by communicative rationality and facticity. It reflects
the gap between journalism wedded to scientific realism and belief communities
embedded in partisan, ideological, and religious epistemologies. In the vast and chaotic
information landscape, the limitations of the model of elite-dominated, scientific realism
that sustained “professional” journalism have become conspicuous.
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS 1871
Truth and/in Journalism
Under these conditions, the relationship between journalism and truth cannot be
narrowly understood as a matter of the conditions of news production—the rules and
the norms journalists follow to determine the validity of information. The central
problem of post-truth is not journalists falsifying reality by mistake or malice, leaving out
important information, or failing to check facts. Rather, truth in/and journalism is
embedded in the uses of news and information produced by journalism and virtually
anyone else—from intelligence services to social media users. Notions of news and truth
are linked to what people do with information rather than what journalism unilaterally
decides are accurate portrayals of reality.
To paraphrase William Jame’s (1905) observation, “truth is what happens to news.”
James argued that truth is not inherent to an idea; rather, it is a dynamic process by
which the truth is proved or disproved. Veracity results from a process of verification and
validation. This insight helps to approach “the truth of news” as a collective process
rather than as the attribute of particular news stories. Truth is pragmatically shaped as contracts
of readership and belief between certain news stories/information and certain
publics. Truth makes sense in context, as part of discursive conditions that determine the
correspondence between news and reality. Truth refers to social conditions in which arguments
are developed, shared, and discussed—from the perceived credibility of sources to
the political and social attitudes of publics. The rejection of the possibility of truth means
the denial of the unity and commonality necessary to determine whether ideas or news
are true or false. This is why truth is forever unstable, disputed, challenged. Journalism’s
ambition to be the arbiter of truth clashes with the open-ended character of truth-telling.
A pragmatic approach directs the analysis of “fake news” and “post-truth” to the conditions
for public expression and away from the conduct of journalism or the qualities of
particular news stories. To associate these terms with news deception, journalistic ethics,
or misinformed readers is to miss broader currents in public communication, namely, the
consolidation of separate public spheres with difference subjectivities, the decentralization
of information and knowledge, and the proliferation of epistemic communities tied to
different logics of belief. Just as different, competitive logics of knowledge thrive in such
circumstances, relativism emerges as a distinctive feature, too. We are not all postmodernists
in the sense of absolute suspension of truth or belief about news (Stephens 2016).
In fact, individual and communities hold strong convictions and seem to be relatively
impervious to counterviews and corrections. Overall conditions, however, are conducive
to the destabilization of truth-telling narratives, including those spread by journalism. Journalistic
notions of truth-telling grounded in facticity and reason are questioned or simply
ignored.
The normative consequences of this process are mixed. Multidimensional news gatekeeping
has positive democratic consequences. It lets “a thousand voices bloom” as legacy
journalism is thrown off its perch as the arbiter of news and truth. Lay expertise is no longer
suffocated by the imperious power of elites and science. Journalism embedded in technocratic
visions does not permeate every corner of the public sphere. Although longtime
critics of modernist journalism favorably view this situation, these dynamics also facilitate
the spread of democratic dystopias. Hate speech, trolling, weaponized social media,
large-scale disinformation campaigns, and massive operations of surveillance are not
healthy outcomes of the current communication chaos. The digital revolution lays down
1872 SILVIO WAISBORD
innovative conduits for the dissemination of sophisticated forms of falsehoods and disinformation.
The debate about “fake news” should be a rude awakening for those who believed
that the digital revolution will bring nothing but democratic consequences.
In this context, it is not obvious that journalism’s “high modernity” (Hallin 1992) ontological
principles have changed. Even as some voices inside journalism have become skeptical
about the shibboleths of objectivity and neutrality, journalism remains firmly
grounded in conventional principles to render “truthful” accounts of reality. Mainstream
journalism rarely problematizes its complex and equivocal relation with truth (Zelizer
2004; Broersma 2010), but instead, it continues to cling to naïve realism to report the
world “truthfully.” This is displayed by how mainstream journalism tried to reassert its authority
as truth keeper in response to the fake news phenomenon. Advertisements for the
Baltimore Sun called for a “2017 resolution: No more fake news! Only read trusted
stories, $1.25 a week for a year. A New York Times ad asserted “Truth is more important
than ever.” This is more than clever copy tapping into the contemporary zeitgeist. Even
after an epistemological crisis is widely recognized (There is no truth!) and vulgar postmodernism
rears its ugly head, legacy journalism opts to stick to philosophical realism
(Waisbord 2013).
How do we explain this reaction? To acknowledge that truth is what happens to news
would be too risky—too outside the comfort zone of journalism interested in reasserting its
legitimacy and authority in the current situation. Fake news symbolizes the threats facing
journalism at a time of crisis. Dusting off old chestnuts of the professional imaginary is a
logical, conservative reaction to the disintegration of the old modernist order.
One should take issue with the way journalism remains anchored in simplistic, realist
notions of truth-telling. We should not lose sight, however, of the fact that questions about
news and truth largely exceed journalism. Journalism is not the only institution that affects
conceptions of truth. Many may believe and hope for journalism to exert unmatched influence
in shaping perceptions of reality. But, fake news demonstrates that news and truth are
inevitably messy matters rather than simple issues determined by journalists and other
experts. Truth is the result of the way publics interpret reality as they constantly scan, navigate,
avoid, and understand information. Truth is an outcome of collective sense-making
rather than unilaterally decided by newsrooms.
This reflects the repositioning of journalism in daily sense-making. One could reasonably
argue that, compared to most institutions in the public sphere, journalism retains
unmatched ability to determine what is real and visible for large publics. Few institutions
have the reach and scope of journalism, and specific news companies both in the offline
and online worlds. Sense-making, however, is not bounded by journalism. It is grounded
in the ways multiple actors actively engage with copious amount of news and information
of diverse characteristics, origin, merits, and qualities. Only a fraction of the constant, dazzling
variety of digital data gets the stamp of approval by modern arbiters of truth.
Although journalism once claimed a special position and power to determine truth, such
claims are harder to defend today. Multiple platforms shape belief communities who determine
the meaning and the truth of news without help from conventional news definers.
Fake news is a powerful reminder that what counts as news and knowledge is constantly
disputed. One could legitimately argue that has always been the case—that publics did not
always march in lockstep with journalism’s assessments of truth. But now this gap is plainly
evident—everything that journalism stood for and claim to report is up for grabs.
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS 1873
Implications for Journalism Studies
Post-truth challenges the normative vision of journalism as a critical link in democratic
public life based on fact-grounded, reasoned arguments. The combination of
large-scale dissemination of false information and the wide access of communities of
belief with diametrically different epistemologies contradicts the aspirations of rationalist
models. Post-truth also raises fresh questions for the democratic vision of journalism as
community builder. Whereas journalism served as a social connector across difference
during the heyday of mass communication, digital news and information flows may
connect communities of belief more than publics with fundamentally different notions
of truth-telling. Truth as a common public effort is elusive when news organizations and
social media connect like-minded communities.
Given scattered epistemologies and divided belief communities, there is no easy fix
for fake news, misinformation, and post-truth. The toolkit of solutions proposed to solve
fake news, including news literacy, fact-checking, and cleaning up social media, is insufficient
to address the new challenges for public communication (Mihailidis and Viotta
2017). To recommend sharpening news literacy skills to confront fake news is like
hoping to be protected from danger by bringing a flyswatter and sunblock to Jurassic
Park. Educational proposals to tackle this perfect storm of absurdity, deception and propaganda
sound reasonable. Recent studies show that providing critical skills equips news
users with valuable resources (Roozenbeek and van der Linden 2018). More astute
readers are able to discern reality from fantasy. As educators, we should continue to
believe in critical reasoning and news literacy. That’s what we do in the classrooms, presentations
and publications. Also, demanding digital giants to be responsible and accountable
is fundamental given their unprecedented power in public discourse. These solutions are
insufficient, however, to tackle the challenges brought by the collapse of journalismcontrolled
news gatekeeping.
Here are three suggestions for further analysis about news and truth at a time when
journalism is shifting from being the gravitational point of public communication to a fluid,
undetermined position.
First, it is necessary to weave the study of journalism and truth with the rapidly, constantly
changing communication ecology. The study of journalistic norms and practices,
routines, and ethics needs to be situated in the shifting conditions for public communication
and truth-telling. If truth is what happens to news, then we need to understand
what is happening in different contexts of news engagement. Surging interest in news
engagement is auspicious for it takes the analysis of authority, trust, and belief from a
matter of journalistic practice to the practices of publics. News is a collective, social enterprise
rather than simply a question about journalism.
Second, it is important to revisit classic arguments which were developed at a very
different time for both journalism and public communication. The socio-political and economic
conditions as well as the communication order that served as the backdrop for the
foundations of contemporary journalism studies have changed. Central theories and concepts
formulated in the United States decades ago are grounded in the realities of the
hegemony of technocratic liberalism in politics and the news. For example, consider arguments
about journalism as too close to dominant political elites with fundamental agreements
on public issues, too enamored with the power of technocracy, experts, and
scientific facts, and holding a quasi-monopolistic position on news. It would be wrong to
1874 SILVIO WAISBORD
argue that political elites, at least in the United States, still share identical views on a vast
range of subjects. Partisanship has overridden centrist, middle-of the road politicians and
politics. Technocrats and experts are not equally respected across publics. In fact, the situation
in the United States and other countries in the West is reminiscent of the conditions in
much of the global South: divided societies and politics, strong partisanship in public life,
journalism ostensibly aligned with partisan and corporate actors, and currents of opinion
opposed to scientific epistemology.
As conditions have changed, old arguments need to be revisited. Journalism can still
be arguably seen as a “technology of truth” but old conclusions may not be quite applicable
as conditions are considerably different. Just like the past monopolies of knowledge like the
State and the Church that lost their once-dominant position with the coming of technological
innovations, journalism has similarly lost the privilege as the main definer of news as
truth. Journalism can hardly stand “above the fray” when middle-of-the-road politics succumbs
to right-wing extremists. Publics perceive journalism differently despite the continuous
efforts of mainstream journalism to solidify its reputation as evenhanded, fair, and
noble. Journalism is too chaotic, broken up in myriad organizations with different economic
models, professional ideals, and news norms, to function as a unified institution.
It is also necessary to revisit the critique of modernist journalism for normative
reasons—it might easily devolve into anti-democratic positions, closer to right-wing populism
rather than to democratic views that foreground tolerance, facts, listening, open-mindedness,
and reason. Blowing up the technocratic structure of knowledge may not produce
more democracy but actually authoritarianism. Some counter-epistemic alternatives to
modernist, liberal journalism are platforms for reactionary politics rather anything democratic,
let alone progressive.
A third suggestion is to reassess standard recommendations for journalism. Given the
state of affairs, journalism scholars should not go on automatic pilot when translating normative
viewpoints into concrete actions. We should not talk to an institution that does not
exist any longer. Even if we assume that journalism listens to academics, we should remember
that journalism is not what it used to be. No easy solutions would address tackle deepseated
problems.
Also, we should cautiously approach any innovations with democratic possibilities.
Journalism studies have a spotted record identifying trends as potential saviors of news
and democracy. In recent times, the field has praised several innovations—public journalism,
citizen journalism, hyperlocal news, startups, and digital news activism. All have made
important contributions to news diversity and quality, but the problem goes beyond
specific experiences. Recent love letters to journalistic innovations today read like declarations
of world peace in 1938. Resisting the temptation to find sure-fire redeemers of journalism
is important. Learning from past experiences of hope and disillusion may provide
good insights to recalibrate normative arguments. All good practical ideas stand on a precarious
situation given the instability of journalism in a new context.
One particularly difficult question is implementing the vision of journalism as nurturing
a sense of public commons at the time of privatized spheres, manipulated opinion, hardened
differences, and political tribalism and polarization. How is such vision possible
when certain belief communities seem pretty content upholding fictions, refusing to
engage with other epistemologies, and/or endorsing politics aimed at purging difference?
How can journalism foster empathy, tolerance, reasoning, and other central values of
democratic communication at a time of broken-up public life?
TRUTH IS WHAT HAPPENS TO NEWS 1875
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
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Silvio Waisbord, George Washington University, Washington, DC, USA. E-mail: waisbord@
gwu.edu
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