Where Did Journalistic Civility Go?

Evan Gallagher

eg271418@ohio.edu

The media of 2021 is a much different scene than it was, say, five years ago. It seems that rather than it being the main priority to seek truth, some publications are at politician's throats.

Many journalists saw the quote from Trump saying the media was the "enemy of the people," and they felt personally attacked. If the President is giving this rhetoric about the fourth branch of government, what does it mean for trust in our journalists?

Graphic Credit: The Hollywood Reporter

With the amount of pushback a statement like this could get on a site like Twitter, it's not surprising that some journalists had some things to say about it. The question is to what extent is that pushback harming trust in media?

I have seen the chart positioning news organizations on a political spectrum from Ad Fontes Media, and it's visualization of where they stand is very telling of where we are politically and in terms of faith in journalism.

It can be subtle how some news organizations get their rhetoric across. CNN, for example, will run a story about Republicans delaying a bill and have a panel that mostly agrees that it is wrong. So, the anchors don't have to outwardly say that they oppose Republican's actions, it is already being done.

Of course, this has been the case with broadcast media for sometime now. It is social media that has led to a highlighting of just how partisan media is capable of being.

It seems that the most bipartisan way of reporting nowadays, at least in broadcast, is gaining information from multiple credible sources, and then getting the perspectives of those who happen to be of different political viewpoints. Lumen Learning recognizes this with their list of takeaways of media bias. They say that media can use "the round table" with differing political viewpoints to gain insight to how the issues are really thought of. Getting information from a partisan source could muddy the waters of what is true, and it has been done on multiple occasions in our media.

So how do we know that the information we are receiving isn't spun one way or the other? An indicator I always notice is if sources are credited and it isn't followed up by any rant or rhetoric that could spin the story. There doesn't even have to be a sentence giving a perspective, it could even be the way the report is worded.

The term "trust" is always thrown around about media nowadays, and people can't be blamed for referring to that word. It's natural in our current level of discourse to have concern about the credibility of what they are watching/reading/listening to. When bias bleeds over to reporting truth, that is when the problem often arises.