Just the Fact, Ma'am
For centuries, the media has played an important role in not only keeping the world informed but, perhaps more importantly, in representing a virtual traffic light to our society. But today, we face an unprecedented challenge: the systematic debasing of our media may represent one of the great threats in our history and is setting a daunting precedent that we must all be on guard and defend against.
Throughout history, the ability of every nation to keep its citizens informed about events within and outside of their borders has played the role of an important litmus test, measuring our abilities to observe, digest and decide on the basis of the social norms that govern the behavior of our society as a whole.
Were it not for the media, the world might have gone uninformed about the presence of trends and atrocities that lie outside these social norms. Imagine if there had been no media reporting in the 1930's and 1940's when the Nazis attempted to systematically engage in a process of ethnic cleansing - the Holocaust. In the 1970's, the Khmer Rouge engaged in a reign of terror, that completely destroyed Cambodia, economically, politically, and demographically. Had it not been for the media, the world might never have known, or been able to mitigate the atrocities committed in Cambodia. Indeed, in the absence of a strong and independent media, some of the greatest atrocities of our time have happened in the world's "backyard" without significant intervention. A couple of good examples of this might be Josef Stalin’s forced starvation genocide against the Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 and the Great Chinese Famine from 1958 to 1962, when Mao Zedung implemented unprecedented economic and social changes with epic consequences when his Great Leap Forward led to nationwide crop shortages, and resulted in the starvation of millions of the Chinese people.
Today, we face a challenge that is unprecedented in modern history. The media and news reporting, in general, are being systematically debased as the result of (in my opinion) two significant factors: 1) the strong-arming and influence of political factions in destroying independence, free thought and factual media reporting; and 2) an alarming (and potentially, related) drop-off in media ethical standards as media channels change their focus from reporting the news to creating news for entertainment or political value.
To quote Edgar R. Murrow, "to be persuasive, we must be believable; to be believable we must be credible; credible, we must be truthful." Murrow believed that we should not confuse dissent with disloyalty and that, in the absence or death of loyal opposition, the soul of America begins to die with it. He was quite correct, of course. One my favorite quotes from Murrow was "we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."
In our current sociopolitical climate, there is an ever-growing paradigm that involves the tactical approach of impugning those with whom we disagree. This ad hominem deviation from rational thought smacks of McCarthyism - a period in American history that I don't think anybody can be proud of. And yet, that is precisely the climate in which we once again find ourselves. The lack of standards in social media have exacerbated this effect because, within the social media environment, people can say nearly whatever they want with impunity. Social media is essentially un-policed, allowing outrageous claims and falsehoods to go unchecked -- in many cases by people or organizations who cannot be verified. Political organizations and even foreign nations have put this loophole to good use and greatly contributed to the problem at hand.
As a nation, as a people, as a society, it's time to stand up and fight for the truth - independent of whether we agree or disagree and independent of our personal political views. We must find a way to protect the media, in general, from political influence. We must also find a way to ensure and encourage independence, truthful and unbiased reporting, and prevent unilateral influence on the media by any party or organization that fails to uphold the ethical standard of unbiased reporting.
If we fail at this, we go down a rabbit hole that will be difficult to climb out of - and we run the risk of destroying the moral fabric that has made this country great for centuries.