A Hard Truth about the Truth in Journalism

By Hayley DeSilva

As a young journalist on the precipice of graduation and getting out into the field, I am nervous.

While I’ve been told several times that I’m not alone in that camp, it’s not just the expected jitters that come with being a rookie that I’m wholly concerned about.

I’m afraid of the way the perception of news is going. More specifically, that we’re finding ourselves in a world where sometimes even facts are controversial.

I had a professor who sat our class down one day and told us a story of a reporter who did a story on the presence and dangers of global warming. A fact, no less, that has been continuously shared from scientists or other reputable sources time and time again.

He continued that this reporter found themselves in hot water, that their reputation and credibility was being questioned by those who refuse the existence of global warming.

It makes me wonder about, and at times even doubt, the value society places on journalism.

Seeing how reporters and publications are constantly under attack for being biased and opinionated makes me feel like it’s not enough to just seek and report the truth anymore.

Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of journalists who make mistakes–and plenty of people on news stations who are being presented as journalists when they’re really just someone on a soapbox while they’re on air (I’m looking at you, Tucker Carlson.)

Nevertheless, I can’t help but feel like there’s this kind of mystifying gray area in the world of information. The way I’ve been taught, facts are facts. If you have the proof, where’s the sense in denying that?

Yet, there are people who value the words of politicians and mouthpieces who affirm their preexisting biases and ways of thinking more than a reporter with stacks of FOIA’s, hours of interviews, and data that makes your head spin.

It’s no longer the days of Walter Cronkite, who refused to give his opinion on air until the Vietnam War, which he had been covering and evaluating. In an editorial report following his investigation, he stated that he thought the war was unwinnable. Then, President Lyndon B. Johnson was widely rumored to have said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost middle America.”

While some can still argue Cronkite giving his opinion was unethical, the fact remains that people believed him because he had never offered up his analysis of any story previously. Not to mention, they understood he had witnessed firsthand the reality of the war, which was the opposite of what Johnson was telling the public at the time.

Nowadays, certain presidents and people in power have upped their game. They’ve made us the enemy, us the one’s not to trust—most recently seen during Donald Trump’s presidency, which was effective in turning people against the media. He’d refuse questions from the press, has sued publications for libel, and attempted to strip correspondent’s White House press badges.

Maybe it’s not the majority of people, but it’s one too many who’ve fallen prey to that political tactic. It’s scary to think that so many people refuse to find out for themselves, to let someone else do the thinking for them and just follow without question.

We’ve seen the damaging effects that can have in our world. Imagine if Cronkite hadn’t reported about what was really going on in Vietnam. Or, if the Pentagon Papers, a once sealed study on the history and development of the Vietnam War, were never released–if those brave journalists at the Washington Post or the New York Times hadn’t published them despite facing federal criminal charges for doing so.

News, factual news, is a necessity for the American people–who have a right to know what the government is up to. But if those people refuse to listen, what then?

I know all I can do is what I’ve been taught. When I first set out to pursue journalism, all my college essays revolved around the height of the ‘fake news’ crisis and how I wanted to be a reporter who worked against that.

Four years later, I still do, and that value for the truth and a right to information has been a core principle in all of my classes.

I wish people who doubted the validity of the news could see that. To sit in those classrooms and see we are taught that the truth is paramount–that you never report what you cannot prove.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that seeing it all would just be another fact they’d refuse to believe.