A major theme of the year has been rapid rise in prominence of the labelling of news stories as “Fake News” by many in the public eye, especially by key political figures seeking to distract from, deflect and generally avoid responding to stories which have been published in the news media.  The current President of the United States, Donald Trump has been possibly the greatest proponent of this, having used the terms on many occasions, including having tweeted the phrase more than 60 times in the first 6 months of his Presidency, most notably when accusing the news media of making things up or pushing an agenda which he personally believes to be mistaken or inappropriate.

The danger in perpetuating this position I think, is one of an erosion of confidence in the news media as an agency of truthful communication.  Should the public lose all faith in the media as a source of facts, then we risk losing any form of possible arbitration when it comes to discussing current events (or indeed anything).  Indeed, it seems that even now we are in the early stages of this, and there is evidence that the public is becoming more and more partisan concerning both the news outlets that they choose to follow, and their belief in the impartiality (or lack thereof) of news agencies other than those in whom they place any degree of confidence.  In November of this year, Shepard Smith (an anchor for the US channel Fox News) used his programme to specifically debunk a false conspiracy theory being promoted by both the President Donald Trump and the channel Fox News concerning the sale of uranium to Russia.  This move so displeased some of the viewers of Fox News that they immediately took to twitter to suggest that he was arrogant, that he ‘span’ his stories and that he should be dismissed; with some even suggesting that with views like that he should be on CNN and not Fox.

But isn’t news supposed to be impartial?  Isn’t news supposed to be a reporting of events that have occurred?  If so, how can anyone’s ‘views’ be of direct relevance to a news broadcast?  According to the Collins dictionary, News can be defined as “…information about recent events in the country or the world” – no mention of opinion there… or interpretation.

The line between news and commentary has been blurred for quite a while it would seem, and in the modern world of journalism we find many instances where both the event itself and a specific person’s interpretation of the event can be reported with equal weight.  Television and radio programmes will routinely report on a news item and then immediately move to interview a person or journalist for their interpretation of that same event.  Such practice I believe, leads to a conflation of fact and opinion, and can therefore lead people to take the combined package as fact, rather than treating each separately.  In such circumstances, a partisan approach to following the news could easily (and I would argue does) result in people seeking only to reinforce their view of events and the world, rather than seeking to learn things – some of which may not automatically fit in with their world view.  The impact of Shepard Smith’s programme seems to bear this out, with some of his audience members who disagreed with what he said suggesting that he should not be saying it, or simply that whether it be true or no, they did not want to hear it.  If you only trust ‘your own’ news agency however, you become free to discard anything which conflicts with this as being mistaken, mistaken then becomes untrue, untrue then becomes ‘fake’ – through which process we lose all common ground by which the actual facts of the situation can be discussed with people who do not follow the same news agency as you.  Opinion becomes synonymous with news, as news is synonymous with fact – and since you cannot disprove opinion, any chance of reasoned debate is lost.

This is not something restricted to the news and news agencies however, on December 6th 2017 in the UK parliament the Conservative MP Peter Bone stood up and said that “…the people voted to leave the European Superstate…”, yet this is clearly opinion (or a downright lie): there is no European Superstate, hence the people of the United Kingdom could not have voted to leave one.  Such language is not only false, but it is also prejudicial, conflating opinion and fact; and yet it seems, it is now tolerated by us when coming from people and agencies in positions of responsibility and influence!

There will always be a interpretation of a sort; even where nothing but the facts of a situation are reported we can consider that some things are being reported and others not.  In addition to which there is always a running order, which subconsciously assigns a priority to events – but even where this is the case it should still be possible to report events without interpretation.  Journalists and other News Media surely have a responsibility to ensure that the language and the context they use does not skew a story in one direction or another.  Commentary and opinion should be clearly marked as such, and in my view, the commentary and editorials should not be presented by the same people or in the same programme/ section – there needs to be a clear separation between a factual report and an opinion.

Just to be very clear – this post is opinion!