What Is Truth?: Reflections on the Current State of Journalism

SPECIAL REPORT

What is truth?: Reflections on the current state of journalism

Madrid, November 2016

Barcelona • Bogota • Buenos Aires • Havana • Lima • Lisbon • Madrid • Mexico City • Miami • New York City • Panama City • Quito • Rio de Janeiro • Sao Paulo Santiago • Santo Domingo • Washington, DC WHAT IS TRUTH?: REFLECTIONS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF JOURNALISM

PRESENTATION

The newspaper Ahora was founded on September 18th, 2005. PRESENTATION Inspired by Miguel Ángel Aguilar, it was an initiative of a HOW TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTED group of the old school journalists, the one based on the tenets THE TRUTH of thoughtful journalism, giving priority to rigor against rush. 1. INTRODUCTION One year later, its disappearance has been announced. Someone 2. DOES THE TRUTH MATTER ANYMORE? once said that with each closure of a means of communication, democracy and freedom die a little. This is true, but unfortunately 3. LIES AND FACTS hardly anyone takes any notice of it. And here we are, convinced 4. MAXIMIZING UPTIME that we will never lack of sources to satiate our thirst for news. 5. A NEW WAY OF CONSUMPTION We just need one “click” and starting an app or getting access to 6. DIGITAL ADVERTISING our social networks from our perfect smartphones. The question 7. WALKING THE STREETS is to what extent this overwhelming information is actually 8. THE POLITICAL DISCOURSE true, useful and relevant in our daily lives. “What is truth?” Jesus queried Pilatus… and we are still seeking answers.

Prior to its disappearance, Ahora published on August 12th an article of the British journalist Katharine Viner, which had been published one month earlier at The Guardian. The article is an extensive analysis on the current state of journalism and its degradation because of both its unthinking adaptation to trends and social networks as well as the increasingly impoverished judging ability of many conformist citizens. From Developing Ideas, we share this article because of its unquestionable interest.

Arturo Pinedo Partner and General Director of LLORENTE & CUENCA Spain and Portugal

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HOW TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTED THE TRUTH

1. INTRODUCTION their source was an MP, who said he had seen photographic Social networks cover the evidence: “His extraordinary news, threaten the viability suggestion is that the future of journalism based on public PM inserted a private part of interest and have contributed his anatomy into the animal.” to a time in which opinions are replacing facts. The story, extracted from a new biography of Cameron, One Monday morning last sparked an immediate furore. September, Britain woke to a It was gross, it was a great depraved news story. The prime opportunity to humiliate minister, David Cameron, had an elitist prime minister, committed an “obscene act with and many felt it rang true a dead pig’s head”, according to for a former member of the the Daily Mail. “A distinguished notorious Bullingdon Club. Oxford contemporary claims Within minutes, #Piggate Cameron once took part in an and #Hameron were trending outrageous initiation ceremony on Twitter, and even senior at a Piers Gaveston event, politicians joined the fun: involving a dead pig,” the paper Nicola Sturgeon said the reported. Piers Gaveston is allegations had “entertained the the name of a riotous Oxford whole country”, while Paddy university dining society; the Ashdown joked that Cameron authors of the story claimed was “hogging the headlines”. At first, the BBC refused to mention the allegations, and 10 Downing Street said it would not “dignify” the story with a response – but soon it was forced to issue a denial. And so a powerful man was sexually shamed, in a way that had nothing to do with his divisive politics, and in a way he could never really respond to. But who cares? He could take it.

Then, after a full day of online merriment, something shocking happened. Isabel Oakeshott, the Daily Mail journalist who had co- written the biography with Lord Ashcroft, a billionaire businessman, went on TV and

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admitted that she did not know make up their own mind. But whether her huge, scandalous based on what? Gut instinct, scoop was even true. Pressed intuition, mood? to provide evidence for the sensational claim, Oakeshott admitted she had none. 2. DOES THE TRUTH MATTER ANYMORE? “We couldn’t get to the bottom of that source’s allegations,” she Nine months after Britain “It seemed that said on Channel 4 News. “So we woke up giggling at Cameron’s merely reported the account hypothetical porcine journalists were no that the source gave us … We intimacies, the country arose longer required to don’t say whether we believe on the morning of 24 June believe their own it to be true.” In other words, to the very real sight of the there was no evidence that the prime minister standing stories to be true, prime minister of the United outside Downing Street nor, apparently, Kingdom had once “inserted at 8am, announcing his did they need to a private part of his anatomy” own resignation. provide evidence” into the mouth of a dead pig – a story reported in dozens “The British people have of newspapers and repeated voted to leave the European in millions of tweets and Union and their will must be Facebook updates, which many respected,” Cameron declared. people presumably still believe “It was not a decision that was to be true today. taken lightly, not least because so many things were said by so Oakeshott went even further many different organisations to absolve herself of any about the significance of this journalistic responsibility: decision. So there can be no “It’s up to other people to doubt about the result.” decide whether they give it any credibility or not,” she But what soon became clear concluded. This was not, of was that almost everything course, the first time that was still in doubt. At the end outlandish claims were of a campaign that dominated published on the basis of the news for months, it was flimsy evidence, but this was suddenly obvious that the an unusually brazen defence. winning side had no plan It seemed that journalists for how or when the UK were no longer required to would leave the EU – while believe their own stories to the deceptive claims that be true, nor, apparently, did carried the leave campaign to they need to provide evidence. victory suddenly crumbled. Instead it was up to the reader At 6.31am on Friday 24 June, – who does not even know just over an hour after the the identity of the source – to result of the EU referendum

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had become clear, Ukip leader winning economists who Nigel Farage conceded that signed an anti-Brexit letter to a post-Brexit UK would not Nazi scientists loyal to Hitler. in fact have £350m a week spare to spend on the NHS – a For months, the Eurosceptic key claim of Brexiteers that press trumpeted every was even emblazoned on the dubious claim and rubbished Vote Leave campaign bus. every expert warning, filling A few hours later, the Tory the front pages with too MEP Daniel Hannan stated many confected anti-migrant that immigration was not headlines to count – many of likely to be reduced – another them later quietly corrected key claim. in very small print. A week before the vote – on the same “When a fact begins It was hardly the first time day Nigel Farage unveiled his to resemble whatever that politicians had failed to inflammatory “Breaking Point” deliver what they promised, poster, and the Labour MP Jo you feel is true, it but it might have been the Cox, who had campaigned becomes very difficult first time they admitted on tirelessly for refugees, was for anyone to tell the the morning after victory that shot dead – the cover of the the promises had been false all Daily Mail featured a picture difference between along. This was the first major of migrants in the back of a facts that are true and vote in the era of post-truth lorry entering the UK, with the “facts” that are not” politics: the listless remain headline “We are from Europe campaign attempted to fight – let us in!” The next day, the fantasy with facts, but quickly Mail and the Sun, which also found that the currency of fact carried the story, were forced to had been badly debased. admit that the stowaways were actually from Iraq and Kuwait. The remain side’s worrying facts and worried experts were The brazen disregard for dismissed as “Project Fear” facts did not stop after the – and quickly neutralised by referendum: just this weekend, opposing “facts”: if 99 experts the short-lived Conservative said the economy would crash leadership candidate Andrea and one disagreed, the BBC Leadsom, fresh from a starring told us that each side had a role in the leave campaign, different view of the situation. demonstrated the waning (This is a disastrous mistake power of evidence. After telling that ends up obscuring truth, the Times that being a mother and echoes how some report would make her a better PM climate change.) Michael Gove than her rival Theresa May, declared that “people in this she cried “gutter journalism!” country have had enough and accused the newspaper of of experts” on Sky News. He misrepresenting her remarks also compared 10 Nobel prize- – even though she said exactly

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that, clearly and definitively Now, we are caught in a series and on tape. Leadsom is a post- of confusing battles between truth politician even about her opposing forces: between own truths. truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness and cruelty; “Increasingly, what When a fact begins to resemble between the few and the counts as a fact is merely whatever you feel is true, it many, the connected and the becomes very difficult for alienated; between the open a view that someone anyone to tell the difference platform of the web as its feels to be true – and between facts that are true and architects envisioned it and the technology has made it “facts” that are not. The leave gated enclosures of Facebook campaign was well aware of and other social networks; very easy for these “facts” this – and took full advantage, between an informed public to circulate with a speed” safe in the knowledge that and a misguided mob. the Advertising Standards Authority has no power to What is common to these police political claims. A few struggles – and what makes days after the vote, Arron their resolution an urgent Banks, Ukip’s largest donor matter – is that they all involve and the main funder of the the diminishing status of Leave.EU campaign, told the truth. This does not mean that Guardian that his side knew there are no truths. It simply all along that facts would means, as this year has made not win the day. “It was very clear, that we cannot agree taking an American-style on what those truths are, and media approach,” said Banks. when there is no consensus “What they said early on was about the truth and no way to ‘Facts don’t work’, and that’s achieve it, chaos soon follows. it. The remain campaign featured fact, fact, fact, fact, Increasingly, what counts as fact. It just doesn’t work. You a fact is merely a view that have got to connect with someone feels to be true – people emotionally. It’s the and technology has made it Trump success.” very easy for these “facts” to circulate with a speed and Twenty-five years after the reach that was unimaginable first website went online, in the Gutenberg era (or even it is clear that we are living a decade ago). A dubious through a period of dizzying story about Cameron and a transition. For 500 years after pig appears in a tabloid one Gutenberg, the dominant morning, and by noon, it form of information was the has flown around the world printed page: knowledge was on social media and turned primarily delivered in a fixed up in trusted news sources format, one that encouraged everywhere. This may seem readers to believe in stable and like a small matter, but its settled truths. consequences are enormous.

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“The Truth”, as Peter one example among many, Chippindale and Chris during the November 2015 Paris Horrie wrote in Stick It Up terror attacks, rumours quickly “In the digital age, it Your Punter!, their history spread on social media that the is easier than ever of the Sun newspaper, is a Louvre and Pompidou Centre to publish false “bald statement which every had been hit, and that François information, which newspaper prints at its peril”. Hollande had suffered a stroke. There are usually several Trusted news organisations is quickly shared and conflicting truths on any are needed to debunk such taken to be true” given subject, but in the era tall tales. of the printing press, words on a page nailed things down, whether they turned out to be 3. LIES AND FACTS true or not. The information felt like the truth, at least until Sometimes rumours like these the next day brought another spread out of panic, sometimes update or a correction, and out of malice, and sometimes we all shared a common set deliberate manipulation, of facts. in which a corporation or regime pays people to convey This settled “truth” was usually their message. Whatever the handed down from above: an motive, falsehoods and facts established truth, often fixed now spread the same way, in place by an establishment. through what academics call This arrangement was not an “information cascade”. As without flaws: too much of the the legal scholar and online- press often exhibited a bias harassment expert Danielle towards the status quo and a Citron describes it, “people deference to authority, and it forward on what others think, was prohibitively difficult for even if the information is false, ordinary people to challenge misleading or incomplete, the power of the press. Now, because they think they have people distrust much of what is learned something valuable.” presented as fact – particularly This cycle repeats itself, and if the facts in question are before you know it, the cascade uncomfortable, or out of sync has unstoppable momentum. with their own views – and You share a friend’s post on while some of that distrust is Facebook, perhaps to show misplaced, some of it is not. kinship or agreement or that you’re “in the know”, and thus In the digital age, it is easier you increase the visibility of than ever to publish false their post to others. information, which is quickly shared and taken to be true – Algorithms such as the one as we often see in emergency that powers Facebook’s news situations, when news is feed are designed to give us breaking in real time. To pick more of what they think we

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want – which means that that “their algorithms prioritise the version of the world we countervailing views and encounter every day in our news that’s important, not just “Algorithms such as own personal stream has the stuff that’s most popular the one that powers been invisibly curated to or most self-validating”. But Facebook’s news feed reinforce our pre-existing in less than five years, thanks are designed to give beliefs. When Eli Pariser, to the incredible power of a the co-founder of Upworthy, few social platforms, the filter us more of what they coined the term “filter bubble” bubble that Pariser described think we want” in 2011, he was talking about has become much more how the personalised web extreme. – and in particular Google’s personalised search function, On the day after the EU which means that no two referendum, in a Facebook post, people’s Google searches are the British internet activist the same – means that we are and mySociety founder, Tom less likely to be exposed to Steinberg, provided a vivid information that challenges us illustration of the power of or broadens our worldview, and the filter bubble – and the less likely to encounter facts serious civic consequences for that disprove false information a world where information that others have shared. flows largely through social networks: Pariser’s plea, at the time, was that those running social I am actively searching through media platforms should ensure Facebook for people celebrating the Brexit leave victory, but the filter bubble is SO strong, and extends SO far into things like Facebook’s custom search that I can’t find anyone who is happy *despite the fact that over half the country is clearly jubilant today* and despite the fact that I’m *actively* looking to hear what they are saying.

This echo-chamber problem is now SO severe and SO chronic that I can only beg any friends I have who actually work for Facebook and other major social media and technology to urgently tell their leaders that to not act on this problem now is tantamount to actively

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supporting and funding the in March, “than perhaps at tearing apart of the fabric of any time in the past 500.” our societies … We’re getting The future of publishing is countries where one half just being put into the “hands doesn’t know anything at all of the few, who now control about the other. the destiny of the many”. News publishers have lost But asking technology control over the distribution companies to “do something” of their journalism, which about the filter bubble for many readers is now presumes that this is a problem “filtered through algorithms that can be easily fixed – rather and platforms which are than one baked into the very opaque and unpredictable”. idea of social networks that are This means that social media designed to give you what you companies have become and your friends want to see. overwhelmingly powerful in determining what we read – “Publications curated Facebook, which launched and enormously profitable only in 2004, now has 1.6bn from the monetisation of by editors have in users worldwide. It has become other people’s work. As Bell many cases been the dominant way for people notes: “There is a far greater replaced by a stream of to find news on the internet concentration of power in this information chosen by – and in fact it is dominant respect than there has ever in ways that would have been in the past.” friends, contacts and been impossible to imagine family, processed by in the newspaper era. As secret algorithms” Emily Bell has written: “Social 4. MAXIMIZING UPTIME media hasn’t just swallowed journalism, it has swallowed Publications curated by everything. It has swallowed editors have in many cases political campaigns, banking been replaced by a stream of systems, personal histories, the information chosen by friends, leisure industry, retail, even contacts and family, processed government and security.” by secret algorithms. The old idea of a wide-open web – Bell, the director of the Tow where hyperlinks from site to Centre for Digital Journalism site created a non-hierarchical at Columbia University – and decentralised network of and a board member of the information – has been largely Scott Trust, which owns the supplanted by platforms Guardian – has outlined designed to maximise your the seismic impact of social time within their walls, some media for journalism. “Our of which (such as Instagram news ecosystem has changed and Snapchat) do not allow more dramatically in the outward links at all. past five years,” she wrote

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Many people, in fact, especially any change in the news feed teenagers, now spend more and algorithm that threatens to more of their time on closed reduce the page views sent chat apps, which allow users to publishers.) to create groups to share messages privately – perhaps In the last few years, many because young people, who news organisations have are most likely to have faced steered themselves away from harassment online, are seeking public-interest journalism more carefully protected social and toward junk-food news, spaces. But the closed space chasing page views in the of a chat app is an even more vain hope of attracting restrictive silo than the walled clicks and advertising (or garden of Facebook or other investment) – but like junk social networks. food, you hate yourself when you’ve gorged on it. The most “Today, rumours and lies As the pioneering Iranian extreme manifestation of this are read just as widely as blogger Hossein Derakhshan, phenomenon has been the who was imprisoned in creation of fake news farms, copper-bottomed facts” Tehran for six years for his which attract traffic with false online activity, wrote in the reports that are designed to Guardian earlier this year, the look like real news, and are “diversity that the world wide therefore widely shared on web had originally envisioned” social networks. But the same has given way to “the principle applies to news that centralisation of information” is misleading or sensationally inside a select few social dishonest, even if it wasn’t networks – and the end result created to deceive: the new is “making us all less powerful measure of value for too many in relation to government news organisations is virality and corporations”. rather than truth or quality.

Of course, Facebook does not Of course, journalists have decide what you read – at least got things wrong in the past – not in the traditional sense either by mistake or prejudice of making decisions – and or sometimes by intent. nor does it dictate what news (Freddie Starr probably didn’t organisations produce. But eat a hamster.) So it would be a when one platform becomes mistake to think this is a new the dominant source for phenomenon of the digital age. accessing information, news But what is new and significant organisations will often tailor is that today, rumours and their own work to the demands lies are read just as widely as of this new medium. (The most copper-bottomed facts – and visible evidence of Facebook’s often more widely, because influence on journalism is they are wilder than reality the panic that accompanies and more exciting to share.

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The cynicism of this approach the values of journalism – a was expressed most nakedly consumerist shift. Instead of by Neetzan Zimmerman, strengthening social bonds, or formerly employed by Gawker creating an informed public, as a specialist in high-traffic or the idea of news as a civic viral stories. “Nowadays it’s not good, a democratic necessity, important if a story’s real,” he it creates gangs, which spread said in 2014. “The only thing instant falsehoods that “We are in the midst of a that really matters is whether fit their views, reinforcing fundamental change in people click on it.” Facts, he each other’s beliefs, driving suggested, are over; they are each other deeper into the values of journalism a relic from the age of the shared opinions, rather than – a consumerist shift” printing press, when readers established facts. had no choice. He continued: “If a person is not sharing a news But the trouble is that the story, it is, at its core, not news.” business model of most digital news organisations is based around clicks. News media 5. A NEW WAY OF around the world has reached CONSUMPTION a fever-pitch of frenzied binge- publishing, in order to scrape The increasing prevalence up digital advertising’s pennies of this approach suggests and cents. (And there’s not that we are in the midst of much advertising to be got: a fundamental change in in the first quarter of 2016, 85 cents of every new dollar spent in the US on online advertising went to Google and Facebook. That used to go to news publishers.)

In the news feed on your phone, all stories look the same – whether they come from a credible source or not. And, increasingly, otherwise- credible sources are also publishing false, misleading, or deliberately outrageous stories. “Clickbait is king, so newsrooms will uncritically print some of the worst stuff out there, which lends legitimacy to bullshit,” said Brooke Binkowski, an editor

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at the debunking website A news-publishing industry Snopes, in an interview with desperately chasing down the Guardian in April. “Not all every cheap click doesn’t newsrooms are like this, but a sound like an industry in lot of them are.” a position of strength, and indeed, news publishing as “While the possibilities We should be careful not to a business is in trouble. The for journalism have been dismiss anything with an shift to digital publishing has appealing digital headline as been a thrilling development strengthened by the clickbait – appealing headlines for journalism – as I said in digital developments are a good thing, if they my 2013 AN Smith lecture at of the last few years, lead the reader to quality the University of Melbourne, journalism, both serious and “The Rise of the Reader”, it the business model is not. My belief is that what has induced “a fundamental under grave threat” distinguishes good journalism redrawing of journalists’ from poor journalism is labour: relationship with our audience, the journalism that people how we think about our value the most is that for readers, our perception of our which they can tell someone role in society, our status”. has put in a lot of work – where It has meant we have found they can feel the effort that new ways to get stories – from has been expended on their our audience, from data, from behalf, over tasks big or small, social media. It has given us important or entertaining. new ways to tell stories – with It is the reverse of so-called interactive technologies and “churnalism”, the endless now with virtual reality. It has recycling of other people’s given us new ways to distribute stories for clicks. our journalism, to find new readers in surprising places; and it has given us new ways 6. DIGITAL ADVERTISING to engage with our audiences, opening ourselves up to The digital advertising model challenge and debate. doesn’t currently discriminate between true or not true, just But while the possibilities big or small. As the American for journalism have been political reporter Dave Weigel strengthened by the digital wrote in the wake of a hoax developments of the last few story that became a viral hit all years, the business model is the way back in 2013: “‘Too good under grave threat, because no to check’ used to be a warning matter how many clicks you to newspaper editors not to get, it will never be enough. jump on bullshit stories. Now And if you charge readers it’s a business model.” to access your journalism

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you have a big challenge to net income had tripled in persuade the digital consumer the same period – to a quite who is used to getting staggering $1.51bn. information for free to part with their cash. Many journalists have lost their jobs in the past decade. “Journalism has seen News publishers everywhere The number of journalists in dramatic innovation are seeing profits and revenue the UK shrank by up to one- drop dramatically. If you want third between 2001 and 2010; in the last two digital a stark illustration of the US newsrooms declined by decades, but business new realities of digital media, a similar amount between models have not” consider the first-quarter 2006 and 2013. In Australia, financial results announced there was a 20 % cut in the by the New York Times and journalistic workforce between Facebook within a week of one 2012 and 2014 alone. Earlier another earlier this year. The this year, at the Guardian we New York Times announced announced that we would that its operating profits need to lose 100 journalistic had fallen by 13 %, to $51.5m positions. In March, the – healthier than most of the Independent ceased existing rest of the publishing industry, as a print newspaper. Since but quite a drop. Facebook, 2005, according to research by meanwhile, revealed that its Press Gazette, the number of local newspapers in the UK has fallen by 181 – again, not because of a problem with journalism, but because of a Article in the Independent announcing the new format problem with funding it.

But journalists losing their jobs is not simply a problem for journalists: it has a damaging impact on the entire culture. As the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas warned, back in 2007: “When reorganisation and cost-cutting in this core area jeopardise accustomed journalistic standards, it hits at the very heart of the political public sphere. Because, without the flow of information gained through extensive research, Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/press/the-independent-becomes-the- and without the stimulation first-national-newspaper-to-embrace-a-global-digital-only-future-a6869736.html. of arguments based on an

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expertise that doesn’t come know. Serious, public-interest cheap, public communication journalism is demanding, loses its discursive vitality. and there is more of a need The public media would for it than ever. It helps keep then cease to resist populist the powerful honest; it helps tendencies, and could no longer people make sense of the world fulfil the function it should and their place in it. Facts in the context of a democratic and reliable information are constitutional state.” essential for the functioning of democracy – and the “We must not allow Perhaps, then, the focus of the digital era has made that even the chaos of the news industry needs to turn more obvious. to commercial innovation: present to cast the how to rescue the funding of But we must not allow the past in a rosy light” journalism, which is what is chaos of the present to cast the under threat. Journalism has past in a rosy light – as can be seen dramatic innovation in seen from the recent resolution the last two digital decades, to a tragedy that became one but business models have not. of the darkest moments in the In the words of my colleague history of British journalism. Mary Hamilton, the Guardian’s At the end of April, a two- executive editor for audience: year-long inquest ruled that “We’ve transformed everything the 96 people who died in the about our journalism and not Hillsborough disaster in 1989 enough about our businesses.” had been unlawfully killed and had not contributed to The impact on journalism the dangerous situation at the of the crisis in the business football ground. The verdict model is that, in chasing down was the culmination of an cheap clicks at the expense of indefatigable 27-year-campaign accuracy and veracity, news by the victims’ families, whose organisations undermine the case was reported for two very reason they exist: to find decades with great detail things out and tell readers the and sensitivity by Guardian truth – to report, report, report. journalist David Conn. His journalism helped uncover the real truth about what 7. WALKING THE STREETS happened at Hillsborough, and the subsequent cover-up by the Many newsrooms are in danger police – a classic example of a of losing what matters most reporter holding the powerful about journalism: the valuable, to account on behalf of the civic, pounding-the-streets, less powerful. sifting-the-database, asking- challenging-questions hard What the families had been graft of uncovering things that campaigning against for someone doesn’t want you to nearly three decades was a

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lie put into circulation by the The truth is a struggle. It takes Sun. The tabloid’s aggressive hard graft. But the struggle rightwing editor, Kelvin is worth it: traditional news MacKenzie, blamed the fans values are important and for the disaster, suggesting they matter and they are “Traditional news values they had forced their way into worth defending. The digital the ground without tickets revolution has meant that are important and – a claim later revealed to be journalists – rightly, in my they matter and they false. According to Horrie and view – are more accountable are worth defending” Chippindale’s history of The to their audience. And as the Sun, MacKenzie overruled Hillsborough story shows, his own reporter and put the old media were certainly the words “THE TRUTH” on capable of perpetrating the front page, alleging that appalling falsehoods, which Liverpool fans were drunk, could take years to unravel. that they picked the pockets Some of the old hierarchies of victims, that they punched, have been decisively kicked and urinated on police undermined, which has led to a officers, that they shouted that more open debate and a more they wanted sex with a dead substantial challenge to the female victim. The fans, said a old elites whose interests often “high-ranking police officer”, dominated the media. But the were “acting like animals”. age of relentless and instant The story, as Chippindale information – and uncertain and Horrie write, is a “classic truths – can be overwhelming. smear”, free of any attributable We careen from outrage to evidence and “precisely outrage, but forget each one fitting MacKenzie’s formula very quickly: it’s doomsday by publicising the half-baked every afternoon. ignorant prejudice being voiced all over the country”. At the same time, the levelling of the information landscape It is hard to imagine that has unleashed new torrents Hillsborough could happen of racism and sexism and now: if 96 people were new means of shaming and crushed to death in front of harassment, suggesting a 53,000 smartphones, with world in which the loudest and photographs and eyewitness crudest arguments will prevail. accounts all posted to social It is an atmosphere that has media, would it have taken so proved particularly hostile to long for the truth to come out? women and people of colour, Today, the police – or Kelvin revealing that the inequalities MacKenzie – would not have of the physical world are been able to lie so blatantly reproduced all too easily in and for so long. online spaces. The Guardian

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is not immune – which is why for Brexit and the emergence one of my first initiatives as of Donald Trump as the editor-in-chief was to launch Republican candidate for the Web We Want project, in the US presidency – are not order to combat a general simply the byproducts of a culture of online abuse and resurgent populism or the “Traditional news values ask how we as an institution revolt of those left behind by must be embraced can foster better and more civil global capitalism. and celebrated: conversations on the web. As the academic Zeynep reporting, verifying, Tufekci argued in an gathering together 8. THE POLITICAL essay earlier this year, the eyewitness statements, DISCOURSE rise of Trump “is actually a symptom of the mass media’s making a serious Above all, the challenge for growing weakness, especially attempt to discover journalism today is not simply in controlling the limits of what really happened” technological innovation or what it is acceptable to say”. the creation of new business (A similar case could be made models. It is to establish what for the Brexit campaign.) “For role journalistic organisations decades, journalists at major still play in a public discourse media organisations acted that has become impossibly as gatekeepers who passed fragmented and radically judgment on what ideas could destabilised. The stunning be publicly discussed, and what political developments of the was considered too radical,” past year – including the vote Tufekci wrote. The weakening of these gatekeepers is both positive and negative; there are opportunities and there are dangers.

As we can see from the past, the old gatekeepers were also capable of great harm, and they were often imperious in refusing space to arguments they deemed outside the mainstream political consensus. But without some form of consensus, it is hard for any truth to take hold. The decline of the gatekeepers has given Trump space to raise formerly taboo subjects, such as the cost of a

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global free-trade regime that gathering together eyewitness benefits corporations rather statements, making a serious than workers, an issue that attempt to discover what American elites and much of really happened. the media had long dismissed – as well as, more obviously, We are privileged to live in an allowing his outrageous lies era when we can use many to flourish. new technologies – and the help of our audience – to do When the prevailing mood is that. But we must also grapple anti-elite and anti-authority, with the issues underpinning trust in big institutions, digital culture, and realise including the media, begins that the shift from print to to crumble. digital media was never just about technology. We must I believe that a strong also address the new power journalistic culture is worth dynamics that these changes fighting for. So is a business have created. Technology and model that serves and rewards media do not exist in isolation media organisations that put – they help shape society, just the search for truth at the as they are shaped by it in turn. heart of everything – building That means engaging with an informed, active public that people as civic actors, citizens, scrutinises the powerful, not equals. It is about holding an ill-informed, reactionary power to account, fighting gang that attacks the for a public space, and taking vulnerable. Traditional news responsibility for creating values must be embraced and the kind of world we want celebrated: reporting, verifying, to live in.

This text was originally written by Katharine Viner

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