Is There an Antidote to Advocacy Journalism?

With the presidential election campaign in full swing, I have realized that not only readers of history, but also readers of the news need to seek out primary sources to verify the truth of what a candidate says. In recent years, various news media outlets have tried to assist us in this research with what have been called “reality checks” on various statements of the candidates. I’ve always found these useful, but now comes news that often the “reality checks” themselves are skewed by political bias. In terms of time available for research, it is virtually impossible for people to track down the facts for every statement that is made in a political campaign, and I realize that under the spotlights and the pressure of presidential and vice-presidential debates, no candidate could be blamed for making a slip here or there. Such slips alone would not disqualify a person for public office, in the opinion of most reasonable voters. But when there is a pattern of deception (or ignorance) with the apparent collusion of the media on whom we rely to do some of the “leg-work” for us, I think we find ourselves in the same situation as dear old Dorothy when she said: “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.” John R. Lott, Jr., has written a piece on Fox.news documenting this problem, which can be found at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,433314,00.html . It does a good job of showing us very real consequences of “advocacy journalism,” which has been the direction schools of journalism have been taking in American universities since the 1980s. I am hopeful that with a heightened awareness of this trend we can amend the advice of our teachers and parents not to believe everything we read in the newspapers to say: “Don’t believe everything you find in the papers or on TV or online.” Intellectual vigilance is the order of the day.