The Way Forward
By Mike Dobbie
“Silicon Valley’s sins came home to roost in the United States on January 6 with mob violence on Capitol Hill. What happens on social media doesn’t stay on social media. Online violence is real world violence… Facebook is the world’s largest distributor of news, and yet studies have shown that lies laced with anger and hate spread faster and further than facts on social media. These American companies controlling our global information ecosystem are biased against facts, biased against journalists. Without facts, you can’t have truth. Without truth, you can’t have trust. Without trust, we have no shared reality, no democracy, and it becomes impossible to deal with our world’s existential problems: climate, coronavirus, the battle for truth.” [i] - Rappler editor-in-chief Maria Ressa at her acceptance of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize
Disinformation thrives when there is a lack of trust. Disinformation has become a feature of the COVID-19 pandemic. It has exploited the confusion of a complex and dangerous health crisis.
It is the response to COVID where disinformation has flourished. Complex science, government information relying on the advice of health officials. Lockdowns, restrictions and mandates. Vaccines had been rapidly developed but clumsily distributed. Government failings and contradictions, clashing health advice.
The disinformation has utilised the pandemic to spread conspiracy theories, fact-less opinions, distractions, challenges and provocations.
It’s understandable that people feel vulnerable about the enormity of the crisis and the responses to it. Jobs were lost; businesses closed, and many went broke; people could not see family and friends and faced intense travel restrictions that contained them to just a few kilometres, the wearing of masks was almost ubiquitous. Vaccines appeared too but were they safe?
Disinformation was able to spread quickly on social media as people turned away from mainstream media. The amount of information presented and the contradictions that were reported led to a collapse of trust in what the traditional media told them.
Disinformation offered alternatives to the media’s reporting: the virus was fake, the daily data was fake, COVID wasn’t that bad, COVID only affected the elderly, governments wanted to control people’s lives, supplies were running short, economic collapse was imminent, there’s no need to wear a mask… and on it went.
As protests began and quickly grew into thousands of people demanding change and calling out “lies”, disinformation spread utilising social media. Journalists covered the protests, but the disinformation campaigns quickly targeted the media.
It’s hard to gauge how much damage the pandemic has contributed to a distrust of the media. What is certain is that the media already faced trust issues before the pandemic broke out.
A June 2021 report examined views about the trustworthiness of the news media in 40 countries. A survey of about 2000 people in each country found that Western Europeans had greater trust in the news media than citizens from other parts of the world. Top of the charts is Finland where 65 per cent of adults trust the news. The lowest is the US where the number is just 29 per cent.
In Australia, the study found that 43 per cent of adults trust the news… less than half the respondents.
A different 2019 study of more than 25,000 people found that more than a third of Australian respondents (35 per cent) said they trusted the media less than they had 12 months earlier, with most citing “fake news” as the cause of their mistrust. That number is matched by the same percentage of respondents in Brazil and Hong Kong and compares with 40 per cent of respondents in China, Canada and India.[ii]
Trust is the cornerstone of public interest journalism. Journalists must trust their sources to be honest and truthful. Sources must be assured that what they say to a journalist will be faithfully represented in the news story that results. Whistleblowers trust journalists to respect their confidentiality in all circumstances as they tell their truth.
Above all, there is the trust of the communities that journalists serve; the journalism they consume must be reliable.
The pandemic didn’t start the decline in trust that has developed into a rift between audiences and news media. But the pandemic has exacerbated it.
This matters, not least because some segments of the media’s audience are now openly hostile to traditional media outlets and to the journalists who work for them. Disdain for the media has developed into abuse, harassment, assaults and death threats.
It is not enough to say that these examples are the actions of a few. The pandemic has shown that they are increasing and becoming more extreme.
Several factors have contributed to this situation — involving the four stakeholders engaged in news and information and in the communication of essential information during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The stakeholders are the traditional news media, the audiences they serve, social media platforms, and the politicians who should provide leadership and certainty for the communities they are elected to represent.
The news media industry has struggled since the massive disruption caused by the digital transformation that began in the mid-1990s. Journalism that was in the public interest had sickened. Media outlets were in a desperate scramble for eyeballs. Outlets competed with the new digital businesses.
The arrival of last-minute funding sources has helped restore the health of some, but not all, media outlets. The News Media Bargaining Code has directed some lost revenue to media companies. However, even this is flawed in that it ignores small and emerging media outlets, particularly local and regional businesses; it does not ensure that the funds are invested in public interest journalism or the journalists — employed and freelance — who produce it.[iii]
Social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and others attracted massive global audiences that allowed them to wield enormous power. But as they provided networks for social digital interaction, they also created gigantic information distribution systems that could bloat a falsehood to an exponentially growing audience. There has been insufficient action on their part to stem the flow of mistruths and disinformation. And when the pandemic struck, their response was slow and unsatisfactory.
Social media platforms could also be used as weapons, spreading hate and, by using a hashtag, to gather a digital mob to spread abuse or rumours under cover of anonymity. All this with little or no self-regulation. In times of political extremes, social and political change, and war, the social media platforms have resisted moves to suspend or take down offensive or inaccurate posts until pressure finally forced them to unwillingly make modest changes.
The pandemic also saw the development of a crisis for regional journalism. In 2020 up to 150 media businesses, the majority in regional Australia, temporarily shuttered or close forever. Up to 1000 journalist jobs were lost across the country.[iv] After much lobbying by MEAA and others, the Public Interest News Gathering program offered a modest amount to keep regional businesses going but again, this was directed at the biggest media corporations and not the smaller outlets that needed it most. Audiences lost out once more.[v]
However, in the battle against disinformation, it is politicians who have misused social media.
From the White House, a president could invent any falsehood he liked and ensure it spread rapidly thanks to his social media channels. At the same time, and with the same weapon, he could decry the truth reported by traditional media outlets as simply “fake news” and goad his followers to take up the cry.
It couldn’t happen here? Australian politicians have been adept at manipulating social media and running away from questions asked by traditional media. They have, on occasion, also called out what they say is “fake news”.
The pandemic has taken all these elements that were already there before the first COVID-19 case was diagnosed and detonated them.
A global survey of 1400 journalists found that 46 per cent of respondents identified politicians and elected officials as a top source of disinformation about COVID-19.[vi]
Meta Platforms Inc.’s Facebook was the most frequently identified social media platform as a prolific disinformation vector (66 per cent). More than a third (35 per cent) also nominated the Facebook-owned closed-messaging app WhatsApp as a top spreader, while Instagram (also Facebook-owned) was identified as a top enabler by 11 per cent of respondents, and Facebook Messenger was cited by 9 per cent. Twitter was identified as a prolific disinformation spreader by 42 per cent of respondents.[vii]
Politicians also used the health crisis to wage battles with their opponents. State premiers and the prime minister would resist using the term “lockdown”. Messages about the virtue of a “hard and fast” lockdown versus “slow and steady” were played out in column inches and on nightly news. What was happening across that border was either right or wrong this side of the border.
All the time and breath spent on political rhetoric meant nothing to the COVID virus.
A combination of a weakened media industry, desperate to cling on to their audience and advertisers; social media platforms that wield enormous power but with little responsibility; politicians who wage political warfare at any price — even in the midst of a global health crisis — all these engaged an audience where trust in the truth-tellers had been weakened — for many people, perhaps irrevocably.
The protests about COVID began to be dangerous for journalists. Reporting on a protest could have you targeted by protesters, arrested by police, harangued, abused and threatened. Speakers at these protests could encourage the mob to believe that the media was the real virus and, come their takeover of the country, journalists would join politicians, judges, police and others in being executed — words that would bring raucous cheers from the crowd.
If that’s what some people want to do to journalists, how, then, to restore trust in the media?
The Nieman Lab has been tackling the issue of trust in the media and how to rebuild it for several years.[viii] It commented on a report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism that offered a bit more insight into what’s driving distrust in news organisations across the world.
The Reuters Institute initiated a poll conducted by YouGov that sought the opinions of around 18,000 people across nine countries: Australia, the U.S., Germany, UK, Ireland, Spain, Denmark, France and Greece.
Asked why they don’t trust the news, two-thirds of people (67 percent) cited concerns about bias, spin, and hidden agendas as a reason they don’t trust what they read.
Trust in news is higher among people above the age of 35 (42 percent) than those younger than 35 (34 percent) and people of low income (35 percent) The study’s report believes that “brands, particularly journalistic ones, don’t gain trust overnight, and it may be a long while before news organisations see their renewed emphasis on fact-checking and journalistic transparency pay off among readers broadly.”
The report said that video is a key driver of trust. The study explained that “if you want people to trust what you say, show, don’t tell”. The belief is that television is seen as less open to manipulation compared to text and photo; the survey’s respondents said that the presence of visuals gives them more confidence that a news report is true. “Usually, the news media can offer images or video or interviews or statements that show what they are reporting or that they are from official sources,” a respondent in Australia said.
The study warned however, that “it’s a scarily likely possibility that even this could change as new technology makes it easier to fake video footage as well.”
The audience’s relationship with social media will continue to be complicated for traditional media. “While social media has become a central source of news for many people, just 24 per cent of respondents said that social media does a good job of helping them separate fact from fiction. Put another way, just because people are on Twitter and Facebook all day doesn’t mean they trust everything (or even most things) that they read… Roughly 35 per cent of respondents who distrust social media cited the lack of fact-checking and the prevalence of opinion-driven information as the most significant reasons. (Notably, just five per cent of these people said they lacked confidence in social media because of a distrust in virality and the platforms’ algorithms, suggesting either that few are concerned about technology’s role in presenting the news they read, or that few are aware of it.)”
Winning the battle of trust versus disinformation will require effort. While traditional news media outlets have taken steps to make their reporting more open and transparent and include fact-checking services, there is still a lot of work to do when it comes to distinguishing the outlets’ journalism from the mass of disinformation available on the internet.
The study proposed that media outlets continue trying to recover audiences by shifting away from a reliance on digital advertising in favour of audience-supported business models. That should help outlets get off the reliance for eyeballs and to focus more on deeper investigations that produce high-quality public interest journalism that will help build trust with their audience.
The study also issued a challenge for social media platforms. “Facebook and Twitter, too, must grapple with their role in the trust problem, particularly when it comes to identifying trustworthy news sources on their platforms.”
Politicians must also grapple with the trust issue. Audiences come to know their elected representatives through traditional media and social media. While politicians can, to a degree, control their image on social media, it is traditional media (and, in turn, when traditional media distribute news content on social media channels) where politicians have lost the trust of their electors.
Politicians and governments must do more than talk about respecting press freedom. A healthy, functioning democracy must have at its heart openness, accountability and transparency. Politicians must be responsible, approachable, honest and forthcoming, That’s they’re job.
The workings of government should be open to scrutiny. Journalists should not be blocked by Freedom of Information applications that are delayed, blocked or ignored. Politicians should answer the questions asked and not parry with the non-answers they choose to give. Legislation should not be used to criminalise public interest journalism, intimidate and silence whistleblowers and shroud the truth by classifying it “secret”.
Restoring trust in the media won’t be easy. It is a press freedom issue for everyone in the community.
Rebuilding trust will take time. It will require investment in understanding what audiences want and engaging in more open and transparent reporting that is fact-checked and reliable. An emphasis on ethical journalism is vital. MEAA’s Journalist Code of Ethics[ix] fulfils several roles:
· to establish and apply guidelines for ethical behaviour as part of MEAA’s role as the union and professional association for Australia’s journalists.
· to codify conventions of ethical journalism practice.
· to provide professional protections for journalists to maintain their ethical obligations and to resist any compulsion to breach the code, with the support of their colleagues and their union.
· to aid the practice of high-quality public interest journalism by establishing reporting markers for journalists to apply in their work; and finally
· to help engender trust between journalists and the audiences they serve.
Press freedom is not just something that only journalists must defend and champion — it’s a principle that must be safeguarded for all.
Mike Dobbie is the Communications Manager for the MEAA Media section
[i] ibid
[ii] “Share of adults who trust the media less than they did a year ago as a result of fake news worldwide as of January 2019, by country”, Statista.com, June 24, 2019 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1017882/media-trust-loss-fake-news-worldwide/
[iii] “Opening statement to Senate inquiry on the News Media Bargaining Code”, MEAA, February 1, 2021 https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/opening-statement-to-senate-inquiry-on-the-news-media-bargaining-code/
[iv] “Regional media companies that receive taxpayer money must keep services going’, MEAA, May 26, 2021 https://www.meaa.org/mediaroom/regional-media-companies-that-receive-taxpayer-money-must-keep-services-going/
[v] ibid
[vi] “Journalism and the Pandemic Project: Assessing and responding to COVID-19’s long-term impacts”, Julie Posetti, Nabeelah Shabbir and Emily Bell, International Journalists’ Network , March 10, 2022 https://ijnet.org/en/story/journalism-and-pandemic-project-assessing-and-responding-covid-19%E2%80%99s-long-term-impacts
[vii] ibid
[viii] “Why don’t people trust the news and social media? A new report lets them explain in their own words”, Ricardo Bilton, Nieman Lab, November 30, 2017 https://www.niemanlab.org/2017/11/why-dont-people-trust-the-news-and-social-media-a-new-report-lets-them-explain-in-their-own-words/
[ix] “MEAA Journalist Code of Ethics”, MEAA https://www.meaa.org/meaa-media/code-of-ethics/
