84 Zombie Media
themselves, there is clearly a practice that often seems to self-evidently
depend on knowing the facts (and, by extension, the truth and reporting
these in an unbiased manner). Theories of social production deny the
possibility of that self-evident truth, although this is not by any means to
defend the kind of laissez-faire, anything goes attitude towards facts currently on display in sectors of the political establishment. Facts should
and must be checked wherever possible, but the very conditions as to
which facts are important – and what efforts then must be expended
on them to verify their truth or falsehood – are more complex than the
positivist assumptions made by many practitioners. Indeed, as Alfred
Hermida observes, social media has questioned the top-down, individualistic ideology of traditional journalism and forced writers to explore
networked, iterative forms of verifying their information.
24
A very real (if until recently unlikely and somewhat esoteric) consequence of this positivist assumption of journalists towards the truth of
their trade has been that increasingly large segments of the population
have been unwilling to trust them. If the task of journalism is to verify
the truth of the world (which is in and of itself an impossible assertion),
then the failure to do so makes journalism itself suspect. A Gallup Poll
from September 2016 recorded the lowest level of public trust since 1972
among Americans in media organisations, with only 32 per cent of them
expecting the mainstream media to “report the news fully, accurately
and fairly”.
25
The biggest change at the time was among Republicans
(with a drop to 14 per cent). This contrasted to roughly half of the population having trusted the media between the 1950s and early 2000s,
although the fact that only half of adult Americans believed the news
they read in the final decades of the twentieth century is hardly a cause
for celebration among journalists and editors. Underlying this erosion of
trust was a growing realisation, particularly following media reporting
of the Iraq invasion, that at best the press was capable of being mistaken. More drastically in other areas such as climate change, dedicated
activists had long engaged in disruptive programmes of disinformation.
Because there is always the possibility of interpretation of the facts, because even the highest levels of professional practice must work with
models of the real world, then so as with theories of climate change, a
determined and systematic attempt to change perceptions through propaganda always has fertile ground upon which to operate. If we are told
enough times by a profession that it is operating to the highest standards
of truth – and yet those standards are impossible to achieve – then confusion always remains a possibility.
In addition, it is also demonstrable that journalists and media organisations always operate with some kind of bias, even though this is not
always apparent to them and may not be what the wider public always
believes. A common opinion of conservatives in America in recent years,
for example, has been that the mainstream media operates with a liberal
themselves, there is clearly a practice that often seems to self-evidently
depend on knowing the facts (and, by extension, the truth and reporting
these in an unbiased manner). Theories of social production deny the
possibility of that self-evident truth, although this is not by any means to
defend the kind of laissez-faire, anything goes attitude towards facts currently on display in sectors of the political establishment. Facts should
and must be checked wherever possible, but the very conditions as to
which facts are important – and what efforts then must be expended
on them to verify their truth or falsehood – are more complex than the
positivist assumptions made by many practitioners. Indeed, as Alfred
Hermida observes, social media has questioned the top-down, individualistic ideology of traditional journalism and forced writers to explore
networked, iterative forms of verifying their information.
24
A very real (if until recently unlikely and somewhat esoteric) consequence of this positivist assumption of journalists towards the truth of
their trade has been that increasingly large segments of the population
have been unwilling to trust them. If the task of journalism is to verify
the truth of the world (which is in and of itself an impossible assertion),
then the failure to do so makes journalism itself suspect. A Gallup Poll
from September 2016 recorded the lowest level of public trust since 1972
among Americans in media organisations, with only 32 per cent of them
expecting the mainstream media to “report the news fully, accurately
and fairly”.
25
The biggest change at the time was among Republicans
(with a drop to 14 per cent). This contrasted to roughly half of the population having trusted the media between the 1950s and early 2000s,
although the fact that only half of adult Americans believed the news
they read in the final decades of the twentieth century is hardly a cause
for celebration among journalists and editors. Underlying this erosion of
trust was a growing realisation, particularly following media reporting
of the Iraq invasion, that at best the press was capable of being mistaken. More drastically in other areas such as climate change, dedicated
activists had long engaged in disruptive programmes of disinformation.
Because there is always the possibility of interpretation of the facts, because even the highest levels of professional practice must work with
models of the real world, then so as with theories of climate change, a
determined and systematic attempt to change perceptions through propaganda always has fertile ground upon which to operate. If we are told
enough times by a profession that it is operating to the highest standards
of truth – and yet those standards are impossible to achieve – then confusion always remains a possibility.
In addition, it is also demonstrable that journalists and media organisations always operate with some kind of bias, even though this is not
always apparent to them and may not be what the wider public always
believes. A common opinion of conservatives in America in recent years,
for example, has been that the mainstream media operates with a liberal