A Pressing need to know the truth

I READ the other day an American opinion piece that claimed the world’s three most impartial news organisations were Associated Press, Reuters and the BBC. Living in Britain, I find that reassuring, but also baffling. Impartial news? There’s no such thing.

I was a newspaper journalist for nearly 40 years, so hope to speak with some authority. The fact is that when anyone, anywhere, passes on any sort of news – whether it’s war, famine, flood or their grandmother’s cataract operation – they bring their own bias, background and personal belief system to their story. It’s human nature to be selective in what we recall and how we tell it. And in the world of professional news broadcast, this bias is writ large.

This is true even when reporters stick to the facts – they choose an order in which to tell them, passing on their bias that one element of a story is more important than another.

Some facts they find so uninteresting they don’t present them at all. Rare is the news outlet that has the time and space to tell you everything, which means they leave information out, which forces the consumer to base their opinion on half a story.

Even the most objective, honest newshounds do this. It happens by default. And then of course there are other news sources that deliberately bury or omit certain facts, and then write a headline based on their prominent facts to skew their readers/viewers/opinions in a certain way. The maxim of never letting the facts get in the way of a good story is so well known because it is true.

I should say that selective presentation is a tried and tested journalism skill. I’ve spent much of my career doing it: sometimes proudly, my words influencing readers to get behind a cause; other times not so much, knowing I was presenting solidly true facts in such a way as to encourage readers to believe two plus two equalled five.

I can’t change what I’ve done, and I wouldn’t want to change laws that enshrine our media’s right to freedom of speech. Newspapers, broadcasters and news websites have a right to present the news how they choose. ITV News simpers its way through its bulletins with melodrama, framing tragedies with a mawkish “isn’t this simply awful” narrative, as if it genuinely believes its viewers incapable of working this out on their own. Sky News is more combative, its reporters challenging people to say what they think of the government/energy companies/French/whoever according to the yarn they want spinning (or in Beth Rigby’s case, spinnin).

But they have a right to do this – just as do newspapers. Of course the Express is allowed to dress up as news its tiresome drone about the ‘triumph’ of Boris’s Brexit. Of course the Mirror is allowed to present itself as a champion of workers against fat cat bosses while its own journalists are denied a pay rise by the company’s £4million-a-year CEO. Of course the Mail is allowed to comfort its readers with reasons why it’s okay to tar all desperate migrant experiences with the same brush and pack them all off as a job lot to Rwanda. And of course the Star is allowed to fondly resurrect the attitudes of the 1970s in the name of giving its readers a laugh.

But. If we are to enjoy and preserve the healthiness of a free press – and it’s vital we do – it’s also increasingly vital that we are able to evaluate news stories accurately. That means for us, and future generations, learning how to do it.

By all means everyone should be allowed to consume whichever legal news source they choose. Most people who read particular UK national newspapers, or watch or listen to particular news broadcasters, do so for comfort and reassurance – they want their ‘objective’ news to reflect what they are thinking. Question is – and this is an age old quandary – are the newspapers and broadcasters truly reflecting what their audience is thinking, or do their readers, viewers and listeners only think like that in the first place because they’ve been brainwashed to do so by those newspapers and broadcasters?

So this isn’t a new issue, the idea of media bias. When John Major defeated Neil Kinnock at the 1992 General Election, Britain’s then biggest-selling newspaper crowed about its front page showing the Labour leader as a lightbulb, declaring “It’s The Sun wot won it”. And it probably did.

What’s troubling now is that there are so many sources of news – most digital consumption now swamping newspaper sales – that it’s now harder than ever for someone seeking ‘unbiased’ news to guarantee they’re getting a balanced story. My teenage son gets his news from Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and a gazillion other word-of-mouth sources. What chance does he stand of getting something that offers all sides of a story – or is he already part of a generation that decides it doesn’t need context, but just the headline ‘fact’?

Media bias has indeed been around for ever, but with infinite news sources floating around the ether, it’s time to teach our children how to evaluate, how to assess, how to contextualise. News makes people act and react. To do so responsibly, as a society, in whatever cause we choose to do so, we need the opportunity to hear the whole story.