Election Challenges and the Media's Role
The media plays an essential role in society to be the truth tellers, however, during this election season, the media failed at its job. For the past week, millions have been protesting Donald Trump’s election victory. Polls leading up to the election showed that Hillary Clinton would win the presidency, but it’s clear now that they were wrong.
The Campus Trainer's editorial board believes that whether the election resulted in a Trump or Clinton victory, the media faced a lot of challenges, such as the emergence of major social media platforms, increased counts of false claims, information from foreign intelligence services, and unexpected FBI letters and announcements. The editorial board believes that the manner in which the media as a whole handled these challenges shows that the media needs to take a step back and remember what its purpose is: to give the public true, factual information, not show viewers what will get the highest ratings.
In the early stages of his campaign, the media failed to challenge many of Trump’s false statements, which allowed him to gain a strong following. News stations featured him because his behavior was good for ratings. The media’s focus on getting the most viewers, having the best ratings, and always wanting to break the news first has blinded some in the media from holding powerful people accountable for false statements.
Social media networks such as Facebook are becoming the new mass media. They covered the election 24/7 and their news feeds were filled with false news. Mark Zuckerberg emphasized that Facebook is a tech company, not a media company, however, the editorial board believes Facebook has become a part of the media industry whether that was the intention or not. According to Pew Research Center, 62 percent of Americans get their news from social media networks like Facebook. Facebook reaches about 67 percent of U.S. adults, and two-thirds of Facebook users get their news there, which amounts to 44 percent of the general population. On Facebook, there was disinformation that wasn’t constantly regulated, which meant 44 percent of the general public was receiving false news. Tech and social media companies need to understand that they influence much of what the public is exposed to. They have transformed into major news media platforms and need to learn how to regulate falsehoods that are shared on their websites.
When the Russian government released emails from the Democratic National Committee, the mainstream media treated the emails as legitimate news stories despite its lack of confirmation and illegality of how it was obtained. It also had an origin from a foreign intelligence agency that is notorious for faking documents. The media was not skeptical enough; media companies see their role as having a duty to report information that is out there, however in this situation, they failed to question if the information was true.
When FBI director James Comey sent a letter to Congress 11 days before the election saying that investigators had discovered new emails that were applicable to Clinton’s email investigation, polls showed that support for Clinton decreased. An ABC/Washington Post poll shows that one-third of likely voters, including seven percent of Clinton supporters said the new email revelations made them less likely to support her. Clinton herself blames Comey for her election loss; she says Comey’s letter stopped the campaign’s momentum in the final stretch of the race. Whether Comey intended for his letter to influence the election is debatable, however, the editorial board believes that it’s clear that it helped determine the final results on election night.
The editorial board is confident that the media will recover from this campaign; however, improvements need to be made to the media industry. Every media company, including major social media companies, should hire a specialized team of fact checkers. It’s difficult to keep up with every false statement that comes up, but if there’s a team that fact checks, it will make fact checking a lot more efficient. One big issue with fact checking is timeliness; false statements need to be refuted as soon as possible. During debates, there should be fact checking sessions instead of commercial breaks, or a fact checking overview at the end of the debate. Fact checking can’t come into play within the next day or two, it needs to come into play as soon as false statements start to arise. The media has always had problems with falsehoods; but this campaign shed light on the fact that people will believe false facts if they are not refuted immediately. The editorial board believes the media as a whole needs to work on getting back to its roots to being truth tellers, challenging powerful people when necessary, and delivering facts, not fiction.
