Due Diligence and the News

Searching for a Moral Compass in the Digital Age

Stanley E. Flink

• Publisher: Center for Media and Journalism Studies at Indian River State College
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780578616667
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Reporter, editor and lecturerStanley Flink knows the news business. He has worked as a journalist and editor for many years, in many different venues and platforms.Flinkknows, as we all should, that democracy has no life without truth. In Due Diligence and the News, Stan reviews, succinctly and gracefully, the relationship between the press and American civic life from colonial days to the digital age. He shows that while opinions may differ, facts are not optional. How it can be possible toassure publication based on verifiable facts without curtailing differing opinions is the issue addressed throughout this collection of linked essays.

Can internal verification earn the trust of the reading/listening public?

Can a voluntary body of experts, like the Hutchins Commission, make workable rules?

Can government—international, national, state or local—serve as a watchdog without violating the Constitution?

Can the press, in the absence of malice, do less than full due diligence in commenting on a public official?

These questions are addressed thoughtfully throughout this well written book, but no one, not even Stan, can answer them conclusively and for all situations. Ultimately, asStan takes a look forward into the digital age, the age of learned intelligence and poses unanswerable questions about the future of the press.

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Contents

Acknowledgement

Foreword

Preface

Oracles and Origins

Reciprocity Between the Constitution and the Press

The Press in the Nineteenth Century

The Concept: A Well-Informed Electorate

The Rising Years

A Second First Amendment

Finding a Moral Compass

The Paradox of Self-Regulation

The Pursuit of Ethics

Codes and Compromises

Is Anybody Home?

Fomenting Fake News

The Spirit of Liberty

Who is Watching the Watchdog?

The Human-Chip

Looking Forward

Due Diligence, the Critical Element

The Collaborators

The Sovereignty of Algorithms

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Acknowledgement

My conviction is that freedom of the press will survive only if a large proportion of the citizenry is willing to watch over it. This will require surveillance, fact finding and education.

The essays in this collection were informed by years of research and teaching about public affairs journalism, at both New York University and Yale University.

When my wife and I began to spend more time in Florida, I was able to develop a relationship with the Center for Media Studies and Journalism at Indian River State College, which is located in Fort Pierce, Florida, not far from where we lived.

The Center is the kind of enterprise that will help people in the nearby communities and beyond to understand the nature and purpose of a free press, and to value its contributions to democracy.

I am particularly grateful to Professor Bruce Fraser for his work as a founder of the Center, and his insightful commentary on my essays. An institution such as IRSC, and its student body and faculty, can bring the energy and curiosity of a diverse group of people to the issues of technology and political manipulation that afflict the modern media.

This book is dedicated to journalists, but it aspires to help the consumers of journalistic reporting and opinion to evaluate the contents of what they read and watch with a knowledgeable perception of truth-telling integrity. I am grateful for the opportunity to share in their ruminations.

Stanley E. Flink

October 2019

Foreword

IN THE SPRING of 2006, Stanley Flink descended on Indian River State College to inaugurate a series of lectures through what would later become the Feilden Institute of Lifelong Learning. That opening lecture, titled “Protecting America’s Newsrooms,” became the focus of what would evolve into a 12-year conversation between Stan and me about the nature and role of the press in a rapidly changing world, one that had seen the birth of the desktop computer in the previous century and the rise of the Internet in the preceding decade. Times were changing, and journalism was struggling to keep up. What was at stake was the future of the Fourth Estate itself, as online journalism—much of it generated by small operations or ambitious individuals—was encroaching increasingly on the territory and profit margins of established print news organizations. Ideas about knowledge and communication were shifting, and public discourse was sliding into increasingly vitriolic, partisan squabbling. Print journalism seemed moribund, and the worry was—and is—that what would take its place could not serve the public interest in ways necessary for the preservation of our democracy. The clamoring and sometimes raucous voices amplifying across the Internet seem more divisive than communitarian, more likely to make communication and truth less prominent than more.

The focus of this conversation oscillated between theory and practice, Stanley’s background as a journalist challenging and grounding my predilections as a philosopher, and my interest in abstract questions about knowledge, evidence, and truth informing his own views on the future of journalism. The result was the birth of IRSC’s Center for Media and Journalism Studies, a collaboration of faculty and students committed to raising public awareness of the role of journalism in the digital age, and to providing carefully vetted information about issues in the public interest.

The model for the Center was intriguing but not new. Walter Lippmann, media critic and journalist (discussed at length in the essays that follow) had proposed something similar in his 1922 book Public Opinion, a prophetic and insightful analysis of the challenges facing the news business in an increasingly technological society. Concerned by the flood of information that would swamp the public sphere and force people back into their subjective preferences and biases, Lippmann proposed that an objective group of experts vet the information and provide concise, actionable analyses of the day’s events and issues to public officials and the media-- not unlike the role of the Congressional Research Office, which provides this kind of analysis for legislators. Lippmann had hoped to bring the expertise of academe to bear on the news, providing a filter for the flow of information to the public that would allow people to make informed decisions about the business of managing their lives. The Center, in a much more modest role, attempted to do the same by linking the college classroom to the public domain in a way that engaged students with important issues and shared their findings with the community. In this way, the decline of the modern newsroom, with its attendant function of vetting stories and providing essential context and analysis, could be remedied to some extent by connecting journalism with the learning objectives of college courses. It would also prepare students for the world beyond the classroom, cultivating what we refer to as ‘due diligence,’ i.e., the capacity and wherewithal of private citizens to evaluate information for both truth and relevance—and, it is hoped, to assess its moral implications.

From 2008 onward, Indian River State College’s Media Center vested itself in the effort to engage students from a variety of backgrounds with America’s free press. In the subsequent decade, it became clear that two central themes must guide this effort to improve the public’s understanding of, and engagement with, the news: due diligence, and the need to connect the content of college-level instruction to public life. Personal responsibility and education—hardly novel solutions to what is arguably the greatest challenge to our democracy since its founding, viz., the preservation of public information that makes self-governance possible. But it is the solution that makes most sense as a stopgap to the slide into technological tribalism.

The reflections that follow represent the culmination of this work through and for IRSC’s Center for Media and Journalism Studies. Each topic, each essay, was developed with a broad readership in mind—and with an eye to providing essential history and context for understanding the changing landscape of America’s free press. The topics can be taken as part of an extended narrative, but they can also be considered as freestanding provocations. None is meant to be the last word, but all are meant to inspire some level of engagement with what is arguably the most pressing issue of our time: how to separate truth from falsehood, fiction, and propaganda. In a sense, these reflections form a constellation of historical and philosophical perspectives, woven together with journalistic skill in the hope of reviving an interest in healthy public dialogue and engagement. The future of our democracy depends, as it always has, on a viable Fourth Estate, and truth is the ground on which that Estate is founded. Due Diligence and the News represents a serious but accessible effort to present the defining issues of our time in a way that engages the reader and encourages an informed evaluation of journalism and the media.

Much of the research for these essays was completed for an earlier publication by Stanley Flink: Sentinel Under Siege: The Triumphs and Troubles of America’s Free Press (Harper Collins, 1998)—a thoroughly researched book on the history and evolution of the American press. For those readers interested in a thoroughgoing scholarly treatment of the content, a careful read of Sentinel will not disappoint. Additional resources used in the development of this work are mentioned explicitly in the text itself.

Bruce W. Fraser

Indian River State College

Preface

DEMOCRACY HAS NO life without truth, and the process of truth-seeking has little hope of succeeding in a diverse society without a free and independent press.

The ruminations in this collection of essays examine the dramatic history of journalism as a part of the American experience since the beginning of government in the colonial settlements. Now, in the 21st century, we confront the fact that the concept of determining truth, based on evidence and education, can no longer be assured.

The Internet, as we know, entered our lives bright with promise and wonder. But we have also seen its capacity for distortion and falsehood. Cynical and corrupt manipulators, including merchants of hate and division, have harnessed Internet technologies and used them to deceive and reshape public perception. They have attached misinformation to the fears and prejudices of a large segment of the American electorate and captured voter sentiments that have lingered just below the surface of political calculations for several decades. Among those sentiments are the resentment and confusion that accompany loss of manufacturing jobs, and the demographic shifts in the population around them. Some of these tremors are understandable, others are sinister and contradict the deepest principles of the Constitution.

The remedies—if there are any—require public awareness, truthful rendering of the facts, and the willingness to change our minds. The Founders recommended that liberty be protected by vigilance, but the power of the Internet was not imaginable in 1787. The willing belief in presuppositions has always been part of the body politic, but influencing millions of citizens almost overnight, and repetitively, is a phenomenon few people could anticipate. The structure of persuasion has been corrupted by deliberate falsehood, and targeted malevolent propaganda, able to reach voters swiftly, over and over.

The planning for what became the United States could not have predicted the digital revolution. Those who invented it, in fact, are not yet sure of their vision. It will take dedicated hard work, education and due diligence to help the public in the process of auditing information systems that can inflict such compelling powers of misinformation without statutory restraints, or the ability to recall or countermand automated information “bots.” The damage that can be done is currently beyond control. At risk is democracy itself.

Looked at in terms of defensive actions, the due diligence concept adapts common sense measures. It begins with understanding the indisputable decline in respect for the truth. The massive explosion of information providers, and the corruption of news about public affairs by deliberate falsehoods online, has created the option to select whatever version of reality pleases us the most—despite the facts. By influencing public perception with the help of personal data “harvested” from competitive platforms, people with no interest in the truth have been able to target potential voters. Misinformation can effect voting decisions. Once truth becomes irrelevant, the manipulation of public opinion becomes not only likely but more deceptive.

The consumer of news has to find conveyors of news he or she can trust. Journalism will be validated by unfolding events. The trustworthy providers earn their places in print, television and online by careful research and affirmation. Fact-checking services are available, and more of them will appear in the coming years—particularly as critical elections and political campaigns are amplified. The 2016 presidential election widened the field for fact-checking along with the revelations on data harvesting.

Some consumers will take the time to compare reporting in competing newspapers or electronic communications. Consciousness about the misuse of data, and “fake news,” may have some positive consequences—among them greater care in preparing news materials, and less willing belief in false stories. If the competing sources of news find that demonstrable truth-telling in the news business is a good investment, the machinations of miscreant “trolls” working on deception may diminish.

Whatever the trend may be over time, news will always be controversial if only because those who produce it bring different perspectives to the enterprise. For this reason alone a comparison of sources, and frequent reliance on fact-checkers, internally and externally, should become routine. It seems predictable that new companies—mostly online—will engage a growing audience in determining where truth based on facts is most likely to be found, and who specifically are the truth tellers.

Perhaps a major commission can be formed that will have the prestige and expertise necessary to monitor truth-telling and accountability. Such a commission might also award credentials to news organizations that have earned recognition for integrity and competence—not unlike lawyers and surgeons. Ethically motivated enterprises, in a society that can and will reward excellence and honesty, may find out that doing the right thing provides greater benefits and satisfaction, than trying to “game the system.”

The need for truth will grow unless we drift into barbarism. That need should become a hallmark of success in the news business—and wherever the public interest is paramount.

Reinhold Niebuhr, a distinguished theologian, wrote an essay in 1946, entitled “The Role of the Newspapers in America’s Function as the Greatest World Power.” He exhorted journalists to present the facts even when they ran “counter to our presuppositions.” To place facts in the right setting would, he said, require “a moral and political imagination.”

Due diligence and imagination do not usually sleep in the same bed, but Niebuhr realized that the press must look below the surface to find truth in public affairs where politics and morality intersect.

There is—and always has been—a symbiosis between the intellectual content of news media and the technology that permits its dissemination. The progress in paper-making, printing, broadcasting and Internet all had an effect on the content of journalism, not least the speed with which it could be conveyed. The size of circulation, the growth of advertising and the evolution of electronic communication crucially influenced style, substance and revenue. The proliferation of social media on platforms such as Facebook and Google intensified concerns over data collection and privacy. It has also brought some government intervention into what are essentially private corporate enterprises.

The large digital companies involved have not yet developed news reporting as part of their business models, and may welcome legal boundaries that are administered uniformly by the government—or some other outside...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title page
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Author
• Testimonials