Thanks to the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) for the First Amendment Award, accepted on behalf of the Pulitzer Prizes by board chair Eugene Robinson.
Read his important remarks in support of press freedom and truth.
On behalf of the Pulitzer Prize board, thank you for this important recognition. Given the state of affairs in the nation and the world, thank you now more than ever.
We are living through an unprecedented moment — a time when the very idea of unquestioned fact is being questioned. What you teach, and what we honor, is constantly assailed as “fake news” — not by easily dismissed crackpots or lunatics shouting at passing cars, but by the president of the United States.
We have not only a president and an administration, but a whole parallel news ecosystem that believes in alternative facts. As you teach your students, alternative facts are more accurately known as falsehoods. Or lies. For those of us who came up through the ranks in journalism and have been around for a while, it’s not in our comfort zone to state, flat out, that a politician or public official, quote, lied. It’s taken a while for us to get to the point where we can use that word. Now we do — but it doesn’t seem to matter.
There’s a parallel universe that considers all of us part of a vast fake news conspiracy. In this parallel world, which can be glimpsed in the mornings through “Fox and Friends,” which is kind of an interdimensional portal … in this other world, there are millions of cases of voter fraud in the United States, rather than a handful. Climate change is a hoax, not a visibly mounting crisis. The coal industry was decimated by federal regulations, not the workings of the free market and the availability of cheap natural gas. And the head of the Boy Scouts called President Trump to say that his speech to the scout jamboree was the very best speech in the history of speaking. Anybody who says otherwise, “Fake news!”
I’ve been thinking a lot about this fake news issue. My natural instinct is that the proper response is simply to keep doing our jobs. We report and analyze the real news, and we are conditioned to believe that ultimately the truth shall overcome. Ultimately and inevitably, truth defeats lies. That’s what I’ve always believed, but now I have to wonder.
I have to wonder whether the technology of propaganda hasn’t outpaced and perhaps overwhelmed the technology of truth. I’m not just talking about the world according to Fox News versus the world according to MSNBC. I’m talking about a new world in which so many people are getting their news through their Facebook feeds and elected officials communicate directly with their constituents via Twitter. I’m talking about a new world in which lies can appear to be validated — and where access to leaders and information by the real news media is under threat. I wonder if we, in the media, might not be fighting a 21st century war using 20th century weapons and rules. It is starting to feel as if this is an asymmetrical conflict, and we’re on the wrong end of it.
To be clear, we’re not fighting for ourselves. We’re fighting for the public theater we serve, and for truth. We cannot have a democracy without an agreed-upon chronicle of events and a common encyclopedia of facts. That is what seems to be disappearing, and I think this is a crisis.
If indeed this is a new threat, it seems to me that we must consider new and perhaps uncomfortable ways to counter it. It may not be enough to simply report the truth. Perhaps we must insist on it. I haven’t yet figured out what that might look and sound like, but it’s something we should all think about. Ultimately truth must win – and right now, I fear, truth is losing.