On reading the news …
Last week I went to our local library to read “the news.” I actually sat down in the sunlight and read the hard copy of some newspapers — as if I were still living in the twentieth century. Though these days, the yesteryears don’t seem so bad. Clearly, “the news” has become something different in the last decade — due to the internet and explosion of media outlets. I recently asked two college students where they get their news. One said from YouTube and the other from TikTok. This was a revelation to me. Those are “news” sources?
What IS the news, I wondered, as I sat there perusing the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. And what will it become in the next four years? The more I read, the more I realized the obvious: there is less reporting on actual events these days and much more spinning and reinterpreting of a handful of news items for political and economic benefits. And these revised “stories” are all carried by hundreds of news and social media streams, all gushing into one enormous sea of (mis)information. Not surprisingly, a lot of readers are drowning, and confused about who and what to believe.
In the NYT and WSJ, I found a story about how Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of the Washington Post, was imposing new guidelines for the opinion section of the paper, which actually means that this single person is defining what the news is.
“We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets,” he wrote in a memo to staffers (and posted on X). “We'll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.”
Bezos went on to say that there is no longer a need for “a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.”
But does it? Does the internet ensure a diverse range of high-quality news sources? Or is it driven mainly by economic opportunity?
After Bezos’ announcement, 75,000 Washington Post digital subscribers canceled their subscriptions. This added to the 250,000 subscribers who canceled when Bezos blocked the paper’s editorial endorsing Kamala Harris for president a couple of weeks before the election. They instead chose to endorse no one. (The paper endorsed Trump’s rivals in 2016 and 2020.)
According to Post at-large editor Robert Kagin (who has since resigned) officials from Bezos’ Blue Origin aerospace company met with Trump a few hours after his non-endorsement policy became public. Blue Origin has a multi-billion dollar contract with NASA. Bezos’ attitude toward the news seems to be swayed by that of President Trump, who has called the press “the enemy of the people,” and now gives preference to any reporters/papers who affirm (promote) his positions.
Perhaps the question then is not only, what is the news, but is it for sale? President Trump and Jeff Bezos — both billionaires — seem to think it is.
Right next to the array of newspapers at our local library was the “New in Nonfiction” display. Nonfiction. I know what that means: not fiction. One title caught my eye: On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, by Timothy Snyder, a history professor at Yale. Maybe the twentieth century wasn’t so great either. I opened the book to discover it wasn’t actually “new” but was published in 2017. Perhaps just newly relevant?
A cover quote from none other than The Washington Post: “A slim book that fits alongside your pocket Constitution and feels only slightly less vital …” As I reviewed the text, I was struck by this passage: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.”
Snyder wrote the book during Trump’s first term. Remember those years? When the president labeled anything he disagreed with as “fake news”? And when Kelly Anne Conway coined the term “alternative facts.” And then everyone became a little confused about who to believe and it was all up for grabs. But it’s not that complicated. Of course alternative facts (fiction) and fake news (fiction) can undermine the integrity of a free press. That was true during President Trump’s first term, and it is true now.
When I teach courses on research writing, I first focus on the idea of authority, or “author-ity.” How do we determine who we should believe? Authority is tied to the writer’s style, and expertise, and the quality of evidence they provide for their claims, and whether they consider multiple points of view, and so on.
Given today’s Tic-Snap-Googled high-tech culture, this kind of slow, reflective consideration of language may seem outdated. But, if Donald Trump becomes increasingly authoritarian in his leadership, and his army of newly appointed lackeys continue to tighten their grip on the press corp, the slanted news that they promote may threaten our very democracy. Meaning that perhaps it’s time to remember how to read the news in print, and how to respond in person.
• Tom Montgomery Fate, of Glen Ellyn, is the author of six nonfiction books. The most recent is The Long Way Home, a collection of essays.