How Do You Report the News in a Post-Truth World?

If you’re having a conversation about the state of journalism, it’s bound to get a little depressing. 

Since 2008, more than 250 local news outlets have closed down in Canada. The U.S. has lost a third of the newspapers they had in 2005. But this is about more than a failing business model. Only 31 percent of Americans say they trust the media. In Canada, that number is a little bit better – but only a little. 

The problem is not just that people are losing their faith in journalism. It’s that they’re starting to place their trust in other, often more dubious sources of information: TikTok influencers, Elon Musk’s X feed, and The Joe Rogan Experience. 

The impact of this shift can be seen almost everywhere you look. 15 percent of Americans believe climate change is a hoax. 30 percent believe the 2020 election was stolen. 10 percent believe the earth is flat. 

A lot of this can be blamed on social media, which crippled journalism's business model and led to a flourishing of false information online. But not all of it. People like Jay Rosen have long argued that journalists themselves are at least partly responsible for the post-truth moment we now find ourselves in. 

Rosen is a professor of journalism at NYU who’s been studying, critiquing, and really shaping, the press for nearly 40 years. He joined me a couple of weeks ago at the Attention conference in Montreal to explain how we got to this place – and where we might go from here. 

A note: we recorded this interview before the Canadian election was called, so we don’t touch on it here. But over the course of the next month, the integrity of our information ecosystem will face an inordinate amount of stress, and conversations like this one will be more important than ever. 
 

Mentioned:
"Digital News Report Canada 2024 Data: An Overview," by Colette Brin, Sébastien Charlton, Rémi Palisser, Florence Marquis 

"America’s News Influencers,"  by Galen Stocking, Luxuan Wang, Michael Lipka, Katerina Eva Matsa,Regina Widjaya,Emily Tomasik andJacob Liedke

Further Reading: 

"Challenges of Journalist Verification in the Digital Age on Society: A Thematic Review," Melinda Baharom, Akmar Hayati Ahmad Ghazali, Abdul Muati, Zamri Ahmad

"Making Newsworthy News: The Integral Role of Creativity and Verification in the Human Information Behavior that Drives News Story Creation," Marisela Gutierrez Lopez, Stephann Makri, Andrew MacFarlane, Colin Porlezza, Glenda Cooper, Sondess Missaoui

"The Trump Administration and the Media (2020)," by Leonard Downie Jr. for the Committee to Protect Journalists.