What to Remember When Reporting on Lies That Come from Official Sources
The United States is no stranger to lies from elected officials. Donald Trump made over 30,000 false or misleading claims during his time in office. Most major news sources have think pieces on why politicians lie. And liars are very much more emboldened across the country following the attempted overthrow of the 2020 election.
The role of the media has always been to communicate with the public and to hold its officials accountable. But in an age where misinformation from the top can spread like wildfire all the way down to the point where it interferes in someone’s daily life, the simple role of being the messenger is no longer good enough. Journalists are being forced to fact check and call out officials worldwide.
So what are some methods for doing this?
BE TRANSPARENT ABOUT HOW AND WHY YOU ARE FACT CHECKING THE INFORMATION AT HAND
People will ascribe an ulterior motive to your work even if the motive is just the truth, so including a clear reason why this information needs to be checked is important. Link your sources and explain your process succinctly so that someone could duplicate it if they needed to.
BE CREATIVE IN YOUR DELIVERY
One suggested method of delivery in undercutting a falsehood is what Berkeley linguist George Lakoff dubbed the “truth sandwich.”
Consider the following analysis on the concept from The Washington Post:
“First, he says, get as close to the overall, big-picture truth as possible right away…Then report what [they are] claiming about it..And then, in the same story or broadcast, fact-check [their] claims.”
“That’s the truth sandwich — reality, spin, reality — all in one tasty, democracy-nourishing meal. Avoid retelling the lies. Avoid putting them in headlines, leads or tweets, he says. Because it is that very amplification that gives them power. That’s how propaganda works on the brain: through repetition, even when part of that repetition is fact-checking.”
KEEP REPORTING ON THE FALSEHOODS
Many officials will lie on the same point over and over without acknowledging that they’ve been held accountable. Lies also spread faster online. No matter how many times the lie is told, it must be reported as false every single time without letting it slide.
GIVE CONTEXT
There is a reason this official source is lying, and it’s usually apparent with a little bit of research. The issue is, the average person is not going to know where to look for this or feel overwhelmed by it — so it is our job as journalists to find that information and make it accessible to the public.
Some journalists and other experts theorize that part of the reason officials lie so often is that the public has put less value in truth and more value on emotions and polarization. In fact, politicians are currently so emboldened to lie that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s entire time in office was described by Lord Simon McDonald as “crossing your fingers at the same time and hoping that people are not too forensic in their subsequent questioning.” In a society that doesn’t value the truth, is it worth fighting for it anyway?
The noted foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour put it best in a piece for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CRJ) in 2017.
“Because journalism is under siege worldwide, we must appeal to protect the profession itself, including in the country whose free media has historically led the way,” she wrote at the time. “To do that, we must recommit to robust fact-based reporting without fear or favor on the issues. We cannot stand for being labeled crooked or lying or failing. We must stand up together, for divided we will all fall.”
