Excerpted from the Introduction

INTRODUCTION

The Corruption of Information

Incompetence and aimlessness, corruption and disloyalty, panic and ultimate disaster,

must come to any people which is denied access to the facts. No one can manage

anything on pap. Neither can a people.

—Walter Lippmann

As the possibility of invading Iraq was being debated in Washington, pollsters were busy

asking Americans for their opinions. A slim majority expressed support for an invasion if

President George W. Bush thought it necessary. But Americans’ willingness to go to

war depended on what they believed was true of Iraq. Contrary to fact, most Americans

thought Iraq was aligned with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group that had attacked the United

States on September 11, 2001. Some Americans even believed Iraqi pilots had flown

the planes that slammed into the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

Citizens with mistaken beliefs were twice as likely as other Americans to favor an

invasion of Iraq. They might also have had other reasons for wanting to rid the world of

Saddam Hussein. He had repeatedly thwarted UN inspections of his weapons systems

and had killed tens of thousands of his own people. Nevertheless, the notion that

Hussein was aligned with al-Qaeda was pure fiction.

Fox News viewers were the most misinformed. Two-thirds of them perceived a “clear

link” between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, a research finding that journalists at rival

news outlets found amusing. A more sober look at the evidence would have tempered

their response. Fox viewers were not the only ones with a false sense of reality.

Roughly half of ABC, CBS, CNN, and NBC viewers wrongly thought that Iraq and al-

Qaeda were collaborators, as did two in five newspaper readers.

Warped understandings are hardly new. When fluoride was added to the nation’s water

supply a half century ago, some Americans claimed it was a communist plot to poison

the nation’s youth. In a seminal 1964 Harper’s Magazine article, the historian Richard

Hofstadter described such thinking as “the paranoid style.” “No other word,” Hofstadter

wrote, “adequately evokes the sense of heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and

conspiratorial fantasy that I have in mind.”

The crazed anticommunists of postwar America have their counterparts today. Can

anything except the “paranoid style” explain the conspiracy theorists who claim Barack

Obama funneled money to extremist Muslim groups in an effort to sabotage American

interests9 or who say George W. Bush knew in advance of the September 11 terrorist

plot and chose not to stop it? Yet paranoia cannot explain today’s astonishing

misinformation level. As Hofstadter defined it, the “paranoid style” describes the thinking

of the delusional few, whereas it is easy today to find issues on which tens of millions of

Americans have far-fetched ideas. At one point in the 2009–2010 health care reform

debate, for instance, half of the American public falsely believed the legislation included

“death panels”—government-appointed committees with the power to deny medical

treatment to old folks.

It is a short step from misinformation to mischief, as we have seen repeatedly in recent

policy debates. It is nearly impossible to have sensible public deliberation when large

numbers of people are out of touch with reality. Without agreement on the facts,

arguments have no foundation from which to build. Recent debates on everything from

foreign policy to the federal budget have fractured or sputtered because of a factual

deficit.

What’s going on here? Why are Americans mired in misinformation? Several factors are

at work, but changes in communication top the list. Americans have been ill-served by

the intermediaries—the journalists, politicians, talk show hosts, pundits, and bloggers—

that claim to be their trusted guides.

Journalists are our chief sense-makers. Journalists are other things, too, but we need

them mostly to help us understand the world of public affairs beyond our direct

experience. That’s not to say that journalists bear the full burden of keeping us

informed. If they are to be charged with that responsibility, they will fail. They cannot

make up for glaring defects in the work of others, including our educators and political

leaders. Yet, as journalist Walter Lippmann noted, democracy falters “if there is no

steady supply of trustworthy and relevant news.”

_________________

Journalists are failing to deliver it. A 2006 Carnegie Corporation report concluded that
“the quality of journalism is losing ground in the drive for profit, diminished objectivity,

and the spread of the ‘entertainment virus.’ ” The public certainly recognizes the

problem. In a 2012 Gallup poll, a mere 8 percent of respondents said they had a “great

deal” of confidence in the news media’s ability to report “the news fully, accurately, and

fairly.” More than seven times that number—60 percent in all—said they had little or no

confidence in the press. That’s a dramatic comedown from a few decades ago, when a

majority of Americans trusted what the press was telling them.

Some journalists dismiss criticisms of their work, saying that the public is “shooting the

messenger”—blaming the press for what’s being reported, whereas it ought to be

aiming its fire at others. There’s some truth to their claim. Yet most journalists are

keenly aware that they are contributing to the problem. A Pew Research Center survey

found that journalists thought reporting had become “shallower,” “increasingly sloppy,”

and “too timid.” A subsequent Pew survey found that 68 percent of reporters believed

that “bottom-line pressure is hurting journalism,” up from 41 percent a decade earlier.

Six in ten of those surveyed said that journalism is headed “in the wrong direction.”

Nevertheless, journalists are the best hope for something better. Talk show hosts,

bloggers, political activists, politicians, and commentators cannot be trusted to protect

the facts. Many in their ranks are conscientious and public minded, but others willfully

twist the facts for partisan or personal gain. They have concocted most of the half-truths

and lies foisted on the American public.

Some observers say journalists are less relevant today, given the increase in

information sources and the greater ease with which people can share information. As I

see it, citizens need journalists more than ever, precisely because there is so much
information available, of such varying quality and relevance. The contribution of the

reporter cannot be compared with that of the scholar or the policy analyst, much less

that of the talk show host or blogger. Each has a place in our public life, but none of the

others are equipped to do what journalists do. Journalists are in the daily business of

making the unseen visible, of connecting us to the world beyond our direct experience.

Public life is increasingly complex, and we need an ongoing source of timely and

relevant information on the issues of the day. That’s why we need journalists.

Yet, the claim that journalists are the public’s indispensible source of information

dissolves when reporters peddle hype and misinformation, which, as the first two

chapters in this book will show, has too often been the case in recent years. There are

plenty of conscientious journalists, but their efforts are diminished by what other

reporters are doing. The costs of poor reporting are higher than many journalists might

think, not only to our democracy but to their livelihoods. If the public concludes that the

messages of journalists are no more valuable than those of other sources, the demand

for news will go down. The shift is already under way. Surveys over the past decade

show a steady rise in the number of Americans who prefer to get their information from

partisan bloggers, talk show hosts, and pundits. In its 2013 “State of the News Media”

report, the Project for Excellence in Journalism noted that nearly a third of American

adults had stopped using a news source because they believed its reporting had

declined in quality.

Excerpted from Informing the News by Thomas E. Patterson. Copyright © 2013 by Thomas E. Patterson. Excerpted

by permission of Vintage, a division of Random House LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be

reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.