Presenting the truth

In June 1972, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were in their 20s when they began working on a series of stories for the Washington Post that began with a break-in at the Watergate Complex in Washington DC and later rocked American politics like never before. Their dogged investigation and reportage of what became known as the Watergate Scandal and today simply Watergate, shone a light on the flagrant abuse of office by then President Richard Nixon, who still managed to get re-elected in November that same year. However, he was forced to resign in ignominy in August 1974, becoming the first and to date only US president to do so, following an investigation into his role in the affair by a senate committee and a vote of impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee.

Mr Woodward and Mr Bernstein had already been awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 for their coverage of the Watergate affair Their stellar work on what was an explosive issue is still held up today around the world as one of the gold standards in investigative reporting. The duo had many sources but relied on one they referred to at the time as ‘Deep Throat’ to confirm or deny what they were getting from others. ‘Deep Throat’ was actually Mark Felt, a top FBI official whose identity never became public knowledge until more than 30 years after Watergate.

Perhaps the best takeaway from the scandal was the fact that whatever their biases, and everyone has them, Mr Woodward, Mr Bernstein, their editors, and the Washington Post, were not trying to do anything but present the truth to their readers. Truth is one of the pillars of journalism, a noble profession that has been misused and attacked increasingly over the years – quite apart from physical and ad hominem attacks on journalists – by those who feel it should serve their ends.

No one would be wrong to conclude that had Watergate occurred in the current era, Mr Woodward and Mr Bernstein would have been abused with the oxymoron “fake news” by the current resident of the White House. In fact, four months ago, a Washington Post journalist was thus branded when he sought to question President Donald Trump about previous statements President Trump had made relating to the coronavirus being suppressed by heat. There may even have been a more recent occasion since it is a phrase Mr Trump is obviously fond of throwing around both verbally and via social media. 

It is disappointing and perhaps more than a bit ironic that the United States features so highly in tossing around verbiage in blatant attempts to discredit the stories that uncover the shady side of politics and govenrment. This is a country once so proud of its record on freedom of expression, access to information and the role of those and other principles in the development of democracy that it constantly lectured and admonished other countries which appeared not to be walking the straight and narrow.

It is downright scandalous, to say the least, that deliberate campaigns of misinformation have become so ingrained in our daily lives, that it is now important to consistently source and fact check. Not everything branded as “news” is truth.    

While today’s technology allows journalists to gather information and write and present stories perhaps 1,000 percent faster than they could in the 70s, there is also a dark side. Anyone with access to technology, and today that is practically everyone and their dog, can use it and by extension social media to disseminate propaganda and disinformation for pure mischief but also for more nefarious reasons, like to discredit a professional, personal, or political rival. The global reach of social media and its speedy availability means that often the damage is difficult if not impossible to undo.

In the interest of integrity and the preservation of true journalism, global news agencies like Thomson Reuters and the Associated Press among others have been forced to create fact-checking units or departments; the Poynter Institute, which was off the ground early in this regard, set up the International Fact Checking Network in 2015. Fact checking not only ensures the unassailability of what media outfits publish but some go further, correcting some of the disinformation on social media in collaboration with platforms like Facebook and Google.

The 2016 US election, for example, was a hotbed of disinformation. A case in point was the town in Macedonia where a Buzzfeed editor had found that a large group of young people were being paid to either write or just post completely false stories on Facebook most of which favoured Mr Trump.  While the social media platform has since addressed that issue, it does not completely prevent it from occurring. As recently as last week, a post appeared on Twitter with a photograph purported to be the birth certificate of Senator Kamala Harris, the US Democratic VP pick, with the claim that she is listed on it as Caucasian. Ms Harris is in fact African American. However, before it could be fact-checked and flagged as factually inaccurate, it was shared over 1,000 times, including on Facebook, which also fact-checked and flagged it. Part of the fact-checking uncovered the fact that the original tweet was published by a lawyer who starred in a popular TV reality show that was cancelled in 2013.

There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands of false posts and claims made everyday, often by people who have large audiences. Determining which are serious and which are satirical, their reach and propensity for damage is, as noted above, a job in itself. However, any media outfit that wishes to survive beyond the 21st century will have to invest in ensuring whatever it publishes, posts or shares, even from usually reliable sources, is accurate and unbiased.