12 Jul Fake News + Alternative Facts: Is the Media Responsible?

How to Deal with Alternative Facts. A Rare Personal Rant

Written by Daniela Cavalletti

For those of us working with words – and anyone with a love for language and good writing – reading the news items surrounding Donald Trump’s presidency has been disheartening, to say the least. While it is no secret that I’m no fan of Mr Trump’s, this is not a political statement.

Alternative Facts Sell

It’s not so much about what is discussed and broadcast (that’s a separate story entirely) – but how. And that concerns both President Trump (including his infamously incessant and often nocturnal tweets), his entourage, as well as some of the media. Tabloid, broadsheet and those in between.

The media have an important role in our society: as the Forth Estate, they must provide a public check on the activities of all branches of government, representing the interest of the people. The press must, as former Australian senator Don Chipp plainly put it in 1980, “keep the bastards honest“.

And many indeed do. Unwaveringly, impartially, fairly. Often even no matter the consequences, or personal cost.

But when influential media organisations that have the ear (and eyes) of millions, no longer take diligent care to truthfully and usefully inform, something lazy and dangerous is sneaking into our daily lives:

Misinformation, fear and skewed world-views.

The telling of ‘alternative facts‘ that the speaker knows will be taken as actual facts (and acted upon). The cashing-in on hype and rehashing of a trending topic without adding anything useful, but done simply to get online traffic or sell more papers.

Readers are sold short both ways.

As a copywriter, I, like so many others in my profession, take pride in creating content that is useful, clear, informative and true. Long before the most recent US election (or the one prior) was on the horizon, my mission as a writer and business owner has been this:

Here’s to No More Crap Content!

The slightly longer version of that vision goes like this (do indulge me and my soapbox moment):

“We get riled by hollow click-bait articles, misleading and ostentatious headlines, and cookie-cutter writing.
Lazy research, lacklustre composition and shoddy grammar make us break out in hives.
The world needs more well-written pieces that have substance, purpose and that deliver what they promise.”

It enrages and pains me to see language abused and readers fed tawdry content too often right now. I’m one of those readers.

And I’m in equal measure pissed off, worried and saddened.

Just Because It Works, Doesn’t Mean It’s Right

The terrible grammar and lack of linguistic eloquence of one of the globe’s most powerful politicians gives me alternate shivers and uncomfortable nervous giggle-snorts of disbelieve that anyone in such a role would broadcast such drivel. But the power of this simple and simplistic language to a hungry audience is not lost on me.

As a communicator, Mr Trump has nailed the tone and style his target audience laps up. Points to him for that.

But it leaves me distraught that this and other kinds of inflammatory communication seem to have a firm and accepted place nowadays. In a more-divided world, we tend to get lost in our own echo chambers too often these days.

With so much information at, literally, our fingertips, have we really become so lazy or disinterested that we cannot bear to read or write deeper, to question, to not just produce or consume the lowest hanging fruit?

I feel compelled to add to our writers’ vision – the mental image of what the future will or could be like – something for the media (and the President) that should go without saying: always be truthful in your writing, your communications.

Respect the facts; be clear, be honest, be precise.

Be of use.
Be good.
Be fair.

This post was originally published on the Cavalletti Communications blog in February 2017; it has been slightly updated.