The reasonability of misinformation
Republican media is peddling lies with reason and professionalism — and GOP partisans are never coming back to mainstream news
Nikki Usher, PhD
For those who do not regularly watch Fox or stream OAN YouTube videos or Infowars, and for those who do not regularly peruse Brietbart or RedState, it is so easy to think that right wing media is created entirely by GOP partisans wearing tinfoil hats.
Who are these journalists who keep perpetuating this monstrosity of lies around voter fraud?, ask those of us who see ourselves living in reality. Yes, who are these journalists?, as I call them, because these are professionals who know what they are doing and do it with all the symbolic markers and professionalism of their mainstream counterparts.
I want to be completely clear that when it comes to COVID-19 conspiracy, Q-Anon, or voter fraud, there is little true about the journalism being produced, but that does not mean journalists are not creating rationally argued content. These are well-made arguments with bad facts.
Misinformation to those of us who believe in the reality-based media is information to the 75% of Republicans who don’t trust mainstream journalism any more. In fact, if you are reading this piece, it’s highly likely that you’re not a Republican, as GOP partisans tend to trust far fewer mainstream news sites than their Democrat counterparts.
Rather, for GOP partisans, trusted media can be found in sickly-produced, smart, logical commentary that is nonetheless false. The first step to fighting misinformation is to understand that this misinformation is designed as reasonable, rational news content that many see and understand to be journalism.
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The misinformation is so powerful because it is not illogical and does not look like fake news but uses all the same tactics of mainstream news: appeals to expertise, statistics, either/ or framing, and slick and professional news production.
Consider voter fraud “coverage”: The slate of Republican voices brought on or quoted are often elected officials with a storied past in their locales or empowered legislators. Their arguments are unreasonable for anyone vested in reality-based media, but this misinformation comes across as well-reasoned, internally logically consistent, and smart.
Even the digital YouTube universe of conspiracy offers well-produced content that has all the markings of professional news judgment — without the reason and adherence to actual reality we have come to expect of mainstream news.
Plandemic, the misinformation COVID “documentary,” spread like wildfire not because stupid people wearing tinfoil hats were sharing lies, but because the video was full of smart, well-reasoned (but false!) arguments. The genius of Plandemic was that it appealed to expertise, albeit of institutionally-scorned, self-declared Cassandras and outcasts of immunology.
To fight misinformation, this veneer of reasonability and rational bad arguments must be confronted by those of us trying to understand how anyone could possibly believe the litany of false claims and conspiracy theories we’ve seen fly over the past four years.
I don’t want to legitimize the right-wing news ecosystem, but I do want to make it clear that the right-wing news ecosystem appears legitimate to GOP partisans because it looks and feels like journalism.
To understand why information on its own cannot win the battle against slick misinformation that comes from trusted GOP news sources, please sit down and hate watch/read. Doing so is a good reminder that these are seasoned, professional journalists who know what they are doing. Alex Jones has been at it so long that you can find his cameo in Richard Linklater’s 2001 film, Waking Life.
Mainstream journalists need to understand that for many Americans, watching Fox seriously, or reading and watching Brietbart for its careful framing is understood as the duty of an informed citizen and as a defense to save America.
You see, the GOP media makes it clear that the GOP is the true defender of democracy and faithful elections. If you read the op-eds and listen to the commentators on Fox and beyond, you can see this distortion about the election defended as a clear articulation of American values. The Republicans are patriots, and everyone else is destroying America.
This is an old rhetorical line, but it is important for mainstream journalists and those of us who simply cannot understand why anyone might believe this schlock to remember that the people paying attention to politics are deeply engaged. They consider themselves informed even if they are paying attention to false information. As much as we’d like them to trust mainstream news, the sources they listen to are rhetorically-sound and convincing (lies disguised by good arguments).
For every Facebook or Twitter fact-check or warning about misinformation, it’s simply more of a reminder to GOP partisans that platforms are trying to keep the truth from circulating.
In fact, it is high time journalists, democrats, and think-tank types realize that the GOP is never going to come back to mainstream news, except to malign it. There is no reclaiming trust. We just have to deal with the toxic environment that has been enabled by the Web, with the vast majority of right-wing digital news sites born post-2008.
How does reality-based journalism fix this? It is time for journalists to recognize that appealing to expertise and to information as a way to persuade is simply not enough. It is time for journalists to realize that to fail to put out a moral valence in reporting — to stop calling lies “falsehoods,” as a “falsehood” is a far weaker form of journalism than journalism emboldened by a willingness to use the strength of morality to make a claim.
Journalists need to understand, most of all, that the most engaged Republican partisans are not ever, ever going to come back into the fold, not with the best neutrality or the most respected of GOP commentators on CNN or in the opinion pages of national newspapers.
If the past four years taught us anything, it is that appeals to information do not work if the conveyor of information itself is not trusted. The only way out of this is to use the power of mainstream journalistic gatekeeping that has supposedly come back into full force for information that does more than appeal to reason but also to passion — providing moral clarity along with truthful content.
This moral leadership may not work, but it at least removes the delusion that information will win the battle for the soul of democracy.
Nikki Usher is an associate professor at the University of Illinois’ College of Media and a fellow with the Open Markets Institute’s Center for Journalism and Liberty. Her next book, News for the Rich, White, and Blue: How Place and Power Distort American Journalism, will be out in June.
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