An “Assumption of Bad Faith”: Using Fake News Rhetoric to Create Journalistic Teaching Moments

Given rising levels of hostility and distrust toward the press, this project explores how journalists negotiate, adapt, and work to transform this social climate to both get what they need for their stories and (ideally) improve relations with community members. Interviews with 38 journalists who frequently encounter anti-media rhetoric from sources revealed strategies for mitigating distrust and hostility. Although some strategies were counterproductive, others were transformative, as journalists turned conversations with community members into teaching moments. By doing this, journalists can educate the public about the purpose of the press and journalists’ routines, thereby spreading news literacy knowledge with sources and members of their community.

Sample

Participants were 38 local journalists from across the U.S. who worked in source-facing roles (ie., reporters, photographers, MMJs).

Main Findings

All but one participant shared at least one, but often multiple experiences in which they were explicitly called “fake news,” the phrase made popular by Trump, or, relatedly, were accused of being biased by sources they approached for a story. Andrew, a newspaper reporter of nine years working in an urban city in the Midwest, summed up the situation that most participants experienced when they approached community members to get their comments for stories. He explained that upon first meeting someone and telling them that you are a journalist who would like to interview them, “there's sort of like the rush to judgment or assumption of bad faith. I think much more often it comes from the job, just the general perception of what a journalist does and that kind of thing.” On finding out that he is a journalist, people’s guard immediately goes up and they get defensive. He and others noted that that response has increased in the four or five years since Trump moved into the political spotlight. Most often, would-be sources (community members journalists approached and asked to interview for a story) simply refused to work with the media, reciting many of Trump’s phrases about fake news, liberal bias, having an agenda, twisting words, and so on. As Andrew points out, most of this stems from a place of ignorance, because those people have never worked with the media before and don’t actually know how journalists operate. The only pictures in their heads, per say, are based on what they see on TV and social media, and many of those pictures include Trump’s anti-media rhetoric. To combat this, journalists used three key strategies to deal with hostility in the form of anti-media rhetoric and a general distrust of the news media: (1) they reframe the hostility to get usable content, (2) accept the hostility as part of the job and find alternative sources/story angles to get the job done, and (3) they transform the hostility to create teaching moments between themselves and t

Policy recommendations/implications

By creating journalistic teaching moments, reporters are working to transform the situation, leading to at least a small shift in the climate of distrust toward journalists one source at a time. In this way, and without intending to, journalists were also helping to build the knowledge aspect of news literacy that community members were lacking. Although this strategy requires more time and effort on the part of the reporter, it has the potential to create long-term change. Sources who have a positive experience with a reporter might be more likely to speak to future reporters. They may also develop more positive feelings about the press, which they might share with others who believe in fake news rhetoric. In addition to individual reporters preparing situational scripts and newsrooms investing in more formal news literacy training, journalists can also adopt a transparent method for gaining consent from community members before they are interviewed.