Mass Media Against Totalitarianism
How Can Journalism Fight Propaganda?
Enrique Castejon-Lara
@ECastejonL
Abstract
Usually,
certain government representatives and political leaders use their public
relevance to impose through press their ideas in people, although some or all
of them do not fit to real facts. Systematically, they use the journalism credibility
on audiences and its news techniques for their own ideological benefits.
Historically,
journalism has privileged government and other relevant public news sources
because of their assumed reliability. Reason? Their prominence. However, this
standard practice has become through time a double-edged sword for truth —an Achilles’
heel, indeed.
Totalitarian
governments and some political leaders, largely, have been using that journalistic
practice for their own benefits. They know that independent reporters always
repeat “objectively” what they say, and audiences tend to believe them. In
other words, propaganda promoters frequently include fake or altered facts press
declarations in their ideological strategy’s campaigns. In addition,
propagandists are experts offering “attractive” declarations and “scoop traps” to
increase reporters’ interest in covering them.
For that
reasons, journalists have to increase their fact checking task to avoid
divulgation of fake news. At the same time, they have also to place
propagandist declarations on the real news context and continuously clarify to
audiences that the ideas exposed are responsibility of that news sources. In
other words, reporters have to rethink some traditional journalistic criteria.
Constructing
liar source barriers is the only way to stop —and, maybe, defeat— propaganda, which
is trying constantly to use press credibility for your own ideological
benefits.
