HOW CAN JOURNALISM FIGHT PROPAGANDA?

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.