Much ink has been spilled over the past decade about how journalists and the news media have failed to report effectively on the rise of Trump. I think much of that analysis misses the point.
To illustrate the point I think it misses, let’s look at this recent posting:
The news here is that Trump lied at Davos. It hardly matters what he lied about; the news is that the President of the United States stood up in front of a room full of world leaders and lied over and over. That’s what’s important.
Steve Herman knows that, and he thinks he reported that. He thinks what he wrote above is a big, flashing, neon sign shouting, “Hey, look, Trump lied again!”
Steve thinks he told the reader Trump lied by writing what Trump said and then writing the truth. Anyone with reading comprehension skills will understand his point.
Do you see the problem?
Here, let me help:
“In 2023, 28% of adults scored at or below Level 1, 29% at Level 2, and 44% at Level 3 or above… Anything below Level 3 is considered “partially illiterate”.
In other words, more than half the U.S. population will read what Steve Herman wrote above and not draw the obvious conclusion that Trump lied.
Most liberal journalists in the United States are writing for people as educated as they are.
Smart, intelligent, complex reporting is necessary—indeed, it is essential!—but it’s not sufficient. Journalists also need to get the message across to people who haven’t been taught to understand what Steve wrote.
Why do most journalists get this wrong?
It’s hard for most educated people to think like uneducated people. Highly educated people’s brains have been, quite literally, formed by their education. Although some educated people are great at understanding how people not like them think, it’s actually a difficult skill most people don’t have.
Journalists are taught, trained, and expected to write for an informed, educated audience. Starting with their first essay in primary school and all the way through to the long, investigative articles they write for Pulitzer-winning newspapers, no teacher, grader, or editor every says to them, “This prose you wrote assumes the reader is educated. Can you dumb it down a bit?” On the contrary, erudition gets them better grades and better jobs. That last bit is important: you can’t get the best journalism jobs by targeting your writing at uneducated people.
Many journalists consider it “beneath them” to write for an uneducated audience. They think they’re upholding the standards of real journalism (unlike, you know those hacks on Fox News and OAN). They think reporting in a way that uneducated people will understand would demean their profession.
In fact, what is actually demeaning their profession is that our country is falling to fascism to a large extent because of journalists’ failure to report the news in a way the majority of the country can understand.
(Just to be clear, I don’t mean to pick on Steve here. This problem is endemic to the entire journalism profession in the U.S.)
