So now it is just being baldly stated: facts are dead. This week Trump henchman Scottie Nell Hughes said on NPR that "there are no such thing as facts". Just like that. On air. When people were listening.
I think we can all agree that is as daft as it is dangerous.
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So how did we get here? The more time I spend in America, the more worried I become not just about the abandonment of fact, but how we came to a point where trust in the media is the lowest it has been since 1972. A recent Gallup poll concluded: "Before 2004, it was common for a majority of Americans to profess at least some trust in the mass media, but … now, only about a third of the US has any trust in the Fourth Estate, a stunning development for an institution designed to inform the public."
It is frequently claimed that we are living in a world where correct information is no longer considered important. The Oxford Dictionary called "post-truth" the word of the year, defining it as "relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief".
The loss of faith in fact is being enabled by a broader, insidious trend: the demise of the expert; politicians and pundits ridiculing of those who bring knowledge to bear on public debate by those who have none. Learned scientists dismissed as raging greenies. Eminent lawyers – Justin Gleeson, Gillian Triggs – dismissed as disobedient hacks. Journalists who report and record and check cast as partisan.
British conservative politician Michael Gove even crowed in the lead-up to the Brexit vote: "people have had enough of experts!" Until they, say, go to the doctor or dentist or fly in a plane.
What is particularly troubling is that it is not just individual journalists but the very act of journalism itself – holding truth to power, making elected officials accountable, fact checking and seeking transparency – increasingly, repeatedly being denied credibility not on the grounds of factual error, but by those who don't like the stories.
Entire programs, like that of the factually correct Four Corners on the treatment of children on Nauru, condemned as bleeding-heart leftism. Deeply reported pieces on women accusing Donald Trump of sexually predatory behaviour trashed as mainstream media bias.
It's lazy commentary, despicable politics and dangerous shortsightedness.
But the media, too, clearly need to examine their own shortcomings in order to restore trust. We are facing a monstrous, growing crisis of credibility and we cannot be complacent, or simply point fingers at the post-truthers as fools. Because we, too, need to rethink the way we report, and who is reporting.
The composition of newsrooms – too long dominated and controlled by white middle-class men – is crucial. This has historically shaped what is considered to be news, although women – again, usually white and middle class – have made some inroads.
But we must also wrestle with the uncomfortable fact that the more liberal and educated journalists have become, the less they have been trusted. For here and globally, newsrooms have been confirmed as "relatively liberal" by legion studies.
As political scientist Sally Young wrote in How Australia Decides (2010), Australian reporters were "more likely to consider themselves left of centre than the population at large, although, compared to American journalists, Australians were much more likely to choose a middle-of-the-road position".
The skew to the left in America is strong. A 2014 study by Indiana University found the number of full-time US reporters identifying as Republican had plummeted from 18 per cent in 2002 to 7.1 per cent in 2013 (28.1 per cent identified as Democrat). In recent years, this trend seems to have worsened.
It's the same in Britain. In a 2015 study of 700 British journalists, Reuters found 98 per cent had a higher degree, and about half of all journalists were left, while the other half were divided between centre and right wing. As in Australia, those with right-wing political beliefs are more likely to be promoted to higher positions.
I don't know how much this had to do with the fact that the largest demographic shifts of the decade – Brexit and Trump – escaped most commentators. But if we don't report widely, we won't be read widely. And if we don't implement true diversity in newsrooms, as ABC managing director Michelle Guthrie has been urging, then we will lose the trust of an increasingly segmented audience.
And it's not a stupid audience, and not one with a disregard for truth or expertise.
Polls show that, despite the pundits' assault on their status, faith in experts is actually growing while faith in journalists has crumbled. And people still want fact checking - if done by sources they trust. The Rasmussen Reports – a US polling company – found in September that less than a third of US voters trust media fact-checking of candidates' comments. Two-thirds believed news organisations distort facts to help favoured candidates. Rasmussen, it should be pointed out, is conservative leaning.
There is no simple solution for how to dissolve the fog of lies and fake news that has blurred our political landscape. But if members of the media are to demand transparency of those in political power, we must also demand it of ourselves.
Julia Baird hosts The Drum on ABCTV
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