Take an honest look around social media or news and you’ll notice a multitude of completely opposing, yet certain, perspectives on any given issue. Further, you might find people will tell you that they are often confused about what is true these days. Can I trust what I read online? Can I trust alternative news? Can I trust mainstream news? Are these platforms always wrong? Or maybe just sometimes? Do we really know that ‘fake news’ is fake? How can we tell?

The questions can feel dizzying, yet I feel we are seeing the result of several factors playing out, including that of a mainstream culture that has been choosing to shun important conversations for quite some time now. Of course, those who might be into more ‘fringey’ topics have a role in this too, But let me explain so we’re clear and not offending each other.

First off, we’ll get it out of the way right off the top, yes, I do feel that ‘conspiratorial’ thinking, for lack of a better word, has increased in recent years. Sometimes, the reasons for this are good, evidence based and justified – conspiracies do exist in our world. Other times however, many ideas are brought on with no evidence or poor logic, and this is a problem that some feel needs to be dealt with through force of censorship. I chronicled my specific thoughts on the damage of poor conspiratorial thinking in an essay I wrote last year called “Conspireality: Time for a Serious Conversation?”

The basic summary is that conspiracy does exist in our world today, we have evidence to back that up, but if we aren’t careful in sticking to actual evidence that exists, and instead just make wild claims, conversation will get shut down around these topics. This won’t allow mainstream and alternative ideas to converge in any way.

Second, I want to note that just because there are a few fake conspiracies out there that gained steam, it doesn’t mean all conspiracy sounding topics are false. Remember that just 6 years ago someone would have laughed at you for believing UFOs are real – yet the US Navy has recently confirmed that they are in fact real. Following that admission comes further dialogue and exploration of evidence that we do have. This dialogue requires openness and mutual respect, something that didn’t exist prior to the mainstream telling some people it was OK for them to now believe in UFOs.

Were those ‘unhinged conspiracy theorists’ wrong in presenting the evidence they had that UFOs were real 6 years ago? No, we just weren’t willing to listen and were relying on a heavily bias mainstream culture to tell us what’s true.

NBC Journalist Bares All

So let’s take a quick look at some recent comments from a widely known mainstream media personality Lester Holt, who’s the anchor of NBC’s Nightly News. On March 30th, during his acceptance speech after receiving the Edward R. Murrow Award for Lifetime Achievement in Journalism, Holt stated:

Holt added:

“Decisions to not give unsupported arguments equal time are not a dereliction of journalistic responsibility or some kind of agenda, in fact, it’s just the opposite.”

“Imagine, if you would, what the pandemic would look like without the media holding leaders to account for vaccines rollouts or countering harmful misinformation or why some communities are being left behind,”

The irony, a journalist receiving a lifetime achievement award in journalism for breaking the number one rule in journalism: objectivity – and perhaps holding government and big corporations accountable.

The interesting part here is Holt likely does not believe he is breaking these rules. More than likely he feels it’s absolutely the right thing to do to not give platform to misinformation. I don’t doubt his intentions. This exercise of empathizing with someones perspective is something we have to continually practice before we go on attacking people for what WE think their beliefs and intentions are.

What I do doubt in Holt’s intentions is how he, and mainstream media in general, decides what is misinformation and what is not. This process has long seemed unclear to me.

Why should we not give platform to a doctor who feels COVID-19 tests may not be accurate, if they, in fact, may not be accurate? Why should we not give platform to scientific studies that bring into question the effectiveness of lockdowns if those lockdowns are not only harming people’s lives greatly but may in fact not be useful? Are we really to pretend that ideas that descent from mainstream worldview are not fact based all of the time? Or are we just working to protect our fragile mainstream worldviews?

6 years ago, should we not have investigated and pressed government to release UFO information because it was a well known conspiracy that was commonly laughed off by journalists, academics and politicians? We were told many times over the last 12 years that we shared ‘UFO misinformation’ when we wrote about the issue. But was that information really wrong? It’s funny now to see how many mainstream and alternative news sources are suddenly investing heavily in covering the subject – as if now that it’s OK to talk about UFOs. Mainstream sites like the New York Times or newcomers like The Drive are now the authority.

The key here is, if you’ve been ridiculed in the past, when you’re shown to be right, it doesn’t matter, the damage has already been done.

What about vaccines? Steam is gaining around certain issues associated with vaccines, issues that could be widely admitted as common knowledge only 3 or 4 years from now, so should we ignore all doctors and scientists who raise scientifically validated concern about vaccines simply because mainstream media and its hosts believe its misinformation? Who are they to say? Why do they trust some experts but not others? When this information is eventually widely known, are we then going to say The New York Times is now the authority on the issue even though they were wrong for decades?

You can very quickly see where the issue is here. We can very easily build a culture of doubt around any issue that we want to be false, and how we portray it in mainstream conversation feeds that culture. Then, without a doubt, we’ll see all others  fall in line with this cultural narrative without truly looking at all the facts.

It’s here where I think Holt missteps. When I probe many journalists or even doctors about whether they have looked into vaccine research that suggests they may be causing unintended illness they often tell me it has been debunked but have never looked into it themselves. When you do however, you begin to see that the vaccine issue is not one of just ‘science vs anti-science’, it’s a complex one, that we really should be openly talking about in the public eye to make sense of some glaring issues.

Instead, we’ve chosen to label those ‘other facts’ as misinformation, and give them no platform – just as mainstream award winning journalism intends.

Cornell Law School professor and media critic William A. Jacobson gave a statement to Fox News following Holt’s comments:

“In the real world, Holt’s advice simply justifies media political bias.”

Absolutely, and herein lies the hard truth: we’ve come to accept bad journalism as truth. That is to say, we’ve come to accept political bias and unbalanced inquiry into various subjects as good honest journalism, when in reality it’s subjective opinion passed off as certain truth. And look at the mess this culture is creating.

Some people distrust mainstream media because conspiracy analysts told them to, but the majority who don’t trust mainstream media don’t because they see how bad its process is. When will mainstream media take responsibility for this instead of just saying it’s unhinged conspiracy theorists that are ruining society? Sure, some poor conspiratorial thinking is happening out there, and responsibility has to be taken there too, but what’s worse is when citizens and experts have serious questions to ask and they are not addressed in mainstream dialogue because its ‘too controversial’ or doesn’t align with the agendas of pharmaceutical companies the mainstream media relies on to pay their bills.

When these conversations are censored and pushed to the fringes, that is to say ‘not given a platform,’ the level of inquiry and quality of thinking applied to these issues can sometimes suffer as less experts have the courage to weigh in and converge on ideas.

The Takeaway

The situation we are in is one that we’re all responsible for in some way, and various camps have to really take a step back and ask how they are contributing to a culture of confusion in an age of censorship.

True objectivity in mainstream journalism is somewhat rare, we can see that in the ease at which Holt made the comments he did. His comments reveal the type of culture that exists in mainstream newsrooms, it may not be malicious as some might assume, but it’s a culture, a groupthink, and most are likely honestly doing their best.

But, as citizens not in journalism, we have an opportunity to apply objectivity whenever we like, and the world just might need this level of effort to end our current meaning crisis.