The News Today- Quid Est Veritas ? (What is Truth ? )

Since the advent of 24/7 cable news, the great irony of constant news coverage is that public trust in that coverage continues to decline. Countless studies show that television audience trust in news coverage is half of what it used to be, prior to thirty years ago, which was half again what it had been in the 1960s. In essence, the public’s trust in the news media has fallen four-fold in the last fifty years and most of this decline has occurred since the advent of cable news television.

So pronounced is this lack of trust in what is being broadcast as news coverage, the ground has become fertile for conspiracy theories attached to practically every event reported- be it a school shooting, as happened in Parkland, Florida, a train colliding with a garbage truck, as happened in Crozet, Virginia, or an upset political victory that flew in the face of conventional wisdom, and called into question the expertise of pundit and pollster, alike.

We’ve seen examples of manufactured news, like when Dan Rather purported to find what became known as the Killian documents, alleging that former President George W. Bush had once been declared unfit for duty in the Texas Air National Guard and suspended from that service. This was in 2004, when Bush was in the midst of his re-election campaign against John Kerry. The story was a complete fabrication on the part of Rather, whose reputation as a viable journalist had already been on the downward slide since his coverage of the Reagan administration. At that time, bumper stickers which said, “Rather Biased” began to appear as an outward expression of skepticism on the part of the general public. “Rather-gate, “as it came to be known, was the first documented example of false news manufacturing by a major television network, although there had been significant instances of such similar suspicions reaching back into the early days of television broadcasting.

Belief in news coverage or, rather, in the declining lack thereof, hasn’t been helped by the constant drone of news coverage in the wake of cable news, and can be traced to a single event on which saturated news coverage overdosed on the evening of June 17th, 1994.

After his attorneys convinced O. J. Simpson to turn himself in to Los Angeles authorities, following their issuing of a warrant for his arrest in the double homicide of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson and a waiter named Ronald Goldman, and in an attempt to flee from these charges, Simpson was riding in his own white Ford Bronco, driven by his friend, A.J. Cowlings, heading north on Interstate 405, with police cruisers following in pursuit. Overhead, at first, was a single news helicopter, but before the agonizing low speed chase ended, no fewer than nine helicopters had joined in to cover the “event.” 24/7 news coverage of the trial soon followed, and at one point, there was not a time when one could turn on the television and not find coverage of the murder, which lasted for months.

It is said that quantity does not mean quality, and so constant and jaundiced has news coverage become since the Simpson trial, that its watching public has grown skeptical of practically every story covered. Even with the news following the school shooting in Parkland, the slow drip-drip of revelations, like the number of sheriff’s deputies refusing to enter the school building and intercept the shooter, lends credence to this skepticism. Scripted interviews with “students,” some of whom are suspected of being planted by news media for desired effect and messaging, don’t do anything to encourage confidence on the part of television audience, and we have arrived upon a time where all news has become something to be taken with a grain of salt.

In the Gospel of John, chapter 18, verse 38, Pontius Pilate, having heard the accused Jesus of Nazareth’s claim to be a “witness to the truth,” posed the following question to Christ, “Quid est veritas?” (what is truth?), prior to proclaiming to the crowd of onlookers that he believed Jesus to be innocent of having committed any crime. Yet, it was Barabbas for whom the crowd demanded commutation of a death sentence.

Sad that we must all ask ourselves the same question, “What is the truth?” when seeing the news of the day. An uniformed, or mis-informed, public is the greatest threat to representative democracy, and in the end, may prove to be the very reason for the deception that is the mainstream media, as it exists, today.

-Drew Nickell, 24 February 2018

© 2018 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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