The press still doesn’t have an editorial strategy to deal with lies in election campaigns
(Article translated from a text originally published in Portuguese, using Google Translator.)
The Damares Alves episode, involving alleged sexual violence against children on the island of Marajó, showed how the Brazilian press is bewildered by the normalization of lying as an electoral tool.
The statements by the former Minister of Women, Family, and Human Rights proved to be so very unlikely that most newspaper readers did not worry about the credibility of the news, starting to pay more attention to Damares’ real intentions. It was clear that the evangelical pastor, a double for a political activist, intended to generate panic among undecided voters on the eve of the second round of voting for president of the Republic.
The deliberate levity with which far-right politicians have begun to incorporate lies into their electoral discourse puts the press in a complicated professional dilemma: ignore the falsification, distortion, and omission of information to prevent its promoters from achieving their intended goals; or promote the checking of all the news under suspicion, a slow, complex process capable of generating new electoral controversies.
Unfortunately, few media outlets made this choice clearly because they were conditioned by the old rule that you have to hear both sides to demonstrate impartiality. An exemption that loses its raison d’être when the lie is transformed into an electoral tool. In these circumstances, when the use of facts, data, and untrue statements becomes normal in political disputes, journalism cannot be neutral because this goes against its fundamental mission, which is to provide citizens with information that helps them to avoid wrong choices.
The rule of listening to both sides is valid when the divergence of opinions and positions occurs in complex issues where the diversity of perceptions is an important factor for the clarification of the public. When the divergence involves a fact, data, or statement that is notoriously false or untrue, the concern with veracity is much more important than impartiality because of possible irremediable consequences. Therefore, the press should not give space to the liar, or liar, to promote something that will cause harm to society as a whole.
A very complex challenge
Journalism has always treated the lie as an exception that must be reprimanded and deconstructed by verifying the reliability of data and facts under suspicion. But when falsification, distortion, and decontextualization are routinely used by a candidate, checking all lies is virtually impossible because of the time and accuracy required to check. Take the example of debates between presidential candidates. The pace and volume of information that, in theory, should be checked, would imply the interruption of the debate almost every minute, not to mention the time consumed in checking the data presented.
But that’s not all. The normalization of lying during election periods changes the nature of political narratives. Journalism is still attached to an analytical approach to facts, data, and events mentioned in statements and interviews with candidates. The embarrassment of using falsehoods in electoral discourse disappeared because the most important thing is how they influence people’s perceptions, especially those less informed or those most contaminated by political passion and xenophobia. For this reason, far-right candidates no longer have any qualms about lying because what matters is not the reliability of what is said or written, but how the voter will incorporate the lie into their worldview and their voting decision.
This is a professional reality that has not yet been explored by journalism because right-wing extremism, as a significant electoral protagonist, is also a new phenomenon. Due to the undemocratic nature of this political movement, the rules created by journalism conditioned by the democratic model are not applicable. Journalism professionals and researchers thus have no alternative but to start from the study of concrete reality, to discover how and why lies manage to contaminate so many people. Only with these data will it be possible to start thinking about editorial strategies based on reality and not on conceptions inherited from another political context. (see the Portuguese article The Vacillations of Journalism in the coverage of Threats to Democracy)
The option of researching the phenomenon of the growth of the extreme right in various parts of the world is emphatically defended by Margareth Sullivan, former ombudsman of The New York Times and now a columnist at The Washington Post. She says it is essential to be more concerned with the broadest possible contextualization of the statements and promises of candidates, especially those on the far right, than with the rush to publish the news.
