Tell the story and get it right

“I don’t trust the media.”

“They are lying to us, again”

“It’s fake news and a cover-up.”

And here we go again. This time, it was—quite literally—the storm of the century, at least in western North and South Carolina as well as parts of Georgia and eastern Tennessee. In the wake of another natural disaster, the recovery is being executed on the ground and communicated through social media—with a flooded chasm of truth flailing somewhere in between. And now, Florida is bracing for yet another storm—one of unprecedented power and potential destruction.

While some have added the Federal Emergency Management Agency to the villains’ gallery, my biggest concern beyond the health and safety of my neighbors in the Carolinas is their ongoing view of the media in the aftermath. More precisely, who do we trust and why?

Just days after Hurricane Helene caused so much damage in the Appalachian region, social media reports trickled in about neighbors helping neighbors, private agencies bringing massive relief, and even government agencies stepping up in potentially record time.

Then came the onslaught of negativity and misinformation: claims about FEMA confiscating citizens’ gifts, blocking airport access for mercy missions, paying only $750 per person, and then running out of money because it was all going to illegal immigrants or the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

There’s no doubt that some of these claims should be investigated and questions asked and others dismissed. But when mainstream media outlets answer with official responses, online commenters pummel not just the government but also the messengers with charges of “fake,” “liberal,” and “cover-up.” Then, the podcasters, YouTubers, and TikTokers post and rage on, gathering followers who demand neither truth nor fairness. It seems the more reckless you are on social media, the higher you score.

Of course, liberal bias in the media is a long-standing conservative article of faith. I won’t challenge that assumption here because some national news outlets keep showing their stripes, particularly in politics and cable news channel commentary. But even bias, bad as it is, is not the same as promoting conspiracies or fake news. Right and left-leaning opinion media often agree on the facts but diverge wildly on what they mean.

I believe we may now be at a tipping point, though, in an anti-media narrative that is post-truth and post-trust. This mistrust of the media makes its way from the national level down to local outlets, and every journalist trying to do the work is tainted. In conservative ranks, we now have millions who trust neither the product nor the process of journalism—some don’t even know what it is.

I still believe most journalists are motivated by one simple agenda: What’s going on in the world today? They seek sources of information they trust to which they can attribute their reporting. In other words, reporters are only as good as their sources. Most news happens before the media show up, so media depend on those sources for an accurate account. Contrary to the idealism or naïveté of much of the public, the “truth” is not sitting in a bank out there waiting for withdrawal. Rather, news people must find the best available version of the truth from reliable sources.

This is not moral relativism. Truth exists, but it is sometimes elusive. Ask three eyewitnesses to a car crash what they saw and you get three different shadings. Journalists are often working with second- or even third-hand accounts. They are at the mercy of those filters and the best practice of “according to.”

I worry for the future of a free society that needs accurate information about its government, institutions, and fellow citizens. If we don’t trust the media with a semblance of standards and practice, then who? Each other? Do we realize our friends and followers on social media have none of the standards I have tried to explain here? The guardrails are off, the share button is on.

Journalism—news-gathering—is hard work. At the local level, the ones who go out and get the news are usually young, poorly paid, and sometimes too minimally edited. But they are still out there—not for an agenda or a political party but for us. They mess up, sure, but I have never seen one pressured to cover up—only to get it right.

Before we make journalists the source and subject of our post-Helene or post-Milton anger, maybe we should try to appreciate the work they are doing on the scene under extraordinary circumstances. They are another type of first responder, getting the information a community needs to start building back. Cleaning up from a crisis is a long and messy process. So, too, is telling the story—and getting it right.