News media, we are told, should always objectively pursue the truth. That at the very least, they ought to ‘err on the side of the truth’.
But could the pursuit of the truth be a fool’s errand for news organisations?
If we define the truth as ‘something that is in accordance with the facts or reality’, then it would be easy to argue that the media cannot objectively deliver on such a promise.
Reason? Whose reality, whose facts?
In a complex world, very few things lend themselves to a black or white, true or false interpretation. On so many issues we simply cannot agree on what is true and what is not, so much so in the post-truth, social media-fuelled hyper information era.
Example: Deputy President William Ruto’s campaign convoy is reportedly stoned at Kondele in Kisumu. Fact?
That’s about the only thing we can come close to an agreement on about that incident, much as I came across some social media accounts disputing that there was any stoning – that the vehicles could have been damaged elsewhere and taken to Kondele to stage-manage an attack.
Nonetheless, if we agree that there was a violent incident where the DP and his entourage were involved, that is just one aspect of the story.
What about the other elements, the 5Ws and H questions – who, what, when, why, where and how – that good journalism must seek to answer?
It is nigh impossible to agree on who was involved and why. Was it a case of people fighting for “mobilisation” handouts as alleged by the police?
Was it ODM supporters as claimed by the DP and his team? Or did DP supporters instigate the violence to perpetuate a certain narrative against ODM leader Raila Odinga and his supporters?
Given the context I am persuaded that pursuing the “truth” is a Sisyphus curse for the media.
If we cannot agree on what is “true”, then it should be futile to promise that which you cannot deliver.
I am of the view that the media should instead prioritise building and cultivating trust with audiences.
My supposition is that the ‘truth” should be a by-product of what the news media do in cultivating trust with audiences and not the other way round.
Trust is as much about credibility as it is about diligence. It is about telling the consumer that we have done our best; we have looked at the story from multiple angles, we have spoken to and interacted with as many stakeholders as we could and this is what we found out.
It is about zooming out to survey and understand the context of the story before zooming in to the minutiae details so as to expose consumers to a cogent interplay of multiple perspectives.
It is about not taking everything at face value, about doubting until you can verify. It is about asking why five times (as they do at Toyota) until you get to the root cause of an issue.
Trust is about accepting and acknowledging that the first version of the story will most likely be incomplete – and probably wrong – and therefore subject to continuous revision and updating.
Trust demands transparency – where you got your information from and from whom.
Trust means eschewing the shiny object syndrome – staying with the story when everyone on Twitter has moved on to the next trending topic.
My first boss in the media in Kisumu, Haroun Wandalo, used to say that journalists should stay with and pursue a story to its logical conclusion.
In newsroom lingo it is called follow-ups. Good journalists know that you are just a follow-up away from a great story.
Call it shiny object syndrome, conveyor belt journalism, he-said-she-said, or whatever you will, the media just don’t stay with stories long enough to unearth and gain deeper insights.
That erodes consumer confidence, especially when the big tech algorithms are configured to snare consumer attention through click-baiting, and where social media feeds are filled with content primed to go viral.
There is dizzying obsession with gadgetry and the latest industry buzzwords—digital or mobile first, customer-centric, paywalls, reader revenue, subscriptions, memberships, analytics, business model innovation etc—which ideally should be fine. But one would imagine those are secondary issues, just mere enablers of value delivery.
The primary issue should be; why should the consumer trust and therefore choose you as opposed to someone else?
The advantage of this approach, I believe, is that inevitably a clear picture of what transpired – of the truth, if you like – eventually emerges.
For those in media I would say, seek ye first trust…and the rest shall follow.
