With just weeks to go until a U.S. election thrown into chaos by the pandemic, concerns U.S. President Trump is deliberately sowing discord about the validity of the result, and a torrent of misinformation and conspiracy theories online, professional journalism and factual information will be needed more than ever.
That was the takeaway message of Sally Buzbee, senior vice president and executive editor at the Associated Press (AP), who was speaking at one of the聽聽events on September 29.
鈥淲e have an enormous responsibility as American journalists to stand up for facts, whatever those facts are鈥�, she told the panel. 鈥淲e will make our decisions and our journalism based on facts, and people need to seek out credible sources of factual journalism.鈥�
Buzbee said that journalists across the country had to hold themselves to the 鈥渉ighest standards鈥� to fact-check and provide fact-based news to voters, both before, during and after the election.
“The amount of clear, explanatory journalism we鈥檙e going to have to do leading up to the election and after the election is going to be intense. I think everyone in American journalism need to join hands and try to support each other through this process”, she said.
Among those taking part in the event,聽, were Stephen Engelberg, editor-in-chief of ProPublica, and Tia Mitchell, Washington correspondent for the Atlanta Journal Constitution (AJC). The event was moderated by John Mulholland, the editor-in-chief of the Guardian US.
During a wide-ranging discussion which jumped from the Supreme Court nomination to the Electoral College, the speakers agreed that the challenges journalists faced in reporting the upcoming election were perhaps greater than ever before due to the coronavirus, so called 鈥渇ake news鈥�, and the unpredictability of the president.
Asked how her outlet was preparing to cover the election in which the result may not be known for days, Buzbee said: 鈥淲hat we aim to do is aggressively fact check in real time. By having experts go on camera and push back against claims by the president that the election has been rigged.
She added: 鈥淲e are going to double down on precision on accuracy. If it is a close race, its likely to be a while before the full result is known. We are going to be exceptionally careful about reporting this.鈥�
Mitchell added: 鈥淲e鈥檒l have to be prepared to report on a lot of litigation and a lot of small court battles at the local level for congressional races. We鈥檒l have to pay attention to how Trump handles a transition if Biden wins.鈥�
Engelberg said this meant preparing contingency plans for journalists and reporting crews to remain in certain U.S. swing states for days to cover possible court battles over ballots.聽He added that when he was coordinating the NYT鈥檚 coverage of the 2000 presidential election, he sent 13 reporters to Florida at once to cover the run off between President Bush and challenger Al Gore. 鈥淚t was an incredibly difficult, complicated story and it was only happening in one state. So we have to prepare ourselves鈥�, he said.
Discussing the issue of polarization in American politics, Engelberg said that social media algorithms and networks were driving voters into more extreme camps, meaning trust in fact-based news was being increasingly replaced by conspiracy theories.
Giving an example of The New York Times鈥檚 investigation into Donald Trump鈥檚 tax returns, Buzbee said: 鈥淧eople in America are so polarized that they won鈥檛 believe in credible investigative journalism. They just switch off.鈥�
She added: 鈥淭hat鈥檚 my biggest challenge and struggle right now. We have to plough that middle ground. This is what I dedicate my life to. But I don鈥檛 have easy answers. We have to actually shove the facts into everything we鈥檙e doing and that鈥檚 hard. It鈥檚 changing how we work. We鈥檙e trying to figure out solutions in real time.鈥�
Mitchell said that bridging this gap was a challenge due to 鈥渘ews deserts鈥� 鈥� rural areas in which the closure of newspapers has left no source of local information. 鈥淭his means their outlet is Fox News鈥�, she explained. 鈥淏ut unless people actively seek and make the effort to read other news, they won鈥檛 get it.鈥� Another issue, she added, was that journalists themselves often did not seek to move outside their bubble and speak to marginalized or under-represented voters, both black and white.
On reporting Trump,聽Mitchell explained that “context is very important. You can鈥檛 just say let elected officials say what they want to say in a vacuum”, she said.聽Taking the Black Lives Matter protests as an example, she added: 鈥淔rom the right, we see those protests being shaped and coloured in a way that is not always accurate. We as journalists can鈥檛 change what they say, but we have to give it context and give it a full understanding so when people read what the President says, we give them more accuracy. That鈥檚 something I stress to my colleagues particularly as a black woman.鈥�