Kathy Sheridan: Journalists must stop giving legs to fake news stories

Simon Coveney’s icily authoritative BBC interview on Sunday smashed a BBC norm. He minced the longstanding notion that any media outlet striving for balance must give equal weight to both sides. “You seem to be suggesting that there are two sides that are equal in this disagreement. There aren’t. There is one side that is breaking an agreement that was signed by both,” he said. That surely shook up elevenses in the shires.

Presenter Andrew Marr’s job was to articulate the “other side”, putting the questions that the endlessly vox-popped market-stall holders of Grimsby would want asked if they ever felt the urge to watch a politics show at 10am on a Sunday. His strategy was to frame baseless accusations as serious questions. “Are you seriously suggesting the EU would actually blockade goods going into Northern Ireland because that, on the face of it, is what is proposed by Michel Barnier?” he asked with breathless conviction, bedding in the notion of an EU out to starve the suffering people of Northern Ireland.

Coveney’s response was a steely rebuke to all journalists who have drifted down parallel tracks over the years. “Andrew, you’ve been following these negotiations for more than three years now and you’re a pretty good detail person. And you know that is a completely bogus argument.”

The point is that every story does not have two sides. There are lies, vested interests, distortions – and there is objective truth

But it is a conundrum. How do journalists discuss the frothings of political leaders which are evidently false while doing their duty to report? Remember the Leave.EU crowd gloating at the Remain side’s diligent challenges to the £350 million for the NHS and the 75 million Turks? As long as those two figures were endlessly repeated, Leave was winning. The figures were what people heard.

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Typically mendacious

The “blockade” idea had sprung from a typically blustery, mendacious Boris Johnson piece in Saturday’s Daily Telegraph. Well-researched journalists know his form. Yet his sensational claim was being recycled on a BBC flagship as the presenter’s own belief “on the face of it”.

It had no basis in fact – as brilliantly illustrated by Ed Miliband in the debate on the Internal Market Bill on Monday, when he twice offered to cede his speaking time to Johnson if the latter could point to anything in the Bill that backed up his assertion of a blockade. Johnson remained rooted to his seat, puffed.

On Monday evening, the BBC’s usually reliable Europe editor, with 185,000 Twitter followers, tweeted a link to a BBC fact-check in which she repeated the bold headline: “Is the EU trying to blockade Northern Ireland?” Yes, the piece behind the link – once people bothered to access and read it – was a nuanced analysis, and yes, the question format is how BBC fact-checks are framed. But there are judgment calls here and this was a serious one. That headline was a perfect example of giving powerful legs to a fake news story.

The point is that every story does not have two sides. There are lies, vested interests, distortions – and there is objective truth.

The past decade has been dominated by a cabal of world leaders fostering a culture of ignorance, cultivating what Isaac Asimov described as “the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge’’’.

Mask row

On Monday RTÉ 2FM presenter Jennifer Zamparelli landed in murky waters when she tweeted a call-out for people with “strong opinions” on face masks to contribute to an “open discussion” on her Tuesday show. The context was the wild-eyed rage of Tricolour-wielding so-called anti-mask protesters in Dublin last Saturday – who included a notable overlap with participants in recent anti-immigrant, anti-vaccination, anti-restriction protests – during which a counterprotester was left bloodied by a plank wrapped in the national flag.

“Why?” asked “Joan” about the rationale for the discussion. “Why not?” asked Jennifer breezily. Because, said dozens of respondents, it implied that there were two sides to the argument, because it was anti-science, because masks save lives, because the proposed “open discussion” implied that the anti-mask argument was equally valid, because it lent anti-mask proponents a semblance of legitimacy and a powerful national platform for misinformation that could endanger public health. “Next week: how do you feel about brakes in cars?” snarked @Grannies4Equality.

This was no pile-on by the mob. The response on Twitter was mainly a calm call for common sense and responsibility. The “discussion” was pulled, sensibly.

It may be an indication that in our own bumbling way Ireland is alert in important ways. We haven’t far to look for the other side.

As dozens of calamitous wildfires roared across three US states on Monday, the Californian secretary for natural resources Wade Crowfoot addressed Donald Trump: “We want to work with you to really recognise the changing climate and what it means to our forests and actually work together with that science.”

Trump responded: “It’ll start getting cooler. You just – you just watch.”

“I wish science agreed with you,” said Crowfoot.

“Well, I don’t think science knows, actually,” said Trump.

This is where the spittle-flecked anti-science mob leads.