By SARAH M. PANUSKA
news@ColumbiaMissourian.com

Scholars believe that the human drive for truth is innate. It’s what drove our archaic kin forward to create and learn and discover, what made them cast wary eyes toward the dark sky, what kept them looking at the stars.

We can search the Web on our laptops, read blogs on our cell phones and bury our noses in newspapers and magazines. Yet with this surge of information, the truth is still mysterious. We can’t always see the stars anymore.

Bob Humphreys can recall a different time in journalism. In the 50 years he spent working in the field — as a reporter, radio host, general manager and faculty member at the MU School of Journalism — he never registered with any political party; he said he thought it was a conflict of interest. His philosophy: Give people the facts and get out of the way.

A lot of things have changed. It’s frustrating.

“You know, maybe it’s just my perspective, but now there are a lot of news stories out there that have the reporter’s perspective in there, rather than just the straight facts,” Humphreys said.

Humphreys remembers the time when he could look at the paper and know exactly what happened. “You looked at the blotter and reported those facts. If you went to a City Council meeting, you reported what happened,” Humphreys said. “Now, it seems like those stories not only include facts, but sometimes there’s a slant to it, a personalized perspective.”

For Humphreys, facts are important because they are synonymous with the truth. It’s why this change worries him. If he doesn’t know the facts, what does he know?

Victoria Johnson, a sociology professor at MU, said there has been a move away from the hard, or fact-driven, news Humphreys values. “What we are seeing is more and more American television expressing more ideology,” Johnson said. “In the U.S., we have more very short representations of multiple perspectives.”

In the past, the profession was often criticized for not presenting diverse points of view. Johnson says, though, that this is often done without regard for credible claims, which are the foundations of truth. She argues that by presenting every possible ideological vantage point instead of only credible ones, the news media are doing the public a disservice. “We have less news that delves into deep coverage and presents the truth,” Johnson said. “There is less and less analysis.”

Johnson said much of what is called news is being gathered and distributed by organizations that have other agendas. “A lot of think tanks are pumping out ideological frameworks,” Johnson said. “These think tanks are hoping to score political points rather than presenting accurate information to the public.” Charles Davis, director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition and an MU journalism professor, agrees. “News is seeking some functional truth and is often open to interpretation and revision. Spin is trying to make you believe something,” Davis said.

Davis said the two are often confused. Because spin is often packaged to look like news, someone who wants to be informed might have some sorting out to do. Johnson said it is taking more time and energy for people to find the truth and connect the dots. Johnson said citizen knowledge also can be used to measure the truth, and it’s been declining.

“Informed democracies are based on accuracy and credibility,” Johnson said. “If we don’t understand the nature of a problem, we can’t find the answer to it in forms of policy or in terms of voting for leaders.”

A crisis of confidence

Truth and trust are related. Journalists have been sold to society as the caretakers of truth, but that means next to nothing without having the trust of the public they serve, Davis said. “Public trust in journalists is deeply important,” Davis said. “You see, a free press is only a matter of tolerance. We (journalists) are on the razor’s edge.”

Davis cites some very public incidents of media negligence. But he also said some of the public frustration has to do with confusion. “What I’ve come to understand is there is a fundamental difference between what the public believes journalism is and what journalism is. As journalists, we are asking citizens to figure out what is and what’s not journalism. There is also the fact that journalism is devolving from mainstream news operations, to MSNBC on the left and FOX on the right,” Davis said. “As a result, the citizenry is terribly confused, and they have a right to be.”

The lines are being blurred. People are barraged with public relations-speak, infotainment and cable television arguments, all packaged and promoted as legitimate news.

“What frustrates me the most is all of the crap that is posing as journalism. I run into people all the time who believe that Bill O’Reilly and Al Franken are journalists, and these are people who have no commitment to the truth,” Davis said.

He worries that the relationship journalists have with the public, one built on trust, will dissolve completely. “In the past, journalists have not needed to worry about matters of public trust,” he said. “Now, we are having to ask the question of whether the public trusts us. I think we’ve always counted on that answer always being ‘Yeah.’

“But that’s not the case anymore.”

Great expectations

René Powell, a Columbia resident, said that over time, news has become less precise and informative. “Language is our common communication tool. You have linguistic and cultural commonalties,” Powell said. “There’s a lot more distraction now. I don’t think it’s that truth is less apparent; it’s about language being at a distance from what we’re trying to reflect on — what’s being represented.”

Columbia resident Cynthia Gardner has other concerns. She thinks that regardless of what state the news media are in, they should hold onto their truth-telling function. “I am sure that I am somewhat naive. I think everybody should tell the truth as they know it,” Gardner said. “I know that there are gray areas, but journalism has a real obligation.” Gardner said that in a perfect world, media would focus less on a slice of the world and look at the planet through a larger lens.

Even though things have certainly changed in the industry since he was active in it, Humphreys said, journalism’s obligation to the truth is still paramount. It has a bigger social role than first meets the eye.

“In order to be a social being, you have to be able to discern that a person is telling the truth,” Humphreys said. “I think accuracy is the culmination of truth. That’s the part of reporting, that people have to be accurate and get their facts correct. It’s a compilation of correct facts.”