The term “infodemic” has come to the fore to describe the proliferation of fake news that stirs up trouble during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, in addition to fake news, there is also another aspect to this infodemic, namely snide, acerbic reporting in the media.
On June 17, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni published his final opinion piece for the newspaper, titled “Ted Cruz, I’m Sorry,” ending his 10-year stint at the newspaper to take a position at Duke University.
In the article, Bruni issued an apology for his sometimes brutal tongue and intransigent positions.
The New York Times has become famous for crossing swords with US conservatives, of which US Senator Ted Cruz is a leading figure. After former US president Donald Trump was elected in 2016, the paper became irreconcilably estranged from the Republican Party.
When the staunchly anti-China Trump failed to be re-elected last year, some Taiwanese blamed the newspaper, as well as CNN and other US media organizations, for the demise of a pro-Taiwan, anti-China US president. We should ask ourselves why a New York Times columnist used his final column to issue a genuinely contrite apology to US conservatives.
Bruni said that he did not write the apology because he believed that his criticism of Cruz was factually incorrect, but rather because, one day in 2015 when he was having trouble thinking of a topic to write about, he decided to “unload” criticism on Cruz, using the senator as a punch bag.
Bruni wrote that, similar to many other opinion writers, he too frequently chose to swim “with the snide tide” and admitted making two mistakes as a columnist:
First, becoming a high-pitched tongue-wagger that added oil to the fire of an already febrile US political scene. Bruni said that he had unwittingly become what he and fellow commentators frequently criticized, exacerbating the “toxic tenor of American discourse, the furious pitch of American politics, the volume and vitriol of it all.”
Second, Bruni wrote: “I worry, too, about how frequently we shove ambivalence and ambiguity aside. Ambivalence and ambiguity aren’t necessarily signs of weakness or sins of indecision. They can be apt responses to events that we don’t yet understand, with outcomes that we can’t predict.”
Bruni continued: “Too many columns are less sober analyses than snarky stand-up acts or primal screams. The stand-up and the screams sell. My column about Cruz was a little of both, and I wish I could take it back.”
He added that unfortunately this form of shouty and strident journalism will likely continue in a post-Trump world.
Bruni is not wrong: There is no going back. Media organizations have noticed that hate-filled, ranting journalism sells; the facts are no longer important. All that is left is an increasingly polarized public square where anything goes.
Ordinary people outside the commentariat take to social media to vent their spleens and pour out emotion. News media should rise above this because they are important elements of democracy.
If the media chooses to do so, it can function as a proxy for readers and viewers to vent their emotions, but within the context of a national emergency such as a pandemic, when fear and anxiety abound, stoking these emotions to reap profits will only be detrimental to the public interest.
Chang Yueh-han is an assistant professor in Shih Hsin University’s journalism department.
Translated by Edward Jones
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