 This may not be a totally accurate or credible graphic, but it does represent. I think the Issue with American trust in the news media. It has just plummeted over the last, you know, really decade or so But especially in the last few years here. It's just plummeted people don't trust the media They don't find the media credible and that's an issue for us as PR professionals because we depend on the media and To reach our audiences. So we want to do a week in to Ensure the credibility in the media, but in this video I want to take a look at what is the the challenge of media credibility how that impacts us and what we can do to Kind of help correct that issue for our own Benefit to be quite honest our own selfish interests in having a credible media So let's start by defining, you know, what this popular term we've had this popular term come up recently fake news and The idea of fake news and what is fake news? So let's just take a look and dive into what we call fake news So to differentiate between a few important terms first of all, there's false news Which is just news is not true right the news is that people put out there that they just know is not true And they're not credible sources and they're just there's making stories up for the purpose of Their own agenda or for just you know riling up an audience or so this is news That is just absolutely the people putting it out and know that it's 100% not true. That's what we call false news Then there's also this idea of mistaken news where people are putting out information that they think is correct That they they think is reliable and turns out to not be correct So, you know the most famous incident this is when the Chicago Daily Tribune some other newspapers put out You know they already printed up these these papers said do you defeat stream Truman in the the presidential election for that year? Turned out not to be true Truman one in a surprise. So But that was mistaken. It was not, you know an issue of these people Knew the Truman one put it out any way and that's false news But mistaken news is where you just get it wrong you make a mistake So you have to correct and apologize and go back and so forth And then there's what has become called fake news fake news really is just news that the person on the other end of it Doesn't like this is a favorite a favorite refrain from former president Donald Trump who Likes to decry fake news all the time when somebody prints something negative about him or something He disagrees with doesn't like he labels it fake news. That doesn't mean it's not true It just means that you know, it's a way for him to and others who use that term to try and Discredit that story whether or not it's it's true is another issue entirely So we need to be aware of that as well. So when we see, you know, we would see things like Tom's tracks to show chronic all losses of years and tax avoidance We would see that in one paper and he would decry that as fake news, right? And and another news outlet might not even carry that so they're not carrying fake news then right? He's they're carrying a good news according to him But just because you don't like it doesn't necessarily mean it's fake news but so we need to be aware of that term and and really Differentiate between false news mistaken news and fake news So, why do we believe it? Why do we believe that there is such a thing as fake news? Why do we believe when people say well, that's fake news? Well, first of all, there's declining trust in the media. There just is media outlets have it used to be Like the basically what their word was was gold, right? When Walter Cronk had said something you believed it was true You knew it was true in your heart and and and he had credibility in that regard Now we don't have that so much because of so much contrast so many different outlets so many different perspectives taking place on Media that we just have this declining trust in the media and the fact that and the idea that they're giving us Accurate news so it's easy for us to believe that some of this news may be fake news or false news, right? There's also been this blurring of journalism and opinion. We'll talk more about this in a few minutes, but the idea that that People on news channels really have opinion shows a lot of times that they're expressing opinions rather than fact and rather than Following an actual news story there. They're shaping opinion And so that these opinion shows and there's been a blurring of that Because so many more of these opinion shows are showing up on quote-unquote news channels So that's all a lack of media literacy just among our population. We don't have the critical thinking skills anymore We just kind of get stuck in these echo chambers and we just believe whatever they say on our Particular news outlet of choice. We don't we don't critically think about those things We don't have the media literacy skills to differentiate and to make our own decisions on those things There's just been a large shift in consumption methods So people get stuck in these echo chambers. We consume news not from you know the nightly news which had these standards of Journalistic integrities, but now we get our news from Facebook and from Twitter and from news outlets that have a particular spin and particular perspective and and so we get stuck in these echo chambers then we don't get news from other sources or information from other sources So we just get stuck in these in these kind of echo chambers and stuck in the repetitious rhetoric of a particular news outlet, so As speaking of which repetition we hear the same things over and over and over again They start to use the same terms and they use the same Stories and they talk about them forever whether or not it's really news or not Because I can we need to remember that the media is a business the media is not you know strictly for information Entertainment or whatever they're there to make money they're there to do whatever they came to pull in audiences which pulls in advertising dollars and and Sponsorship dollars and things like that so they're gonna repeat a story that they think people are interested in and you get that a lot And you get the same terms and people start to repeat it then and oh my gosh It becomes just so repetitious and this is not exclusive to one side of things or another This is true for all media outlets We're we've become our consumption methods have changed to become very focused on particular news outlets And they know one way to keep us hooked is to keep repeating the same thing It becomes comfortable it becomes familiar to us So we believe fake news for a lot of those reasons we believe that it is fake news So what can we do then to combat fake news to fight against fake news? Well first we can follow ethical guidelines. We can follow ethical journalistic guidelines even as PR folks It's for certainly as journalists we can we can expect them to follow these guidelines But even as as you know an audience member or as public relations professionals We can follow these the the code of ethics set forth by different societies and this one happens to be from the Society of Professional Journalists But we can seek truth and report it. We can minimize harm. We can act independently and we can be accountable and transparent If we follow these ethical guidelines, then we can we can help combat this idea of fake news and hopefully start to increase trust in the media again We can label advocacy and commentary by differentiating between The news function of a new channel and an opinion function. So this just happens to be Fox news So Brett Bayer is you know a respected journalist. He's somebody who studied this and really follows those ethical guidelines and And and so he is a true journalist and and follows and it's part of the news function of Fox news Tucker Carlson is not he's an opinion show. He's an opinion maker. He's not a journalist Which is fine. He has the commentary and that's fine Fox news is a business They're there to bring in audiences and so that's one the way that they do it I'm not arguing that Tucker Carlson should not have a show whether you like him or not I mean he's he's will pull in a lot of money for Fox news. So it's totally legitimate But we need to label that as like this is not a news show This is an opinion show not really distributing facts here so much as opinions And and perspective on things and so we need to differentiate between those things and to be fair MSNBC does the exact same thing They have a they have more of a news function and people who are more follow that that straight up news function And then they have lots of opinion shows CNN does the same that all these news Contemporary news channels do the same thing. I just happened to highlight Fox news here because it was easy to find Examples of that but but all of these places do it. It's not just Fox news to be clear But we need to differentiate between advocacy and commentary What we need to let well, we need to label those things and differentiate those from the news function of an organization We also need to support media literacy. We need to get people more up to date on Being critical thinkers and not just blindly accepting everything that's said on their favorite news channel or on twitter Wherever they get their news we need to teach people to think more critically In in identifying, you know fact versus commentary and advocacy in these situations So another thing we need to talk about in the media and Unfortunately is what we call post-truth We're in a post-truth area era for media which a post-truth means circumstances in which objective facts Are less influential in shaping public opinion that appeals to emotion and personal belief So we have people fighting off a lot of just, you know Feelings and not really facts, but just, you know using emotional appeal whether that's fear whether that's Whether that's hope whether it's whatever as opposed to basic facts and so people people persuading people and firing people up based on emotion and personal belief rather than Objective facts rather than providing people with information like they make their own decision They they really appeal to emotion and drive people through emotion and through their personal beliefs so again not to beat this drum too heavily but Donald trump is the main example of this in the post-truth era that somebody who doesn't rely on facts doesn't really care about the actual facts and and really just focuses on Appealing to emotion whatever it is he can use to fire an audience up, right? So So one example of this that came very early in the trump administration was his claim that And then he forces spokesman to go out and say he had the largest audience ever Largest audience for a largest crowd ever for a For a presidential inauguration, which is just objectively Not true. They kept saying this that that was the largest crowd ever for Presidential inauguration. Here's a photo from the national park service of you know Just an objective photo of the the presidential inauguration at a particular time Now compare this to obama's initial inauguration in 2009. You can see obviously objectively there are far more people At the obama inauguration. So just saying that you know, they had the largest crowd ever for an inauguration Clearly not true. And in fact, they kept pressing this and pressing this even when evidence came out about it To the point where kelly and conway one of his advisors came out and kind of made up this word of alternative facts Alternative facts. What is alternative facts? How does that possible? A fact is a fact There are no alternative facts. There's different perspective, right? But we live in this post-truth era Where we rely more on emotion and appeals to people's personal beliefs and things as opposed even when they're in contrast and could directly contradict Objective fact, which we just need to realize that we are in that type of news Um a cycle right now. We're in that type of world. That's the era we era. We live in is this post-truth Fake news era. So we need to understand that so What then is the impact of all this on pr professionals that the you know, in the interest of media credibility What is the impact for public relations professionals? Well, we need to recognize that we have all kinds of different People that we're trying to reach and we need to certainly identify an audience as we talked about in previous video, but Excuse me, but we also need to understand that The close audiences may have different perspectives. So in my household You have my in-laws who love fox news. Fox news is on 24 hours a day in their house They love fox news. They believe everything fox news says and then in contrast to that My wife has a diehard msmbc fan. So obviously in direct direct Comfort one of the news they're getting and the audiences that they're reaching. So just you know My in-laws and my wife had this different but my dad then my parents Are pretty traditional. They watch the nightly news pretty straight up news function Watching the nightly news without a lot of advocacy and Commentary so they watch that and I'm more interested in a broader perspective that goes beyond the united states So I watch a lot of bbc news or and taking a lot of bbc news because it gives that Worldly perspective on a different perspective. I don't really pay much attention to the news That's coming from us outlets. So I mean, we are just within my household and within my, you know, kind of immediate family here Very diverse in terms of our news intake and that can be a real challenge for PR professionals right to understand that there are people in that just in my group that would have Such different perspectives on our news gathering and what we're looking for So we need to understand that diverse audiences trust media for diverse reasons that we all have different reasons My in-laws have a reason for trusting fox news. My wife has a reason for trusting msmbc My parents have a reason for enjoying and trusting that then the nightly news the national nightly news And I have a reason for going to bbc for my news Diverse audiences trust media for diverse reasons. We need to understand that if we're going to understand our audience And try and reach them through what we would define as a credible new source We understand that that's going to be different for different audiences because they trust The media for diverse reasons So key in that is is what we can do then to support diversity in the media specifically diversity And what can we do to kind of combat all this and support diversity in the media? First of all, we can feature minority subject matter experts When we when we present information as PR professionals when we we put people out there when we Present them a subject matter experts talking on our behalf. We need to feature minorities in that group and not just Run out the same, you know middle-aged white guys that we have for years and years and years We need to to be representative and to reach them an audience You want to you want to see they want to see themselves represented? Now that does not mean put somebody out there who's unqualified, but they're they're certainly Other people in your organization who can serve as subject matter experts who come from a minority base And so when we have that opportunity we want to do that we want to feature minorities as subject matter experts We can do things like provide media kits in different languages If we live in a community that where there's a really high percentage of hispanic population We can we can present that material in spanish Or whatever population we have there we can we can try and reach them in their Native language their home language and make that more comfortable for them We can make sign language interpreters available We see this a lot more especially, you know, if you understand the pandemic when government officials were giving Press conferences there was typically a sign language interpreter there Relaying that information through sign language We can take some basic steps like that to make information more accessible to people with With particular with differing abilities. So we can make sign language interpreters available We can include include close closed captioning Again for people who may have a hearing Issue we can include that closed captioning for for material to make it easier for them to access the information We can work with community-based media not just focus on national media international media We can focus on localized media community-based new media that are going to reach a particular audience in that way We can partner with opinion leaders from diverse communities Within our within our own community when we recognize that we have these diverse communities We can partner with opinion leaders from there and and try and reach them reach those communities By by accessing those those kind of gatekeepers and influencers within that community But really the the main idea here is it's upon us It's incumbent upon us as public relations professionals to help start building trust in the media And not only is important ethically for us, but it's important just for in a practical sense We need the media to to be able to connect with our audiences and leverage the media For reaching on an audience and promoting whatever it is. We're trying to promote an organization So it behooves us to help build that trust again in the media and build media credibility along with them So that audience audiences will have greater trust in what it is we're saying Hopefully have a renewed understanding of media credibility the importance of media credibility and what we can do is public relations professionals to Help build that trust again and and create that trust in the media and build credibility there It's an important function for us if you have questions about media credibility or anything related to public relations And how we connect with the media and why that might be important. Please feel free to email me I'd love to hear from you there in the meantime I hope that you will do what you can to better understand the media become more critical consumer yourself And also to improve the function of public relations in developing that media credibility