“Some People Say” Journalism Opens the Door to Duping Americans

In 2011, I published a Huffington Post blog about “some people say” journalism. That was long before the last U.S. presidential election, long before we knew about the extent of Russian meddling.  Yet, the ideas in that blog bear repeating.

In a sense, our acceptance of “some people say,” “some people think,” “it’s been said,” “many are asking,” and other empty phrases indicative of lazy journalism left us open to being manipulated. If we don’t question the sources of the information we receive and merely accept that our favorite sources are telling us the truth, we risk making faulty decisions and casting votes based on biased views in the guise of substantive ones.

We’re still letting the television news we watch use phrases like “some people say” as if the impact of such facile phrasing is negligible. It isn’t. “Some people” could be a journalist’s relatives or a couple of people met on the street.

On televised news today, expect to hear sentences beginning with “some people say” or “many people think” as a means of positioning a question for an interview or providing support for an opinion being advanced.  Without even realizing it, journalists who take this approach are weakening evidentiary standards — teaching young people that they can support their ideas simply by alluding to unidentified people.

It could be argued that this practice is to be expected.  After all, aren’t we supposed to assume that we’re being led by our noses by the owners of media giants, that journalism is no longer the honorable profession it was, and this is just more evidence of how far it has fallen? Isn’t it our responsibility as viewers to sift through the hype and huckstering to find shreds of objectivity?

Certainly, we are responsible for carefully considering the sources of what we read and view.  And yet, from decades of persuasion research, we know that people often process information without engaging in wariness or counterargument. We may be busy or distracted.  At least naming sources and/or providing a short reason for a line of questioning helps readers, viewers and listeners assess the credibility, intelligence, experience, and trustworthiness of sources.

How do we know the motives of “some” people? Who are they? Where do they come from? How many of them are there? Under what circumstances were their opinions obtained? Did anyone pay them? Do they even exist?

We’ve been duped often lately.  The Facebook debacle is a case in point. If people don’t expect to know the sources of what they read, hear and view, then protecting them from the devious among us often becomes an afterthought — that is until it is forced to the fore.

News outlets are overheated right now with attacks on Facebook. Yet, are they speaking of trust and responsibility to customers without holding themselves to high standards?  Hats off to journalists who stay away from “some people say” types of comments — who do their research.  It’s time to bring the rest of your colleagues along.  Otherwise, they’re a part of the problem, a part of making us easy targets.