This ain't your Uncle Walter's media

The good news is you have more power in a misinformation age than you may know

In 1972, CBS anchor Walter Cronkite was named the most trusted voice in America.

These days, it would be difficult to name his successor. News reporting in the time of Cronkite was imperfect (for starters, the media missed a lot of stories, especially around civil rights issues), but today we are in an information age that is lousy with purposeful misinformation.

In addition, the news consumer has far more outlets from which to choose, including (for some) social media platforms such as Facebook.

(I didn’t say all the outlets are valid. That’s part of the problem.)

But unlike in the days of Uncle Walter, news consumers also have more ways to talk back.

• If you see or hear something on a television or radio broadcast that isn’t accurate, you can report that content to the Federal Communication Commission, the federal agency charged with regulating radio, television, wire, internet, wi-fi, satellite, and cable across the county. I am not saying the FCC will do anything, but if they collect a thick enough file on the behavior of any one news outlet, the organization pretty much has to respond. (Case in point? The so-called wardrobe malfunction of the 2004 Super Bowl half-time show. Nearly a quarter of a million people contacted the FCC to complain about Nipplegate, though the fine that FCC lobbied against CBS (which carried the Super Bowl that year) was eventually dropped. In addition, Janet Jackson’s career mostly died and Justin Timberlake’s took off. Go figure.)

• Print is different. There is no government agency that oversees print content (the courts have the final word on that), so if you read something in a newspaper or magazine that isn’t accurate, your first step is to contact the writer/author/content provider and ask for a correction. Most articles include the email address of the creator. If not, their contact information is usually pretty easy to find online. Remember when you’re composing your email to be polite, but forthright. Any journalist worth his/her/their salt will respond, even if they do not agree with your assessment of their work. If you get nowhere, contact someone higher up the masthead. In days of old, newspapers of any size (including my Hartford Courant) had a public editor who fielded reader complaints and helped make sure we all flew right. Those days are gone. Now, you deal directly with journalists.

• If you see, hear, or read something that’s flat-out wrong and you think it’s a systemic issue, you can research what businesses support the news outlet in question, and pull your support from those businesses. There’s quite an organized attempt to do that in regard to Fox. It’s also fruitful to let the businesses know that you are walking away.

• Remember that there’s also social media, which you can use to let people know the truth. Do not dismiss the power of your correction on social media, even if you don’t have a lot of followers. Correct it anyway.

• The point is, pushing back against the lies takes all of us and once you get into being a member of the army of copy-editors, it’s kind of fun. I promise.