How news media telling the truth may be lying

 
How to use segments of truth to lie
When several hundred migrants tried to storm the US border at the US San Ysidro port of entry, on 25 November 2018, they were driven back by US Customs and Border Patrol firing tear gas canisters, and the border was closed for some time afterwards.
The then head of Homeland Security, Kirstjen M. Nielsen, explained what had happened in a tweet: "This AM, @CBP was forced to close the #SanYsidro POE to ensure public safety in response to a large # of migrants seeking to illegally enter the US. They attempted to breach legacy fence infrastructure along the border & sought to harm CBP personnel by throwing projectiles @ them." (@SecNielsen 25 November 2018)
Thus indirectly defending the use of tear gas against the migrants.
After the clash at the border an image made by the Reuters photojournalist, Kim Kyung-Hoo, became the iconic image of the clash
The image shows a migrant mother clutching and dragging two small, barefooted children, one of them apparently a toddler in diapers, running away from a cloud of tear gas behind her. In the background one sees what seems to be mostly men, some running, some apparently just standing there.
The dramatic image led to burst of outrage in the media around the world. Widely quoted in mainstream news media were tweets like these:
 
California Governor elect Gavin Newsom:"These children are barefoot. In diapers. Choking on tear gas, Women and children who left their lives behind — seeking peace and asylum — were met with violence and fear. That’s not my America. We’re a land of refuge. Of hope. Of freedom. And we will not stand for this."
 
Democratic National Committee Chair, Tom Perez: " Shooting tear gas at children is not who we are as Americans."
 
Nothing indicates that what we see in the image and the media reporting of the clash isn't true, except perhaps that in some cases the image seems to have been cropped, leaving out most of the background and focusing on the running mother dragging children.
But even so, does this image really show the truth of the clash? It only shows a very limited segment of the truth at certain moment in time.
Where do we see the actions of several hundred migrants, who led to the firing of tear gas? Is the picture of a mother with two small children thus representative of the clash, or is the image lying, even though it is true, in the sense that it does not convey a true picture of the clash, but only a spurious moment of the clash?
Why then is this image chosen by the media? Is it chosen because it is the most dramatic? Because it involves mother and child, and knowledge of the potential effect it might have on the public? Combined perhaps with some ulterior motive based upon political views?
This at least seems plausible when one reads the lopsided political reactions it brought forth.
"To some of those expressing outrage, the photograph offered evidence of what
they say is the Trump administration’s draconian approach to immigration, including his response to a caravan of migrants, whom Mr Trump has vilified without evidence, as well as immigrants and refugees fleeing violence in their homelands. Several Democratic lawmakers denounced the use of tear gas on vulnerable people." (NYT).
The result is that people viewing and reading this segment of truth are reinforced in their belief that the Trump administration is using especially harsh and abhorrent measures to stop migrants trying to cross the border into the US. One is led to believe that using tear gas on people is characteristic for someone like Trump.
Misleading all of us, because tear gas and pepper sprays was used for same purpose by the Obama administration, without apparently leading to similar outrage in the media and certainly without reflecting badly on Obama's character.
"The same tear-gas agent that the Trump administration is taking heat for deploying against a border mob this weekend is actually used fairly frequently — including more than once a month during the later years of President Barack Obama’s administration, according to Homeland Security data. (washingtontimes.com).
According to fact checking by snopes.com the Obama administration was in fact a rather frequent user of tear gas at the border: "U.S. Customs and Border Protection has used 2-chlorobenzylidene malononitrile, or CS, since 2010, and deployed it 26 times in fiscal 2012 and 27 times in 2013. The use dropped after that, but was still deployed three times in 2016, Mr Obama’s final full year in office." (snopes.com).
It may even be appropriate to mention that in November 2013 Border Patrol agents used pepper spray and other means to stop a group of about a hundred migrants from crossing the border at exactly the same San Ysidro Port of Entry.
In a certain sense news media reporting on the border clash in November 2018 are deceiving, or one might even regard it as lying, by focusing on a small segment of truth, leaving out or hiding essential parts of the wider truth. It cannot be lying you might say, because they merely reported something that to all accounts must have been true. But that view is too simple.
Telling the truth may in a certain sense be lying. According to Isenberg (1973) “A lie is a statement made by one who does not believe it with the intention that someone else shall be led to believe it.” Bok has an even wider definition. She defines lying "as intentionally deceptive message that is stated.” (Bok 1999).
This would imply that the media reporting the segment of truth doesn't actually believe that it is the whole truth, but that they intentionally try to make the readers and viewers believe it depicts the whole truth.
It is in that sense that the reporting on the border clash and the use of the image with mother clutching her two children may be a case where telling and showing a segment of truth may in fact be lying.
Examples where reporting a segment of truth may be lying is found in other cases. In January 2019 BBC reported on a video from a confrontation between a white teenager wearing a MAGA baseball cap in a group of white teenagers and an old native American. The news heading : "Video of US teenagers taunting Native American draws fire." BBC reported that a group of teenagers from a catholic high school who are taking part in an anti abortion rally are seen mocking the native American elder as he sings, beats a drum and dances.
This version of the incident was widely reported and the video went viral on social media. Like the image from the border clash it led outrage and condemnation, dutifully reported by the media having first presented the story.
The video showed a segment of truth didn't it, and it thus rightly led to condemnation?
Later though other videos came to fore and dare we use the term, "alternative facts" were presented, followed by a long statement from the boy in the video. The new segments of truth and explanations turned the whole story upside down, showing that in fact the native American had been the aggressive part confronting the boys and the boys fairly docile.
Thus once gain reporting on what seemed to be the factual truth, news media were in fact promoting a lie. While it may be argued that in this case the media reporting the confrontation were misled by having only a video segment, it none the less represents a case where telling a segment of truth may in fact be lying. And why was the video segment taken at face value? Perhaps because one saw white anti abortion teenagers wearing MAGA baseballs caps pitted against a lonely old native American?
What happened in these examples would seem to be happening in other cases too. When reporting on refugees, there would seem to be preference for showing dramatic pictures of scared children and women or even better pregnant women, saved from drowning in the Mediterranean. Even though it is a fact, that the majority of refugees or migrants are men. (according to UNHCR between 60 and 70 per cent).
"Survey data show that more than half of the Germans believed that mass media failed to accurately present facts, e. g., concerning migrants’ sociodemographic characteristics and criminality. Moreover, many Germans perceived media coverage as biased in favor of migration." (springer.com)
The examples shown here may seem trivial and our writings about them may in itself represent segments of truth, that doesn't show the wider truth so to speak. They don't show whether "telling the truth may be lying" is true in general for established news media. Thus the examples may just represent aberrations.
Leading to question: Are established news media in general objective and truthful in their treatment of the subjects they choose to take up?  Or do they show ideological and political bias in reporting, by choosing certain selective segments of truth, and ignoring those that would lead to different conclusions?
Not easy questions to answer decisively. But there are indications we may use.
 
Truth seen though the ideological looking glass
A report from Harvard's Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy have analysed media coverage of Trump's first 100 days in office. The report shows that

"President Trump dominated media coverage in the outlets and programs
analyzed, with Trump being the topic of 41 percent of all news stories
—three times the amount of coverage received by previous presidents. He
was also the featured speaker in nearly two-thirds of his coverage.
...
Trump has received unsparing coverage for most weeks of his presidency,
without a single major topic where Trump’s coverage, on balance, was
more positive than negative, setting a new standard for unfavorable press
coverage of a president."
 
Still what may be found in the negative coverage of Trump, may contain representative and fair segments of truth, not just biased opinions, and if that is the case they would certainly confirm a negative view of the Trump and his actions.
The question is, what segments of truth are selected and why?
A more recent October 2018 report from MRC (Media Research Centre) would seem to confirm that part of mainstream media has been very selective in in their choice of topics in that they seem focused especially on negative subjects.
"The results show that, over the past four months, nearly two-thirds of evening news coverage of the Trump presidency has been focused on just five main topics: the Russia investigation; immigration policy; the Kavanaugh nomination; North Korea diplomacy; and U.S. relations with Russia. The networks’ coverage of all of these topics has been highly negative, while bright spots for the administration such as the booming economy received extremely little coverage (less than one per cent of the four-month total)." (MRC).
One may thus be forced to conclude that mainstream media have been very selective in their choice of Trump coverage. While it is much more difficult to answer the question why this is so, except for saying that negative subjects seem to be preferred.
This may lead one to suspect that mainstream news media may in fact be lying or deceiving in telling segments of truth that are convenient for confirming an existing bias, also when covering major subject areas.
Perhaps summarized as "reality as seen through an ideology."
Studies in Germany show that the heart of German journalist beats left. A study from Freie Universität Berlin shows how journalists see themselves. 26,9 per cent felt close to the Green Party, 15,5 close to the social democratic SPD, 4,2 per cent to the left party (Die Linke), while 9 per cent felt close to the conservative Christian Democratic parties CDU/CSU, and 7,4 per close to the liberal FDP.
A majority of journalists were thus leaning left.
Another study asking journalists for their basic belief showed that 48 per cent felt they belonged on the left side, 17 per cent felt they belonged to right side and 15 per cent to the middle.
In a US study of financial journalists, whom one might suppose to have conservative and libertarian views, turned to show that they were mostly leaning left, with 58 per cent seeing them selves as leaning left of centre. (investors.com).
A study from PEW research from 2014 show the ideological placement of readers and views of US media sources. (PEW Research 2018)

Indirectly this might be seen as confirming the left leaning bias of some of the most widely used media sources. Although I suspect that readers and viewers on both sides may insist that they have the most objective sources.
The strange irony is that in many cases the left leaning media are owned by people and organisations that no one would regard as left leaning.
Perhaps what we have is a self-confirming and according to view, vicious or a virtues spiral, whereby the righteous, established parties and left leaning media confirm each other's views, especially in their shared disgust and eagerness to demonstrate the deplorability of right wing protests and populism
We suspect that all this means that we cannot really expect an unbiased view of the existing or emerging right wing protest parties.
Perhaps this is exactly what is happening in relation to everything Trump says or does in the US, to AfD in Germany, to governments in Poland. Hungary and Italy.
 
Losing trust in the news media
A recent survey in the European Union show that trust in the media is not overwhelming.
A Statista "Index of respondents' trust towards media in European Union"from  2018 show that only 19 per cent have a high trust in media, while 39 per cent have a low or no trust. 42 per cent have medium trust, whatever that means.
A PEW study of attitudes about news media in the US from 2018 also shows that trust in the fairness of the media is generally rather low, but that there are significant differences between democrats and republicans and that this difference in their views have recently become the largest ever measured. (PEW 2018)

86 per cent of the republicans believe news organizations favour one side, while only 52 per cent of the democrats believe that to be the case. The Pew study also shows that while republicans in recent years show less trust , the distrust of the democrats have declined somewhat in the later years.
Indirectly the answers to the question of whether news organizations tend to favour one side, when reporting on political and social issues, may show the presence of ideological and political bias. Thus confirming that mainstream media and journalists in general posess a left leaning attitude, as this might explain why they are less distrusted by democrats and much more distrusted by republicans.
And yes, our representation may also show only selective segments, relevant only for the US, but at least they seems to fit with a wider picture.
Another view of the wider picture may be had by looking at results of at survey published by the "Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism" in 2017. The survey attempts to find explanations for the generally low trust in news media, by asking respondent open-ended questions.
The analysis of the responses resulted in a multitude of findings. In relation to our subject the findings show that "Among those who do not trust the news media, the main reasons (67%) relate to bias, spin, and agendas. Simply put, a significant proportion of the public feels that powerful people are using the media to push their own political or economic interests, rather than represent ordinary readers or viewers. These feelings are most strongly held by those who are young and by those that earn the least."
These opinions were most strongly held in the US and UK, among the 9 countries included in the survey, while distrust in general was less in for instance Denmark and Germany.
Asking those who didn't believe that media did a good job in distinguishing fact from fiction, what kind of bias might be the reason for the distrust, the following picture emerged:

 
General bias as an explanation for distrust in the media scored high in all countries, but was evidently felt to be especially high in the US and UK, much less so in countries like Denmark, Australia and Germany. It is also worth noting that a more specific political bias also scored high in US and UK and in Germany.
The German belief that political bias is an important explanation for the distrust, fits well with a German study from the Johannes Gutenberg Universität, which show a significant rise in distrust that seem to accompany the growth in protest movement in Germany in the period. "Seit 2008 ist in unseren Studien der Anteil derjenigen, die bei wichtigen Themen den Medien "eher nicht" oder "überhaupt nicht" vertrauen, deutlich gestiegen – von 9 auf 24 Prozent."
In the Reuters survey commercial bias plays a lesser role. Note though that it is seen as less insignificant in the US and UK compared to for instance Denmark and Germany.
 
The truth to only half the populace?
Now based upon what we have seen two questions might be worth asking:
 
Is the distrust in the media shown here perhaps caused by the widespread phenomenon of what we have termed "telling the truth may be lying." in mainstream news media?
 
Do mainstream news media filter truth by seeing facts through an ideological looking glass, that fits with that part of the populace that represent an equivalent ideological view, mainly consisting of views that may be seen as liberal in the US sense of the term, and in general a left leaning, self-affirmed progressive view and "besserwisser " attitude? In contrast to what may be seen as a conservative, backward looking view? In other words do mainstream media to a high degree reflect and promote the views of only one side of the populace?
 
Two questions that are impossible to answer with certainty.
With regard to the first question one might perhaps refer to the fact that surveys indicate that it is not outright lies presented as truth that is problem. It is instead the marked bias in reporting facts and segments of truth, selected to convey an opinion based upon an ideological and political view, that the reporting journalists may or may not even be fully aware of.
Take the example of the clash at the border, a reader or viewer doesn’t have to know the whole story in order to question the reporting. He or she may ask themselves questions like: Why this focus on woman with children, how come they ended up in a cloud of tear gas? What happened before. and being just a little inquisitive, one may ask why her actions aren't seen as irresponsible?
Realising how media select segments of truth, women like her might even use the media selection to further their own cause, in a kind perverse vicious spiral, in which news media is focusing on the drama, and migrants are using this to create and enlarge exactly the drama. Thus removing focus from the real problem and creating an account that although showing a segment of truth becomes fictional in relation to the wider picture. Leading to more distrust in the media and to accusations of being essentially biased.
 
With regard to the second question one might refer to the Pew survey that shows the political and ideological split in trust in the media in the US, with 86 per cent of the republicans indicating distrust versus only 52 per cent of the democrats. A survey presented in Columbia Journalism Review supports this picture and shows trust and distrust in separate segments of the population.
A similar picture presents itself in Germany where AfD supporters distrust the media more than other political groupings. Maybe because established news media in general are especially critical in their treatment of the right wing politicians, protest parties, opinions and movements. Even in the way they are talking about them, often using derogatory terms like populist, far right, extremist, bigot, fremdenfeindlich or xenophobic, rechtsradikal, pak, homephobic, islamophobic, racist etc.
The Reuters survey also show that there are differences in trust according the income bracket of the respondents. 49 per cent of high income earners trust media to separate facts from fiction, while only 35 per cent of low income earners do.
The picture that emerges is one in which news media in essence cater to liberal, left leaning, self-proclaimed progressives, and to higher income brackets. The one half of the populace that would seem to include most of the journalists themselves.
While to the other half of the population news media are suspected of presenting a lopsided view, not perhaps blatantly so, but in selecting and presenting segments of truth, that certainly isn't seen as the whole truth by this half, and also seen to contain a rejection of their ideological and political views.
If this really is the case, a dangerous viscous spiral is at work here. In which a split in the populace is amplified by the media, leading in turn to deepening the real split in the population and so forth and so on.