My educational and professional background is in journalism. It’s time for me to talk about it.
There are things the mainstream media is doing wrong–things that will guarantee that legacy media outlets will continue to hemorrhage readers, viewers, listeners and credibility.
One of these things is the growing use of the term baseless, often in headlines. I’ve seen news outlets writing stories about a “baseless” theory that rich elites control the world. I’ve seen headlines calling the “died suddenly” hashtag trend on twitter a baseless conspiracy theory.
Allow me to give a few examples:
The Guardian: “Musk posts baseless conspiracy theory about Paul Pelosi attack on Twitter”
AP News: “Russians push baseless theory blaming US for burst pipeline”
Insider: “Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to push a baseless conspiracy theory about the Texas shooter,”
CBS news: “Dominion Voting systems and the baseless conspiracy about the 2020 Election”
The New York Times: (In this headline, the adjective unfounded is used as a synonym for baseless) “Theory About U.S.-Funded Bioweapons Labs in Ukraine Is Unfounded”
Factcheck.org: “Kansas Cattle Died After Unusual Heat Wave, Contrary to Baseless Claims Online’
Here’s the thing about baseless. You can seek to tell the truth and debunk something, using good journalism. If you feel something is incorrect, use the facts to pierce the balloon of lies or misunderstanding.
However, when you start out with the assumption that something is baseless, good journalism is dead on arrival. It’s particularly bad in a headline, because that is an article’s calling card, it’s first “how-do-you-do?”
You are also gas-lighting countless numbers of readers/viewers and would-be consumers of your news. Let’s just say that in 2022, the World Economic Forum–in advance of its annual Davos gathering in Switzerland–released a video conjecturing that by 2030, your average citizen will “own nothing and be happy.” This, by the way, happened.
Seeing this, a person might be inclined to think, wow, these rich people with elite jobs–many of whom traveled to the conference in private jets–want to rule over the average people, instead of helping us with our God-given and Constitutional right for the pursuit of happiness.
Because let me tell you, owning nothing doesn’t lead to happiness. Every child would like to have a stuffed animal to hold. Every family would like a form of transportation. Every home should have framed pictures on their walls. This is, in the microcosm, ownership.
There’s nothing wrong with an article seeking to debunk or get to a bottom of a theory such as organizations like the WEF are responsible for all of our ills.
However, suspicion that they are behind some of them isn’t baseless. It’s based on real stuff, like people pushing agendas of folks eating bugs and of employees wearing special headsets allowing employers to gauge if we are growing fatigued, stressed or aroused at the workplace. (The second instance is not baseless but in fact based on an actual presentation at Davos 2023.)
Let’s move onto my second example of something often deemed baseless: negative impacts from the Covid vaccine. Imagine someone is the parent, spouse, child, friend or coworker of someone who was jabbed and died suddenly, or perhaps more than one such person,
They may be convinced that the MRNA jabs/boosters are causing heart attacks, etc. Or, let’s say you have a young woman who has ceased to have her period since getting the Covid-19 injection, and has also developed a recurrent and uncomfortable rash on her body.
Any of these situations may be a case of post hoc ergo propter hoc), a fallacy we learn about when studying logic, rhetoric, speech and debate. It’s the concept of “after which, therefore because of.”
Perhaps the person grieving a lost loved one has assigned blame in the wrong place. Their 30-year-old spouse’s heart attack was due to an un-diagnosed heart defect. That woman’s period has stopped because of stress and her rash is due to a combination of stress and a new laundry soap they’re allergic to.
Still, it’s gas-lighting and marginalizing to declare someone’s suspicions, theories, hunches and beliefs are baseless. They started somewhere. They may end somewhere, but it won’t be while they’re reading or viewing media telling them they’re crazy and stupid.
It’s time for the media to put down the hubris. It’s time for anyone connected–writers, editors, publishers, owners, advertisers–to stop acting like anyone, has a corner on truth.
We can enumerate countless times when the media has been wrong. That’s okay, so long as it’s acknowledged. New facts emerge. New philosophies prevail. And new files are released.
It truly does seem to hold, in many cases, that yesterday’s conspiracy theory is today’s truth.
I’m not just trying to help restore dignity to news consumers. I’m trying to help keep journalism from losing its dignity and economic viability. I can’t emphasize it enough.
The first rule of journalism club is we don’t talk about journalism club. Just kidding. I’ll be talking a lot about journalism, and I hope to hear back from any interested readers.
My first rule for journalism is this revolutionary axiom:
No newspaper or media outlet shall use the term “baseless” in a headline.
–Sarah Torribio
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