Meet the Press: The role journalists hold in keeping truth and strength in our democracy

Physically slowing his walk. Paying attention to the length of his strides. Calming his mind to prepare to answer questions about how the president was dealing with the Ebola outbreak. Josh Earnest, President Obama’s press secretary who conveyed information to the news media, went through these steps before entering the briefing room calm and controlled, giving his mind a chance to refresh and restart.

Earnest stands in front of the presidential seal on a lifted podium with the U.S. government supporting him as 70 reporters and 10 different cameras surround him, taking every word he says to the extreme. Answering the sometimes rude, flippant questions that reporters shouted out him, Earnest never got flustered — that was his job.

Earnest’s job was to communicate what the government was doing in any circumstance to the media in the most truthful way possible — using a combination of his knowledge, what was happening in the United States and the president’s motives. Earnest believes that a journalist’s job is to tell the truth, and people in the U.S. need to acknowledge the truths in journalism to better our country. 

“In order to do my job well, it required a commitment to telling the truth,” Earnest said. “It requires doing a lot of homework in terms of being knowledgeable and equipped and prepared. It requires being in the loop because you must have the trust of the people inside of the White House to tell you what is going on so you can effectively tell everyone else what is going on.”

East alum and Overland Park City Council representative Logan Heley thinks the media has the responsibility to speak up when people in powerful government roles are misleading the public, which is vital to keeping transparency throughout our democracy.

“More recently, journalists will expose [misleading facts said by officials] as a lie where as just a few years ago [journalists] wouldn’t have [needed to] provided that context,” Heley said. “It is increasingly the responsibility of the news media to provide a journalistic filter because when you have an audience or a following you also have a responsibility.”

According to Earnest, a journalist’s main responsibility is reporting on events occurring in the community and keeping the public informed about what is going on inside and outside of our nation. This means a journalist holds people in power — politically or economically — accountable without letting bias intrude. 

“In order to do it well, there is an expression about doing that job without fear or favor,” Earnest said. “I think that makes a lot of sense in the current environment because you have to be able to hold people in power accountable without being scared of them but also without doing them any favors.”

Heley explains that journalism and the news media in general is surrounded by the struggle of constant neutrality — trying to find the balance between coverage of different political parties, social groups, public matters and elections. The media is almost always performing a balancing act between finding ‘both sides’ of a story. Heley has seen how much interaction there is with the media, and how important it is to tell the truth in journalism.

“If one side is lying or misleading or inciting violence like we saw recently [with the invasion on the capitol], then I believe it is the news media’s responsibility not to lend that side legitimacy or a platform by providing them coverage,” Heley said.

With the riots and propaganda that have occurred this past year, Earnest believes that the media is not to blame for the recent crack in our democracy — but it’s the citizens of the United States that don’t fully trust the media and aren’t willing to acknowledge the truth in every instance. If everyone was open-minded to other opinions, Earnest thinks that we would be a stronger, more united nation.

“We all have to invest in the collective success of the country,” Earnest said. “Otherwise it’s really hard to design a system of government that doesn’t keep us all together if we are not willing to make some sacrifices for each other.”

Local journalist Kyle Palmer from the Shawnee Mission Post explains that having former-President Donald Trump express the media as the enemy of the people has created divided interests. He feels half the country now looks towards the media as liars with a skewed agenda while others adore every journalist speaking for the people. 

“I don’t really want either,” Palmer said. “I don’t want people to hate me for what I report but at the same time I don’t want people to think I am a hero. In both cases it is dangerous for journalists because on one hand, there is the physical and emotional threat of being called the enemy of the people. On the other hand, there is a real self aggrandizing danger to thinking you are the knight in shining armor to save democracy when all you’re really trying to do is do your job.”

Being a local journalist, Palmer finds an extra level of accountability in reporting as his readers are community members, friends and neighbors. 

The Shawnee Mission Post and every news organization are journalists first. But closely behind is every business’s main goal — profit. Finding a balance between reporting on what his community wants and hopes to read and reporting on the news that their city needs to know is one of the many balancing acts of being a reporter. 

Palmer explains that each journalist has a perspective. This does not mean they are biased towards one side of the story versus another, this means they have a certain way on reporting. Journalists and reporters find an angle, or perspective, on the best way to view a story. 

“Journalism is like the scientific method in that you have to constantly acknowledge that you don’t know what you don’t know and be constantly interrogating yourself and your biases on what you are reporting on,” Palmer said. “A lot of people don’t realize that about true journalists. They think we have some preconceived plan about what conclusions we want to reach, who we want to win or what we want to get across. But all we are trying to do is do our job.”