Not Exactly Lying

In exploring the various ways that fakes and falsehoods have made their way to the public as journalism and news, Tucher follows a number of trends: the evolving internal conventions of and boundaries around journalism, the introduction of new media technologies, the waxing and waning of partisan influence on and control over key news outlets, and changing public appetites for news. Not Exactly Lying shows that the enemy of good journalism is not slant but untruth.

Auteur
Andie Tucher is the H. Gordon Garbedian Professor and the director of the Communications PhD Program at the Columbia Journalism School. She is the author of Froth and Scum: Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and the Ax Murder in America's First Mass Medium (1994) and Happily Sometimes After: Discovering Stories from Twelve Generations of an American Family (2014). Tucher previously worked in documentary production at ABC News and Public Affairs Television.

Texte du rabat

From fibs about royal incest in America's first newspaper to social-media-driven conspiracy theories surrounding Barack Obama's birthplace, Andie Tucher explores how American audiences have argued over what's real and what's not-and why that matters for democracy.

Résumé
Winner, 2023 Columbia University Press Distinguished Book Award

Winner, 2023 Frank Luther Mott / Kappa Tau Alpha Research Award

Winner, 2023 Journalism Studies Division Book Award, International Communication Association

Winner, 2023 History Book Award, Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication

Long before the current preoccupation with fake news, American newspapers routinely ran stories that were not quite, strictly speaking, true. Today, a firm boundary between fact and fakery is a hallmark of journalistic practice, yet for many readers and publishers across more than three centuries, this distinction has seemed slippery or even irrelevant. From fibs about royal incest in America's first newspaper to social-media-driven conspiracy theories surrounding Barack Obama's birthplace, Andie Tucher explores how American audiences have argued over what's real and what's notand why that matters for democracy.

Early American journalism was characterized by a hodgepodge of straightforward reporting, partisan broadsides, humbug, tall tales, and embellishment. Around the start of the twentieth century, journalists who were determined to improve the reputation of their craft established professional norms and the goal of objectivity. However, Tucher argues, the creation of outward forms of factuality unleashed new opportunities for falsehood: News doesn't have to be true as long as it looks true. Propaganda, disinformation, and advocacywhether in print, on the radio, on television, or onlinecould be crafted to resemble the real thing. Dressed up in legitimate journalistic conventions, this fake journalism became inextricably bound up with right-wing politics, to the point where it has become an essential driver of political polarization. Shedding light on the long history of today's disputes over disinformation, Not Exactly Lying is a timely consideration of what happens to public life when news is not exactly true.

Contenu
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. False Reports, Maliciously Made
2. Important If True
3. Not Exactly Lying
4. I Believe in Faking
5. We Did Not Call It Propaganda
6. Nothing That Is Not Interesting Is News
7. Why Don't You Guys Tell the Truth Once in a While?
8. So Goddamn Objective
9. The Bastards Are Making It Up!
10. Fake but Accurate
    Conclusion: A Degenerate and Perverted Monstrosity
    Notes
    Bibliography
    Index