According to the FCC website, federal law prohibits the broadcast of anything obscene, indecent, or profane. Of course, what’s obscene, indecent, or profane is somewhat up for debate, but you probably have a general idea of the words I can’t say and the images I can’t try to summon in your heads. If I were on a live show, and I accidentally swore — in the aftermath, no doubt, of knocking over a mug of hot coffee — producers would have to jump on the dump button or be prepared to face a fine.
What I am permitted to do, though, is to inform listeners that, according to the president, the 2020 election was stolen. On January 6, 2021, peaceful and patriotic protesters gathered at the Capitol. ICE detains and deports only immigrants who have committed crimes.
In other words, I cannot repeat profanity, but I can repeat lies.
But lying is far more harmful to the listener than any words I might say upon stubbing my toe on the dishwasher. Even if the station added the truth for balance, even if there were oodles of truth on here, the lie would still pollute the airwaves and, possibly, infect your brain or the brain of someone you know who, let’s say, isn’t up to date on their immunizations. People believe what they hear and read, especially if they hear it over and over. How else could our current president possibly have been reelected?
You could fairly and accurately represent the Trump Era as a dot-to-dot of lies, from the one about Obama’s birth certificate to the one about Haitians eating pets to the one about . . . um what’s in the news today? Something about Trump having been victimized by the previous justice department? Though fact checkers valiantly keep tallies and newspapers tentatively have begun to use the word “lie” - well, “falsehood” anyway - those of us who insist on historical fact and scientific evidence are losing ground every day.
Which is why, when the nonprofit news organization NOTUS asked me and a dozen other former Washington Post writers what we would change about journalism if we could, I answered: our attitude toward lying.
In the deep-fake, bot-infested, Trump era, it’s no longer enough for news organizations to seek truth; we need them to protect the public from lies. Lies should be treated like obscenities, like graphic violence or sexual content. That means literally refusing to repeat a transparent lie — not quoting it early and then offering corrective facts two paragraphs or 30 seconds later. Sure, sometimes it’s a judgment call whether a statement falls just to the spin side of the mendacity line. But sometimes it’s obvious - and predictable too.
News organizations do cover people who swear, of course. But they avoid quoting profanity by writing things like “then he added an expletive for emphasis” and we all fill in the blanks in our heads. That’s how reporters should deal with lies: Quote whatever truth they can and then say, “after which he repeatedly lied about the price of gas” or what have you. For broadcast press conferences, radio producers will have to be ready to press the “dump” button. As for lying on live TV? Bring on the bleeps!
Kate Cohen is an Albany, New York, writer, a former Washington Post columnist, and the author of We of Little Faith. On Substack, she writes a column called Scratch, which celebrates the fight for human agency in a culture awash in cheap consumer goods and A.I.
The views expressed by WAMC’s commentators are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of WAMC or its management.
