Over the past week, social media has been the home to quite polarizing opinions of the now former president, Barack Obama. Many alt-right tweeters and news outlets celebrated who some believe to be “the worst president in American history,”, leaving office while others noted his accomplishments in office, mourned how they’d miss him, and even regarded him as the best president in recent history.
All of these different takes that I have seen recently provoked me to wonder how will President Obama be remembered in the future forms of media if our contemporary forms are so incongruent?
This may just be a thought of mine because this is the first transition of executive power that I have fully witnessed or just because this is the first one in an era so dominated by the Internet. However, there could also be a larger issue at stake here than one viewpoint pushing an agenda against another’s.
In high school, I attended a journalism conference where CNN’s Candy Crowley was one of the week’s many speakers. I remember her saying that today’s news is tomorrow’s history and that as journalists, we were responsible for documenting history as it transpires. Although initially I liked the idea of the responsibility given to journalists to perform their jobs effectively, recently, I have begun thinking about the implications of this quote.
Considering how divided the media is now, who will be the ones who write the history books that our descendants read? Which President Obama will be taught in schools?
So many of the primary sources that they’ll read will oppose each other. As annoying as they are, the tweets from the average “egg” user will be one problem but will still capture the essence of a general public that was divided in both view and erudition. The news outlets though, which we perceive to be “reliable sources,” are likely going to leave future generations of students confused about what to believe, just like how I find myself feeling.
He is not American at all he Hitler Obama is a Ford Muslim the Muslim world made penetration in our government it was Barack Obama who di…
— Danny lapier (@Dannylapier1) January 26, 2017
This incongruence illustrates my frustration with modern media. We can’t control what every anonymous user posts. As #MadOnline as we may get from reading what we may perceive as others’ ignorant or naive opinions, a larger problem are the journalists. They’re the ones who are entrusted with a duty to the people as a reliable bridge into politics trust.
Yellow journalism has always existed since William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer turned Americans against Spain in the 1890s with their sensationalized stories that sought to dominate the New York market. However, the facts were able to emerge so that their articles were not the source of history, but rather, just a part of it.
Recently, there has been growing frustration with textbooks and how they deliberately explain controversial issues, such as gently describing slaves as workers or lionizing Christopher Columbus as a hero. A subject that is supposed to be the facts, history has always been a malleable topic. In science and math, logic can win out and disprove any false claims. But with history, anyone who has ever written a textbook has had the power to reshape it.
Now, with the current state of the media, people are altering history as it occurs. If the primary sources are biased and inaccurate, what should we expect of the history books of the future?
We can go back and see the truth behind the drama that Hearst and Pulitzer created in order to sell newspapers. Likewise, we have access to records that show that Europe’s settlement of the Americas was not a righteous mission. However, if what we think we know about our society now is driven by emotion and “alternative facts,” how will our descendants ever know the truth?