Indrek Treufeldt - How are Facts Made?

Everyone seems to be an expert on journalism. Journalism has become something everyone can praise or condemn at all times. In a way, this is justified, as anyone can become a journalist without even working for a certain newspaper. Their messages can spread over the Internet and can be called journalism to some effect. However, the status of a journalistic publication is only one factor which determines the truthfulness of messages, says Indrek Treufeldt, Associate Professor of TV Journalism at Tallinn University.

A fact becomes one only when the public sees it as a fact.

One of the most important characteristic of journalism remains the fact that it is a process, during which facts are created, making journalism a facts manufacturing industry.

When a person says it is safe or dangerous to walk in a park at night, it is their personal opinion. When a person says the head officer of Tallinn parks (or any office related to them) says it is safe, it almost becomes fact. This is called attribution, or referring to a fact. Claims like this are made and heard daily during an eventful period of time. The reader, listener or viewer are told things that others have claimed to be true.

However, attribution is just one of the simplest examples of facts manufacturing. The mechanics behind manufacturing facts are much more complicated. Even more so, as journalistic facts are public and meant for the people. Thus, faith in what is and what is not a fact must constantly be renewed. People are after all, up to some point, able to tell between fiction and reality. At least they like to believe they are. Therefore, facts manufacturing encompasses formulating facts in journalism and creating a set of conditions for the facts to be valid. The conditions for facts are creating in public with the public. Oftentimes journalists use attribution to emphasise their own opinion. This is how half-truths are created.

The authorities may try to impose facts, but the authority does not always set the conditions for facts manufacturing. Even the press services of totalitarian countries flirt with facts manufacturing – one cannot keep publishing texts the whole public knows to be lies or fables.

If one believes the press, one must also believe in oneself and thus researching the press lets us find out things about ourselves. The conditions of different times are stored in the texts from these times. For example signs of repressions, censorship, humanistic or international approaches. The latter being terms more adequate to fiction. A text can be analysed by finding the markers or significant characteristics. The press gives us a new text daily. This lets us define what is constant and what is changing.

The press as a vehicle

People turn a great deal of attention to vehicles. However, is there really a difference whether you move along in a carriage, a raggedy old car, a limousine or even by foot? The journey is always similar. In fact, we hardly notice the change in the environment on our way.  Nor do we discuss on our perceptions of reality.

The press can also be compared to vehicles. They carry us through times and show us new views of the ever-changing reality. One of the most important characteristics of journalism is its periodicity. This makes it constantly synchronise itself to the conditions that surround people. It is difficult to explain how an event becomes a media text, but it is one of the results of the synchronisation process.

We could also ask whether it is possible to compare journalism in different society to different vehicles. Whether pre-war authoritarian Estonia should be a vintage limousine, or the post-war totalitarian press an uncomfortable Zhiguli with dirty windows. And by contrast, today’s democratic and European press would be a family car with an economic engine. It is easy to formulate these comparisons, but they often refer to our simplified impressions of the times and vehicles.

In his PhD Thesis, “Construction of journalistic facts in different societies,” Treufeldt offered a model for a thorough comparison of the journalism in different eras (authoritarian, totalitarian and democratic). Modern text analysis can explain what was left unsaid, or even what the public knew and felt at the time. The most important factor to research in this segment is the ways the press was controlled and restricted at these times.

Unexpectedly, Soviet journalistic texts have more personal stories than modern texts. This shows that no single regime can control the way people change experiences.

His thesis also showed how Finland started transmitting radio shows in Estonian to give Estonians knowledge about the things the republic deemed undesirable. At the same time, opinion tends to become more important in a democratic country than facts.