On Oct. 22, DU hosted a conversation focused on “Media and Democracy: What Happens When We Can’t Agree on the Facts?” with Kyle Clark, an award-winning 9News anchor, and Jeremey Haefner, DU’s Chancellor and published academic. Derrigan Silver, the faculty director for civil discourse and free expression, moderated the discussion.
Before the event, Clark hosted his show “Next with Kyle Clark” on campus, interviewing DU students about how comfortable they feel presenting their opinions on campus and in class.
During the panel, Clark was asked how journalism could help win back the trust of the American people, given the public’s historically low confidence in it.
“Journalism done right is something that is done in conversation with community….There is nothing that I could talk about on television that I know more about than somebody out there,” Clark said.
Harnessing the collective expertise of the public is essential in creating well-informed journalism, Clark argued. And even then, he says, journalism is never a finished product.
“So gone are the days of the voice of god news anchor who was omniscient and proclaimed the truth to people every night,” Clark said. “No, every night, I go out and try to figure out the best ascertainable version of the truth that we have. I present it to you, and you know that we’re still working on it.”
Ultimately, Clark said, the solution to winning back the American people’s confidence will come from local journalists. The trick is avoiding pitfalls, like what he calls “the litany of tragedy model.”
“The answer is not for journalists to retreat into what I call the ‘litany of tragedy model,’ which is to say the things that we should cover every day are simply the ten worst things to happen to the community, then weather, sports, an animal story and goodnight. That’s not a representation of true life,” Clark said.
On the topic of misinformation, Clark emphasized the danger it poses to our ability to have civil discourse in our society. Specifically, when powerful people spread information that they themselves do not believe to be true.
When non-truths disseminate into our society, every situation, from Thanksgiving dinner to our national dialogue, becomes more divided and corrosive.
“Being wrong or even dangerously misinformed used to be something that people would be embarrassed by and now it is something that is celebrated as a tribal identity,” Clark said.
Chancellor Haefner, a published academic and mathematician, took a more positive view of the future.
“Getting started with a foundational dialogue that we have more in common than we have differences is a glimmer of hope on how we might proceed on this,” Haefner said.
Haefner argued that universities play a role in advancing and protecting the truth. Good scholarship, he said, can and should help inform our communities; the issue is connecting civil society and academia in a meaningful way.
One way the university has sought to bridge that gap is through the Public Impact Fellows program, which trains faculty to translate their scholarly research into a more consumable and accessible version for the public.
“Making the public better understand the work that we are doing and how it impacts and is ingrained in a process that is after the truth is our best weapon to combat the public mistrust in us,” Haefner said.
Regarding the learning environment at DU, the chancellor said encouraging thoughtful and productive discourse should be paired with a firm commitment to freedom of speech. An open environment that invites uncomfortable questions is what college is all about.
“To have that environment, you’ve got to have a commitment to free speech, because if you have any constraints on free speech, you start to control what questions you can ask and what truths you can have,” Haefner said.
However, as DU students know, campus became divided over a pro-Palestine encampment that sprung up in front of the library last spring. Trying to broach that uncomfortable subject, the chancellor said:
“There’s this tension; it doesn’t work perfectly, it’s messy, and it puts people in extreme discomfort, but it is sometimes out of those extreme moments of discomfort where you get much stronger as a person.”
The tension on DU’s campus seemed to manifest itself at that moment; an angry voice rang from the crowd, accusing Haefner of being unfair to the students who decided to participate in the encampment.
The guest, who the Clarion was unable to identify, interrupted and berated the chancellor for not releasing a statement condemning Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Silver gave the chancellor a chance to respond.
“I will speak out when it directly impacts our community, when there is abuse that is directed towards a protected class, let’s say. However, wandering into political or geopolitical politics or social politics is not the role of the university’s voice. That is our faculty or students’ role to engage in meaningful dialogue in the search for truth,” Haefner said.
The chancellor went on to say the encampment turned out to be a “terrible example of civil discourse.”
Last spring, the university hired Lim Riley, a private law firm, to investigate discrimination on campus during the encampment. In early October, the university shared those results with the student body.
Lim Riley concluded that, for various reasons, hostile environments were created for students who identify as Jewish or LGBTQ+ during the encampment.
For this reason, the chancellor said, the decision was made to ban encampments on DU’s campus for the future.
The chancellor’s words did not dissuade the members of the crowd, who seemed to be still angry.
Ultimately, Clark, Haefner and Silver moved on from the topic of encampment and protest. The night, full of insights about the state of democracy in our country, was also eye-opening to the division existing in DU’s community.
