As peace journalists, how do we reach election-deniers?
Many conservative media outlets continue to fuel the lie that Biden’s win is illegitimate, even though the facts to the contrary are clear. 

Biden’s victory has been certified by every competitive state, while more than 30 Trump campaign legal challenges have been thrown out of court, often by conservative judges. Despite protestations to the contrary, not a shred of proof has been introduced in court that would indicate any fraud, let alone fraud on a scale that would change the outcome of the election in any state or overall.

The news media have repeated these facts ad nauseam and challenged the Trump campaign’s lies about voter fraud. While admirable, this reporting and commentary is clearly not reaching anyone who really needs to hear it. According to the New York Times, “Since the election, surveys have consistently found that about 70 percent to 80 percent of Republicans don’t buy the results. They don’t agree that Joe Biden won fair and square. They say the election was rigged. And they say enough fraud occurred to tip the outcome.” Also, an alarming 49 percent said "they expected Mr. Trump to be inaugurated on Jan. 20.” (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/30/upshot/republican-voters-election-doubts.html)

Obviously, these election-deniers have their heads buried in the Fox, Newsmax, and OANN sand. 

As peace journalists, then, how do we reach our fellow citizens?

The fix won’t happen quickly, but needs to start immediately. It begins with re-imagining our politically polarized media which has so distorted information that facts, opinions, and claims have become indistinguishable. One key tenet of peace journalism is to reject ‘us vs. them’ narratives, the kind that feed polarizing media. Instead, a peace journalist would strive to serve audiences on all sides politically, and seek common ground. A good place to start would be to attempt to forge some agreed-upon facts like those mentioned previously.

Peace journalists would also turn down the rhetorical heat by rejecting inflammatory language directed at the other side. President-elect Biden has been a good role model in this regard.

Another way to reach election-deniers is with media literacy education. Media lit education would empower audiences to check facts for themselves, to critically analyze content from all media sources for bias and misinformation, and to break out of their ‘media bubbles’ and consume news from a diversity of sources across the political spectrum. Better journalism, peace journalism, could be employed to help audiences distinguish between claims and facts, to provide basic civics education that so many lack, and to give audiences the tools so that they can de-bunk conspiracy theories themselves. (To learn more, see  the National Association for Media Literacy Education at  https://namle.net/ .)

All the responsible, productive, bridge-building peace journalism in the world won’t make much of a difference if it echoes inside only one media bubble or if its messages get lost in a partisan maelstrom.

It’s time to dismantle our poisonous partisan media structure and empower audiences to become better, smarter news media consumers.