The heart of the book consists of a series of case studies—some ugly, some disturbing, some embarrassing, a few humorous—that illustrate important moments of tension involving journalism, news consumers, and truth. I invite readers to explore some of those with an eye to what’s new to them and what feels old and familiar about how the truth has been told—and, sometimes, sold.There was, for instance, unabashed fabrication. In the late nineteenth century some reporters insisted that it did not “debase their manhood,” as one put it, to “‘fake’ an interview” with a subject who didn’t want to answer their questions; the reporter’s job was to “get news,” while the reader expected to hear from newsworthy people. There was the manipulation of new technologies. Most of the customers who flocked to the motion-picture theaters showing “real battle scenes” from the Spanish American War down in Cuba would probably have been disappointed to learn that they were actually watching New Jersey National Guardsmen dressed up as U.S. soldiers and acting out dramatic charges filmed just across the river from Manhattan. But what did anyone expect? Movie cameras were just too big and clumsy to carry around on the field of battle!There were accusations of fakery used to undermine and delegitimize journalism that was in fact accurate. During the Jim Crow era, the mainstream southern press brimmed with stories painting Black men as sexual predators against white women, and when the well-known Black activist and journalist Ida B. Wells began exposing those reports as lies, white editors dismissed her works as “Ida Wells fakes.” There was government skullduggery. The CIA, operating on the theory that no weapon against the Communist threat was out of bounds, set up front organizations to produce fake journalism that sought to damage the nation’s enemies. And now there are influencers, activists, and partisans, often but not always on the Right, who cloak falsehoods involving critical matters like vaccines and election security in the familiar language of fact-driven objectivity.The tensions between the real and the fake unfolded differently in each case, and readers may find it intriguing to compare how some of them played out: who committed the fake, who profited from it, who justified it, who claimed the power to fight back against it, who carried the day in the end, and why.In these hyperpolarized times it’s easy—and, yes, sometimes appropriate—to focus on journalism’s flaws and failures. It’s also easy to forget there’s a more affirmative view of journalism: as an essential tool of democracy that provides citizens with the information they need to understand what their government and their elected officials are doing and to hold them accountable. That view acknowledges the idealism of the First Amendment, the landmark exposés by courageous investigative reporters, the gutsy coverage of war and crisis, the dogged daily slog to get things right.And now the pervasive fake claims by fake journalists that they are the only ones upholding traditional principles have made it more important than ever for the true professionals—the ones who strive to do honest work—to reclaim and repair the crucial distinction between themselves and the fakers. Not Exactly Lying ends with a robust defense of the increasingly beleaguered tradition of true objectivity, arguing that mainstream “real” media must publicly recommit themselves to the rigorous, fact-based, intellectually honest search for truth—wherever the evidence might lead.