Oxford Dictionaries have just released their ‘Word of the Year 2016’ – post-truth – (adjective) “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
It’s certainly relevant. The zeitgeist is now infected with made-up “news”. Maybe it even swayed the recent US election. This ranges across the spectrum from deliberately fake news to real events that are instantly analysed by people who have no idea, but who are ready to apply a good dose of internal bias to any story.
‘Create your own audience’ the social media gurus told us. And we did, with no checks and balances, no review, no journalistic principles, no fact-checking and no restraint. Having sown the wind of ‘my opinion is just as valid as yours’, we have reaped the whirlwind of ‘my truth is just as valid as yours’. Experts – real experts – are relegated to being just one of many voices; and with their expertise cautioning them to be circumspect with pronouncements, their views are often completely drowned out by the confident (wrong) statements of the opinion-makers.
We all have some propensity to believe what we want to believe. We form views and sometimes hold that consistency in position is more important than reality. That always comes unstuck eventually, but in the meantime we operate on a basis that is not true. We used to worry about that.
I came across “Fox Geezer Syndrome” a couple of years back. Old geezers (ahem, senior citizens) in Florida sitting in front of Fox News all day becoming angrier and angrier with “the government”, “the elites”, “political correctness”, “cancel culture” and other imagined evils; because Fox News had worked out that a steady diet of confected outrage got them viewers. By comparison to now, that seems mild.
Our current echo-chamber of folks who are mutually reinforcing each other’s misinformation infects both ends of the political spectrum. It has created an anti-science sentiment that dulls our response to real threats. From anti-vaxxers to climate change denial to diet ‘advice’ to ‘the law of attraction and the Universe listens to you’. We have now a misinformation industry where anybody (anybody!) can create a fact-free pile and use it to attract followers and advertising.
And while it is easy to tut-tut about the gullible, if we’re not careful, we will do it to ourselves: cut out that voice, or that news source, or that (actual) expert because we don’t like what we hear.
Our traditional media have run out of subscribers (revenue) and can’t afford serious journalism any more. Not in an era where everyone can design and curate their own news – only picking those voices that appeal to them, shouting down the rest. The Fourth Estate now resembles a kind of run-down mansion, its foundations undermined, its lawn full of weeds, its roof leaking. In a desparate scramble for clicks, once-proud mastheads often resort to non-stories about celebrities, miracle cures and salacious crime.
Meanwhile, points of view have become tribal – it’s us against them (and they’re complete idiots if they don’t agree with “us”). A view, once formed, must now be defended! The likes of Keynes (“when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do sir?”) seem long gone.
And the only foundation to any kind of analysis – evidence – is now entirely discounted. The putting forward of facts on which to base a reasonable discussion is looked upon as suspicious, your motives maligned. Facts seem less important than “passion”, analysis is shallow, and outrage rules.
Welcome to the post-truth world.
Image attribution: “Truth suffers a daily death in America” – by Michael Carruth on Unsplash
“And judgment is turned away backward, and justice standeth afar off: for truth is fallen in the street, and equity cannot enter” Isaiah 59:14
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