Recent political conflicts have forced us to confront the
elusive and uncertain nature of truth.
How does one determine what is fact and what is fiction? In an age when information is so easily disseminated
and manipulated, how can we ever be sure that what we read, see or hear is
true?
In the beginning, there was no ‘media’ to capture or spread
information. People talked to one
another and information was relayed person to person, mouth to mouth. Oral history and folklore were the only means
to record historical events. And anyone
who has ever played the game of Chinese Whispers (or the Telephone Game as it
is called in the U.S.) knows that a chain of oral retellings has a high
probability of introducing error even when no one is intending to change the
story.
Historians suspect that much of the folklore and mythology
that came out of the period of human oral history is significantly embellished
or outright fiction. Something happens,
but when people talk about what happened they tend to relate the event in a way
that embodies their own biases, wishes and interpretations. Or they may simply invent something out of
whole cloth that serves their purposes.
Once the written word was invented, that provided the
opportunity to record facts or fiction in a less alterable medium. It did not ensure that what was written was
factual, but at least for the duration of the medium’s existence it prevented
it from being capriciously altered. But
sadly, all media are prone to degradation, and new copies must be made, which
of course re-introduces the opportunity for modification. All our ancient historical documents – e.g.
the Upanishads, the Bible, Greek and Roman classics – have been copied repeatedly
and there is no way to know what has been added, modified or deleted, though
certainly historians and other social scientists have their theories.
Much of what we now accept as historical fact has been
compiled and authenticated by historians via multiple sources – newspaper
accounts, magazines, books, letters, official documents, court records,
photographs and video – which certainly increases the odds for achieving
accurate portrayals. There is never absolute agreement about historical events
and they are of course interpreted by different people in different ways. The perspective of observers and scholars may
change as time passes, which is the reason why we often see ‘revisionist’
interpretations of history long after an event has occurred. But the basic facts of our history are
reasonably well preserved and held inviolable.
Before the advent of the Internet, there were a limited
number and type of media outlets for obtaining information – books, magazines,
newspapers, and radio and TV stations.
The capital and labor costs of mass producing printed material, or
producing radio and TV ensured that it was mostly well-funded enterprises
and/or serious historians that participated in the reporting and associated
commentary of events.
These well-funded media sources were captive to their
markets and needed to achieve a profitable business success. Therefore,
one could always expect an element of showmanship in magazine, newspaper,
television or radio reporting. More
serious scholarship in books and periodicals was less subject to the fickle
nature of the viewing public and thus more likely to avoid sensationalism. Scholarly writings are also reviewed rather
aggressively by one’s peers, which may eliminate much of the temptation to
embellish or distort.
Journalistic standards evolved over time, and credible
newspapers and magazines, as well as TV and radio news shows, could generally
be relied upon to provide factual content, with perhaps a modicum of either
liberal or conservative bias, depending on the political leanings of the
publisher. By the late twentieth century
there was a general perception in conservative circles that much of the media
had liberal leanings. I would argue that
this is not a bad thing, as the press is the fourth estate and may be seen as
playing a role of counterbalance to the influence of corporations and the rich
and powerful. The journalist who aligns
him or herself with the poor, the powerless and the downtrodden is performing a
noble function that may indeed be quite necessary in modern society, as long as
his or her basic presentation of events is still accurate.
However, the modern era of Internet media has unleashed a
veritable maelstrom of information, much of which is passed on by casual
reference without reference to any reliable source, or worse yet, a false
reference. Angry blogs, anonymous
emails, rogue news sites, conspiracy theorists and a thousand other would-be
pundits produce mountains of ‘news’ that may have little or nothing to do with
actual events. The effort required to
verify sources and veracity is prodigious, and the public’s penchant for
embracing and forwarding any views that align with their own, no matter how
uncertain their origin, makes policing the Internet an almost impossibly complex
task.
It is a sad irony that the Internet, while on the one hand providing
a fantastic resource for enrichment and education, is also a rapidly growing
dystopia of propaganda, hate speech, ‘fake’ news and outright falsehoods. True journalism may be found amidst the
trash, but it grows ever more difficult to guide an easily bamboozled public to
authentic, trustworthy information. And
the rapid emergence of authoritarian regimes that exert a powerful influence on media does not bode well for the future. Let us hope that a recognition of the
pitfalls in our current path will awaken in all of us a desire to seek out
facts and truth.
