I wish the NYT would quit referring to voter-suppression measures as “strict” voting laws.
Tag: truth
2021-01-10 09:36
This from Forbes is actually a pretty good start. All media outlets should commit to such a policy:
“Trump’s liars don’t merit that same golden parachute. Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie… Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.”
Source: A Truth Reckoning: Why We’re Holding Those Who Lied For Trump Accountable
The sad perversion of fake news
The old Daily Show, back when it featured Jon Stewart, called itself “fake news,” but it was a very specific thing: It was a topical humor show which used the tropes of a news show for humorous effect.
What we started calling “fake news” toward the end of the recent election cycle was something else. It was click-bait articles with headlines that implied something outrageous, offered up for twin purposes: 1) to get eyeballs for earning advertising dollars, and 2) to produce outrage. Some of it was primarily to produce outrage, but mostly the outrage was just a means to the end of getting even more eyeballs to make even more money.
These are very different things.
I miss the old Daily Show. It was funny. When someone asked Jon Stewart if it didn’t worry him that some large fraction of young people claimed that the Daily Show was their main source of news he said it didn’t, because he knew it wasn’t true: Much of the humor of the Daily Show depended on you already knowing the news of the day.
It’s really unfortunate that click-bait, outrage-producing faux news got tagged with the same label. It’s not the same thing, but since it got the same name, I fear it will be a long time before we get something like the Daily Show back again.
These lies make it easy to find our allies
What’s up with the very peculiar behavior of our new president and his bizarre insistence on telling lies that are easily detected as lies?
I’ve seen several suggestions about what might be going on. Two worth mentioning are Trump’s Constant Lying Is a Power Game and Hannah Arendt Explains How Propaganda Uses Lies to Erode All Truth. Both make the point that the purpose of the lie is not to fool anybody. Rather, it’s an expression of power.
Compelling people who know better to repeat your lies in their own words dramatically displays your complete control over them. Yes, there was a certain schadenfreude to seeing Christie and Rubio parroting Trump’s lies when they were angling for the VP slot or a cabinet post, but there are additional dangers in rendering even powerful people powerless—it means even more power is captured by the person at the top.
All of which is a bit tangential to my point, which is to recognize one good thing about this. Sad and disturbing as the situation is, these lies make it easy to find our allies: The news organizations that identify the lies and present them as such are on the side of right and truth.
Other strategies exist for identifying our allies, but most of them have turned out to be vulnerable to being co-opted by the bad guys.
This one is different.
Yes, an organization under the sway of the bad guys could attempt to do the same thing only backwards—call out the truth as a lie—but that’s pretty easy to spot. No one would be fooled for long.
They could, I suppose, call out actual lies as lies, and then (having built up some credibility) try to slip in an occasional falsehood as the truth, but that’s not going to be a successful strategy for the long term, unless maybe there’s a single issue that you really want to fool people about.
No, the strategy of calling out lies as lies will turn out to be uniquely available to the good guys, which means that we’ll be able to know which news organizations (and other organizations) are on the side of right and truth.
Sure, there’ll be a bit of extra work on our part—identifying the lies and documenting them, taking the time to pick a random few stories and digging into the data to see if the story is true (and the supposed lie an actual lie).
It’s important not to see that as pointless or hopeless work. It’s not like emptying the sea with a teaspoon, even if it may seem like that (because the supply of lies is vast and renewable). Think of it rather as collecting a bit of seawater for the purpose of making some artisan sea salt: The point is not to empty the sea, but to gather a bit of seasoning to use in the service of a larger project.
The larger project is what’s important, not emptying the sea. And there’s the bonus benefit that doing the work marks you as one of the good guys, and that’s something that’s good for all of us to know.