A New Age for Truth

[Nevilledog]

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Joan Donovan, PhD 🦫
@BostonJoan
"The forces of untruth.. know how to birth and spread a lie better than we know how to debunk one. They are more creative about it, and, by the very nature of what they’re doing, they aren’t constrained by ethics...” @CraigSilverman in 2012

A New Age for Truth | Nieman Reports
‘Never has it been so easy to expose an error, check a fact, crowdsource and bring technology to bear in service of verification.’
niemanreports.org
7:18 PM · Apr 1, 2021

https://niemanreports.org/articles/a-new-age-for-truth/

In a handbook for aspiring journalists published in 1894, Edwin L. Shuman shared what he called one of the “most valuable secrets of the profession at its present stage of development.”

He revealed that it was standard practice for reporters to invent a few details, provided the made-up facts were nonessential to the overall story.

“Truth in essentials, imagination in nonessentials, is considered a legitimate rule of action in every office,” he wrote. “The paramount object is to make an interesting story.”

Humans … are disinclined to change closely held beliefs. We seek out sources of information that confirm our existing views. When confronted by contrary information, we find ways to avoid accepting it as true.

It was easy for a reporter of the time to get away with a few, or even a bushel of, inventions. Information was scarce and could take days or weeks to make its way to the public sphere. The telephone was not yet widely in use, and the first transatlantic wireless transmission was years away. The early mass-market Kodak Brownie camera was close to a decade from release. The machinery of publishing and distribution was in the hands of a few.

If a reporter wanted to fudge a few details to make his story a little more colorful, well, chances are no one would notice or call him on it.

Shuman’s advice is objectionable, but something about it—and the information and reporting environment in which it was offered—seems quaint and charming by today’s standards.

It also highlights how much things have changed when it comes to accuracy and verification. “Not too long ago, reporters were the guardians of scarce facts delivered at an appointed time to a passive audience,” writes Storyful founder Mark Little in his essay in this issue. “Today we are the managers of an overabundance of information and content, discovered, verified and delivered in partnership with active communities.”

*snip*

[Funtatlaguy]

1. A society that no longer values truth is no longer a society

[Kid Berwyn]

2. Truth is the Foundation for Democracy

Hence, the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.