Stubborn Facts

Did we all just wake up this morning in a brave new world that some are calling the “post-truth era?” The Oxford Dictionary says this is so. It has named “post-truth” as the new word of the year. It defines it as “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”
For those of us who were already struggling with too many versions of the truth, this can not be good news. Presidential elections, climate science, cable TV bills, local crime rates and what’s really in the U.S. Constitution are all at stake.
New words or not, hasn’t finding the truth and figuring out who to trust in government and the media always been a problem? Let’s admit it; real facts can be stubborn. And now we are faced with more and more enemies of the truth like fake news, wild Wikileak hacks, cockamamie Tweets and fallacious Facebook likes.
It was already bad enough (before the internet) when we were told smoking tobacco or spraying pesticides on our food wouldn’t cause cancer. Burning coal and other fossil fuels won’t really harm the atmosphere or melt the Arctic ice sheets is a lie told so many times that many still believe it.
Living in a post-truth era means living in a world of lost trust. Post-truth means not believing in science, our great universities, scholar-dissidents or independent journalists. A post-truth world has no room for healthy skepticism. Teaching young students about critical thinking or problem solving would be a  waste of time.
We’d better wake up. It’s time for more of us to be more skeptical, not less. We need to remember how we finally found out that smoking tobacco could kill us. It took maverick scientists to convince our government to make new health laws. While the tobacco industry spent millions on a fake news campaign, the American public ultimately believed the reports of an independent press. The stories of cancer victims and crusading health advocates won the public’s trust. This same dynamic of open query, fact-finding and news reporting also vitalized the civil rights and environmental movements.
The rise of the internet, unfiltered social media, loud cable TV news and a million blogs have created this post-truth environment where “mainstream media” is under steady attack.
Guess what? You are holding a copy of mainstream media in your hands right now. You are reading a page tilted “opinion” at the top. For this week’s facts be sure to read all the other pages marked “news” or “community.”
If you don’t want to live in a post-truth world, you have to stay skeptical and you have to choose real facts and real journalism over the fake kind.
How can you tell the difference? Here are a few tips:
Slow down. Don’t take the latest social media posting as fact until you ask yourself questions. In other words, think for yourself.
If it sounds outrageous or too good to be true, some important facts are probably missing.
Did you hear it before? Just repeating the same false fact or lie over and over again doesn’t make it any less post-truth. Check your sources.
Look for the hidden journalist and editor. All real news begins with a firsthand witness or account. But before it gets printed or put online it must be fact-checked and verified.
Cultivate trusted sources. The best news sources will admit their mistakes but won’t give up defending the truth — however unpopular it might become.
And, remember that chasing down the day’s stubborn facts and delivering them to a trusting public does not come easily — or for free.
The word post-truth may now be a permanent entry in the Oxford Dictionary but that does not mean we have to live it.
— Rollie Atkinson