Nicholas Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree or disagree with him.
THE ONGOING BATTLE FOR TRUTH.
In her recent novel and polemic The Deck, Fiona Farrell states (pp.294-295) “Fact is under fire. In 1921 the great CP Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian… had famously stated that in news reportage, ‘comment is free but facts are sacred’. A journalist’s fact could be tested for its veracity, just as modern science depended upon the provable hypothesis that distinguished it from magic and religious belief. The distinction was useful. It offered certainty, a solid platform of objective detail in the midst of the flood of experience and sensation that is the ordinary human existence. It was an ideal, of course, and not always achieved. Those facts were always subject to personal prejudice, party political affiliation and editorial bias. But Scott’s dictum remained a journalistic aspiration, until it ran slap bang into the Trumpian alternative where no fact is reliable, let alone sacred, and every report can be doubted as fake, spin or propaganda.”
I too believe that “facts are sacred” and that we are in an age of massive misinformation and disinformation. I also accept Fiona Farrell’s admission that despite C.P. Scott’s dictum, it was more of an “aspiration” than a law followed diligently by journalists. At the risk of offending an interesting author, however, I challenge her declaration that it was a “Trumpian alternative” that first befouled journalism and reportage. Sure, Trump outrageously labelled anything he didn’t like as “fake news” and to his followers made outlandish statements as if they were the sworn truth. But Trump did not inaugurate this new age of general non-truth - and in the bear-pit that is American politics, Trump’s political opponents spread as many untruths as he did.
So where exactly did this age of enhanced un-truth come from?
The simple fact is that untruthful reporting is nothing new. Obviously downright lies have been with us since human beings existed, but when it comes to published news, bias has always been built into journalism. Let’s ignore the totalitarian states, in which the only reported “news” is propaganda for the ruling regime. Making an historical survey of the press in what could be called democracy, bias – and the denial of facts – began with the very invention of newspapers. History shows that the very first newspapers in Europe – in the 17th century – were essentially approved government bulletins which reported only what the ruling party [or monarch] wanted to be published, involving suppression of awkward facts. Moving into the 19th century, newspapers were fiercely partisan in politics, and distorted the truth when it came to supporting one political party and denigrating another. This was true of the first newspapers in New Zealand. David Hastings’ Extra! Extra!, his history of the genesis of newspapers in Auckland in the 19th and early 20th century [reviewed on this blog], makes it quite clear that newspapers were founded on partisan lines, and few holds were barred when it came ridiculing or belittling an opposing party – including the use of blatant lies.
I’ve remarked elsewhere on this blog that in the early 20th century it became common for readers to say “you can’t trust everything you read in the newspapers”. This attitude was at its height during the First World War when, for morale-boosting purposes, readers were often told that a great victory had been won when the long lists of the dead said otherwise and when returning [injured] soldiers were able to tell their families the raw truth about defeat or stalemate. Morale-boosting journalism involving blatant untruths was also commonplace in the Second World War. By the time C.P. Scott declared that “comment is free but facts are sacred” he was speaking in an environment when, in the news media, facts were routinely being distorted or denied. After newspapers came radio, newsreels, television, the internet and the so-called “social media”. Viewers and listeners were now bombarded with news and in the bombardment were many blatant lies. Some media-outlets took to “fact-checking” which had some merit, but which often involved only “checking” (and refuting) what the given outlet disapproved of - this despised party or group could be scrupulously “checked”; that approved party or group could be passed over in silence.
By his stage – especially if you are a journalist – you might be assuming that I am damning the whole profession of journalism. Not so. I am aware of “muck-rakers” and investigative journalists who have diligently exposed crime, injustice, untruths, dishonest practices and other evils. More power to them. I am also aware that much reporting is “neutral” in the sense of not having any partisan strings attached to it. There have been many great (and honest) journalists. But the notion that massive (journalistic) untruths began in the era of Trump is simply not true. If we now live in an environment “where no fact is reliable, let alone sacred, and every report can be doubted as fake, spin or propaganda” then we are living in the legacy of things that evolved before Trump hit the scene. Okay, he’s a demagogue and liar, but he didn’t set the ball rolling into the era of “post-truth”. “Post-truth” was already there.
Five years back I wrote an opinion piece called jocularly My Reprehensible Schadenfreude in which I took to task the phenomenon of post-modernism. I was fired to do this after having (about 20 years ago now) conversed with a post-modernist who denied that there were objective facts in history. Everything was subjective. I wrote in my opinion piece: “Quite a while ago, I concluded that postmodernist thinking led to a world in which truth was irrelevant because the idea of objective and demonstrable truth was denied. My narrative is as good as your narrative and any assertions about truth and falsehood are specious. I further concluded that this was one of the foundations of the “post-truth” world.” The zealous post-modernists were already chipping away at the idea of demonstrable and objective fact long before Trump was a major figure and they were teaching their subjectivism to generations of students.
Fiona Farrell is right to say that truth is now under massive fire, partly because there are now so many “platforms” for pundits to declare “their” truth. But she missed the real origin of this disaster.
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