“A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”—Mark Twain
The truth has always been up against it, especially from politicians and their “lies, damned lies & statistics”, but in the past 5 years the poor thing has been properly roughed up and left bleeding in a ditch.
Pre-Internet our sources of information were journalists, held by professional pride or at least corporate lawyers to some degree of accountability. Tabloids aside, if you read something in print you had some confidence that it would be true.
Not any more.
The Internet is an unregulated, unchecked morass of bullshit and lies, often not even generated by humans – over half of web traffic is bots (automated software). We pick up the skills to get online and participate in the global community, but not the skills or technology needed to identify truth or lies online.
Add to that Trump’s blatant disregard for truth with “alternative facts” – which astoundingly his gullible followers swallow hook, line and sinker – and the news media’s political bias and sensationalism and it’s difficult to know what you can trust any more.
This leads to some very serious problems :-
- the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups
- giving credence to climate change deniers
- promoting negative views of the world and humanity, which leads to
- feelings of isolation and social anxiety
Thankfully there is a way to fight back.
Independent online fact checkers are available (though maddeningly there are also fake fact checkers, even previously reliable Snopes.com now being corrupted). If you’re reading an article and you’re not certain if it’s true try
There’s also an online course available called Calling Bullshit to train yourself in spotting and calling out the lies
I’ve just bought Factfulness by Hans Rosling, to help me learn to navigate around the bullshit better.
I just hope The Truth gets its boot laces tied soon and starts playing catch up otherwise we’re all in trouble.
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