Fake News and Fake Views: It’s all a lie. And that’s the truth…..

Well, it’s been quite a week. The POTUS has accused those media outlets that are less than effusive in their praise for him of being fake news outlets and enemies of the people. We are, if you believe it, (woops, apologies) being overwhelmed with false reporting, fabrication, misreporting, honest reporting of fake stories and dishonest reporting of the truth. It seems we are awash in leaks from unnamed sources, all reputable but hidden.

It reminds me of an old AC/DC song that went "And its an eye for eye, tooth for tooth. Its a lie, and that's the truth"

Let’s face it, the truth has always been a rather elusive concept when it comes down to opinions and perceptions. It's a bit like its sibling reality - everyone's is slightly different. Today though, it seems it's gone from elusive to almost mythical and perhaps even unrecognisable. The speed-of-light transmission of breaking news leads to saturation before verification. Common sense filters are swept away in in-coming waves of competing stories where instantly perceived facts are blended with the detritus of hastily informed opinion and convenient assumption which is an easy morph away from fabrication. All are put through endlessly spinning media centrifuges and spat out for consumption by the masses 24-7, 365 repeat.

The proliferating choice of endless, competing news outlets means we have ever more options in choosing our particular brand of the truth. Invariably we gravitate to that which chimes most with our perceptions of how we would like the world to be. So CNN viewers will avoid Fox, just as Daily Mail readers won't agree with much that the Guardian reports. Some may even believe Russia Today (Ok, I’m exaggerating for effect). But does listening to the views we expect to hear really give us a fair perception of the world? In a sense we are having comforting conversations with ourselves; no one benefits from such warmly agreeable, sterile non-exchanges of views. And without a variety of views to challenge our assumptions, we risk becoming set in our thinking and instantly intolerant of the opinions of others. That last point seems a particularly chronic condition at the moment but please feel free to violently disagree.

 Much is being said about us being in an alternative fact, post truth sort of world and that this is all sort of conveniently synonymous with the rise to power of Donald Trump. Really? We do have short memories. Anyone remember the Iraq war, dodgy dossiers, Tony Blair and his army of spin doctors as just an arbitrary example?  The truth (apologies for using the word again) is that this has been going on for just about as long as civilisation, for as long as we have had language, lived communally, had social hierarchies (and had to explain our behaviours to others). We decide what we would like to believe and then look for the facts to prove it, when it should be the other way round. That applies to politics as much as it does to creation science.

Once we have settled on our views; our "truths", we are rarely then disturbed by the facts or unsettled by the absence of that extinct beast known as common sense. How many suicide bombers ever change their views?  This is not some new post truth or post fact development. It was ever thus. Perhaps what is new is the fury at being confronted by an alternative view point. How dare we be challenged? In a sense, as we insist on all our inalienable individual human rights, so we demand and exercise the freedom to believe in all the delusions and ridiculous notions of our choice and how dare anyone try to wake us from these dreams of the unreal.

 So here we are, grown bloated on our diets of confirmation bias and its after-effects of angry intolerance.

 

·         In a world of a thousand different viewpoints, it seems we only want to hear our own.

 

·         In a take on Orwell's animals all being equal but some being more equal than others, we demand the right to our free speech, but insist on the right to silence others whose views we “know” are wrong. 

·         The truth is become some spectre that haunts us with its absence in a world deafened by the vulgar shouting of those defined only by their angry, competing ideological dogmas.  

·         Facts are selectively assembled to support preordained conclusions and we brand as heretics and cast out those whose mean biases differ from our own.

 And since I’m in the mood to quote literary giants of rock music (don’t you dare disagree), I’ll paraphrase Roger Daltry of The Who….“Welcome to the new reality. Same as the old reality”

 

So, believe what you will, for it shall be your truth

 

 

(I wrote the grimy lines below long ago in another time (1990s) and place but they seem oddly appropriate at the moment)

THE NEWS

PARALYSED

I GAZE UP INTO THE

UNBLINKING EYE OF TELEVISION

GROPING FEEBLY FOR MEANING

BETWEEN CAREFULLY SELECTED REAL TIME PICTURES

AND VOICE-OVER QUASI-TRUTHs.

THOSE IN-THE-KNOW SMILE BENIGNLY

AND SPIN ELEGANT JUSTIFICATIONS ABOVE MY HEAD,

TURNING FAILURES INTO SALVATIONS AND WATER INTO WINE.

ELSEWHERE ON-THE-SCENE NEWS JOURNALISTS

ANALYSE AND DISTORT FRACTURED FACTS AND FRAMES

FORCING SOME DISTANT AGONY NOT MINE

THROUGH THE CORRUPTED PRISMS

OF THEIR MASTERS’ POLITICAL MYOPIAS.

 I GRAB FOR ENLIGHTENMENT

ONLY TO FIND

THAT WHAT WAS SAID

IS NOW EMPHATICALLY DENIED

THEY ALL SPOKE BETWEEN THE LINES

THE TRUTH WAS ONLY EVER IMPLIED

 I GOT

EYEFULLS OF ADVERTS NOW

SPECIAL PILLS

THAT WILL MAKE ME LIVE FOR EVER

OR I’LL GET MY MONEY BACK