Gimmie Some Truth

13 January 2021

 

How do we come to a common set of facts?  How do we and our fellow citizens become critical consumers of information?  How do we move the vast majority of people in our internet consuming country to understand that simply because something is printed on an electronic page, or on 100,000 electronic pages doesn’t mean that what is set forth there is an actual objective truth?

 

Lies spread like wildfire, always have. 

 

I lived in Wilmington, DE for several years in the early 1980s in a townhouse on Van Buren Street.  Lovely apartment, lovely neighborhood.  Read the Philadelphia Inquirer each day and watched Philly TV news over dinner.  Back in those pre-internet days there was a local broadcaster by the name of Jerry Penacoli. Back before the internet and back before gossip shows had gotten totally tawdry, a vile untruth had spread about his reporter.  The evil tale was spread by word of mouth and probably by mimeograph art. BUT IT WASN’T TRUE!  And despite it not being true it screwed with Penacoli’s life and his career for a time. But the sordidness spread like wildfire and everyone had heard it and most had a joke about it.

 

One newspaper person, a guy who I believe was named Clark Terry of the Inquirer, came out fighting with 10 column inches above the fold on the second section of the paper disputing the vile and pernicious lie. He called people out for spreading such trash. Because newspapers in those had weight, had gravitas, the truth telling of this reporter seemed to quell some of the worst components of the lie.  Even local DJs chimed in, and these were edgy folks back in the day, to intone what was being said was just wrong. Back then you had three basic sources of information for news, radio, TV and the papers.  And when you got agreement between them it had an impact in quelling misinformation, such as tales about Jerry and a cocaine-soaked gerbil.

 

But now old media is sick and dying.  Who even subscribes to a paper anymore?  TV news is an afterthought for most of us. 40 years ago, the 6:30 national news programs were appointment viewing. Now a majority of people get their information online, and there are (and this is a technical term) a gazillion sources for information.  The problem is nobody having paid big dollars for their combined phone, internet and TV packages wants to pay again to see curated news from the Post, Times or Journal behind a paywall. As a result, the sources people opt for run the spectrum of quality and of political bent. So much of what is out there is warped, truly warped. The problem is that this warped crap is wrapped up in pretty fonts with bright pictures and bylines from people who seem to be credentialed. Just because John Doe, PhD., (of the Mail Order University of Quivering Sassafras) says so does not establish as truth that Cabals of adrenochrome using Democratic pedophiles exist.  So just go screw yourself Q and screw your coming storm. And Trump is not and never will be the messiah saving us from this nonsense.

 

We need to approach our information sources with a critical eye and TRUTH SHOULD NOT BE HIDDEN BEHIND A PAYWALL!!!! Lies, pre the internet, would spread like wildfire if they were tawdry and salacious enough.  But it could be dealt with. Now in our internet era we have thousands of thousands of sites spreading absolute BS all packaged to make it look real and promoted by cynical people for profit or power. And it is out there on both the right and the left, the liberal and conservative sides. And it is raging like the California wildfires so what do we do?

 

I took lots of constitutional law in school from the history of constitution in my undergraduate days to Con Law 1,2,3 and a senior seminar in Con Law in law school.  I have always been against prior restraints on speech, but with the sheer volume, intensity, frequency of misinformation calling for dangerous action out there on the interwebs, I am not so sure now. In days of yore the period of time for people to call out misinformation in newspaper or on TV was longer and allowed for considered responses.  And there was an obligation to present rebuttals.  But that time frame is compressed to nanoseconds now and there is no obligation to allow rebuttals on the same platform. This is a different world.

 

Me, I don’t know how we fix it.  However, I know we must fix it.  If we don’t what happened at the Capitol last week will be just the start of violent internet fueled attacks on our democracy.  I do know however that I am FB friends with lawyers, copywriters, advertising mavens, specialists in information science, reporters, judges and professors of varied and diverse disciplines.  Anyone got any ideas? Anyone got any links to good ideas on how we move forward from here?  Feel free to post them.