There is a battle going on, that at times seems quite obvious and present to many of us, and at other times is silent, covertly conducted and a little insidious. It's the battle for the truth.
I recently saw an article in Canada's national newspaper The Globe and Mail about journalists who had been killed this year. This was a piece no doubt prompted by the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. It's an interesting read and
here if you want to look it over - but please come back. It highlights the places where journalists are seemingly most at risk such as war-torn countries, and where there is strife and discord too. For example, according to this article there have been four journalists killed in each of the US and Mexico while only one in Saudi Arabia. Makes you scratch your chin a little.
In telling the stories of those newsmen and women, it skirts around the bigger issue of who owns truth in our society. Truth in this case being objective, clear facts versus opinions and hypothesis. There is clearly a struggle going on in may countries about 'fake news', the kind of things that mean silly conspiracies rolled out to gullible Facebook groups, but also the increasingly large amount of
spin pushed out by politicians to flatter their own narratives - and called spin in outright manners in papers, radio, TV and social media. Anyone that disagrees with "my version" of the truth, is doing fake news therefore, and if I have a microphone in my face, I'll scream that from the towers I control. That is troubling obviously, and so far I don't think I've said anything new or particularly enlightening.
On the face of it, journalists would prefer to think that they own the truth, and it's their role in the fifth estate to shine a light into the dark corners of the political or business establishment. That is the legacy model from the 1950's-1980's with the Walter Conkite's and Bob Woodward's of the world leading the charge. But these days, there is little to distinguish a Lou Dobbs on FoxTV in the US from a pulitzer prize winning print journalist from the New York Times, The Times in the UK or China Daily - all are journalists, objectively. What separates them is the imposition of their biases, opinions and subject matter and perspective selections in the issues they cover. Now, at times it's obvious as in the case of the US's Fox Network, but it's just as obvious for the Guardian in England or the aforementioned China Daily. What doesn't tend to happen is the admission of these biases clearly. So my review of the 'News' as I hope to get the truth is impacted significantly and imperceptibly and I am exposed to a manipulated media message that wants me to stay tuned for commercial or political reasons. So where's the truth?
Some news organizations such as BBC or Canada's CBC would have you think that they are apolitical, but minimally they reflect their societies norms and opinions as wealthy (white predominately) people from the Western world using their own moral compass to view the balance of the planet. My point here is that there is not a news organization that is truly objective out there, and hence, they can't own the truth as everyone tries to spin it to speak to their own audiences, and keep attracting them.
So where does that leave us, those that want to know an objective, clear set of facts so we can develop informed opinions and act ? I think it leaves us on our own, with a monumental task of sifting through a deluge of daily dross to figure things out. The scope of that task is huge, and so it's little wonder my neighbour, friends and possibly my own family have elected to just get carried away on someone else's commentary that seems to roughly align to their own opinions. The truth is out there, it's just becoming really, really difficult to see and hear, and many have given up that struggle.
Who owns the truth ? I do, you do, we each do.
I'll offer some excerpts during the week (I think). As Horace Greeley said in reference to Manifest Destiny, "Go West Young Man". So I will.
