I enjoy seeing funny quotes attributed to the wrong people. Like these two examples:
The second one is an assault to the senses of fiction and science fiction fans. When the joke is obvious, there is comedy in the creation of these fake attributions. However, we are living in an era where Truth seems more and more subjective.
What’s scary about this is that I consider myself fairly objective, but I’m finding it harder and harder to know what to believe. What I do know is that newspapers today come with tremendous bias, and something as simple as this chart from two years ago is even more exaggerated now, with papers moving further towards the extremes:
Here is an example of something that I know little about, and feel that the more I read, the further I am from having a clear understanding of where to put a value on what’s true: Hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19.
The first article I read was from the Washing Post (dated May 17th, 2020): The results are in. Trump’s miracle drug is useless.
Excerpt: THE HYPE over the drug hydroxychloroquine was fueled by President Trump and Fox News, whose hosts touted it repeatedly on air. The president’s claims were not backed by scientific evidence, but he was enthusiastic. “What do you have to lose?” he has asked. In desperation, the public snapped up pills and the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization on March 28 for the drug to be given to hospitalized patients. On Thursday, Mr. Trump declared, “So we have had some great response, in terms of doctors writing letters and people calling on the hydroxychloroquine.”
Now comes the evidence. Two large studies of hospitalized patients in New York City have found the drug was essentially useless against the virus.
Next I read an Article from the Washington Times (Dated April 2nd, 2020 – about 6 weeks before the article above): Hydroxychloroquine rated ‘most effective therapy’ by doctors for coronavirus: Global survey.
Excerpt: Drug known for treating malaria used by U.S. doctors mostly for high-risk COVID-19 patients.
An international poll of more than 6,000 doctors released Thursday found that the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine was the most highly rated treatment for the novel coronavirus.
The survey conducted by Sermo, a global health care polling company, of 6,227 physicians in 30 countries found that 37% of those treating COVID-19 patients rated hydroxychloroquine as the “most effective therapy” from a list of 15 options.
Of the physicians surveyed, 3,308 said they had either ordered a COVID-19 test or been involved in caring for a coronavirus patient, and 2,171 of those responded to the question asking which medications were most effective.
So, the ‘evidence’ presented in the second article came well before the the first article was printed. Which article holds more ‘Truth’?
First, if you had to guess, which of these newspapers is more Left-of-Centre – Liberal and which of these papers is more Right-of-Centre – Conservative?
Let’s have a look at the sources on MEDIA BIAS/FACT Check. (Full disclosure, I have not checked the reliability of this website.)
Here is the bias of the Washington Post:
Compared to the bias of the Washington Times:
Take a moment to read the final, bolded comments that I clipped from this fact check website about each paper. They would suggest the Post being more reliable than the Times because of a lack of fact checking at the Times. That said, the source for the survey linked to in the Times article checked out when I looked into it. The same source, Sermo, is now toting Remdesivir use more than Hydroxychloroquine, and even then stating that, “Remdesivir Seen as Only Moderately Effective”.
I don’t have the time or mental energy to go fact-checking every article I read, but I do find myself evaluating the source of the information a lot more. However, quite honestly, even when I do that it has now become blatantly easy to read the bias of the reporter woven into almost every news article that’s based on a ‘hot’ topic. How can you look to the news for objectivity when that objectivity is blatantly disregarded?
I’ve now started reading headlines with the following ‘BS Filter’ as a lens: “Does this article headline anger me, or try to anger me? If the answer is ‘yes’, I either ignore the article, or I open it with my ‘BS detectors’ fully engaged. Click bait articles tend not to be focused on sharing any kind of ‘Truth’.
In this day and age of abundant information, I thought Truth would rise above the BS, but that hasn’t been the case. Neil Postman said,
“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another – slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
It seems that there is an information war on both our capacities to think, and our capacities to seek the Truth.
Very thought provoking. I’ve had this open the last few days and have come back to it when I had the time. What happens when you combine bipartisan reporting with a post-truth landscape?
That’s a powerful question Bill, and one I’m not sure I have an answer to.
I wrote Ideas on a Spectrum: https://daily-ink.davidtruss.com/ideas-on-a-spectrum/
I think this is something that we need to figure out, I’m just not sure that the appeal for our attention through anger and outrage isn’t too strong a tide to allow people who are trying to do things well won’t get lost in the undertow.
I grew up as an empiricist …. truth is the search of science. But I find the statement “we are living in an era where Truth seems more and more subjective.” to be moving in the opposite direction of my beliefs and training as a science major. So, we contend that much media has a “spin” and our citIzens are trending to disbelief of science and of leadership, it causes me to be concerned. I get that as Marshall McLuhan intimated, “the medium is the message.” … I worry that, the message, how ever crafted, for whatever purpose is a elusive of truth and subjected to agenda.
Greetings Hutch (so nice of you to add to the conversation Brad!)
You have me thinking about this statement that you made, “ So, we contend that much media has a “spin” and our citIzens are trending to disbelief of science and of leadership, it causes me to be concerned.”
I completely agree about the “spin”, that’s essentially the point of my post, that it is hard to find the truth when everything has a spin. However, are ‘our citIzens… trending to disbelief of science and of leadership’? I’m not sure? For example I might read only one of the the two articles above about Hydroxychloroquine and in my interest to know the truth, and follow the science, I don’t realize that I am reading an article with a biased agenda, I think I am pursuing Truth, and following the Science. So are we trending to disbelief or are we seeing a combination of:
a) more people that did not grow up with the same empirical minded background as you being vocal; and
b) news media that is more interested in using ‘spin’ to pander to an audience than in sharing the truth.
That’s not a statement but a question. Are we trending towards disbelief of truth, or are we just living in a world where our biases, and lack of legitimate, reliable sources of information are undermined by biased news agency agendas that don’t let us get to the truth we are seeking?
I will end this right where you did, with worry that truth is being lost in the crafting of headlines and agendas that put us in a post-truth world, where the medium is undermining the integrity of the message.
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