Ruminations on “Truth” (Part 2)- BY TERRENCE CORRIGAN

[Nat Quinn]

Ruminations on “Truth” (Part 2)- BY TERRENCE CORRIGAN

Ruminations on “Truth” (Part 2)

Last week, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company’s platforms – Facebook and Instagram – would discontinue their fact-checking programmes. In a widely circulated video address, Zuckerberg said that this was in response to a new “cultural moment”, and it was time to go back to the “roots” of social media, reasserting the imperatives of free expression. Besides, he added, the current system had resulted in certain points of view – along with some benign material – being inadvertently silenced. “The problem with complex systems,” he said, “is that they make mistakes.”

He went on to point to growing restrictions on free speech and the use of social media platforms in various jurisdictions, democratic and authoritarian, and pledged to work with the American government to push back against restrictions on it.

And reflecting on Meta’s efforts to deal with harmful online conduct and disinformation, he maintained that the intentions had been sincere: “We tried to address this without becoming the arbiters of truth.”

This announcement was serendipitous for me, since I was working on a piece about the notion of “truth” and its place in our politics. As I said last week, in the first part of this contribution, I was moved to write this as a result of the constant invocation of the importance of “truth” after Donald Trump won last year’s American election. As you read this, he will be taking office.

I noted in the first part that Trump’s second election win had been greeted with dismay; the  response to Zuckerberg’s announcement has, if anything, outdone that. This seems to follow three streams of argument. The first is simply about Trump, and the idea that Zuckerberg is bowing to the prevailing winds. With the weight of media commentary resolutely hostile to Trump, the sense that he has achieved a win and that tech magnates were falling in behind him was horrifying. The second was that this was a misdirection of concerns about free speech. The overall view seemed to be that while, yes, this was an issue worth considering, it was only one concern among several, and not the most important. The third was that doing away with fact-checking (and presumably also associating with Trump) would allow free rein to misinformation and “hate”, to the detriment of societies.

My concern here is with the third issue. How can people and societies protect themselves from misinformation? And how do they, individually and collectively, genuinely honour the concept of “truth”?

These questions, closely linked, are distinct from each other. And as in many things – a theme in this discussion – it begins with a correct understanding of the language, without which a productive comprehension of the issues is near-impossible.

“Truth”, I argued last week, must be founded on facts. This means that the great arbiter of whether or not something is “true” is whether or not it can be evidenced and substantiated. This is, of course, often a high bar to reach, and is complicated when it involves something beyond a one-byte binary. But mere assertion or belief is not sufficient.

In contrast to “truth” stands falsehood, or in its incarnation in modern discourse (as Zuckerberg’s critics remind us), the concept of misinformation. Misinformation is false or misleading information. When it is believed, it contaminates understanding and discussion. This is the case, whether it emerges as a result of a genuine mistake or misunderstanding, or out of malicious intent (what we term “disinformation”), or whether the intention behind disseminating it is good or bad.

Indeed, most of us could name circumstances in which we would be likely to engage in the spreading of some form of misinformation. Perhaps this is in the benign form of toning down unpalatable information to spare feelings or to avoid conflict. I once explained away the deaths of the polar bears at Johannesburg Zoo to my (then) infant child as their relocation to the Arctic. It’s an entirely human thing to do.

What we might do to remove the jagged edges of the world for the emotional wellbeing of our children has its correspondent impulses elsewhere. We keep the family’s dirty laundry from being aired in public – the shady origins of the family fortune, the alcoholic uncle, Mom-and-Dad’s extra-marital peccadilloes. Perhaps we do not lie about this directly, perhaps we divert and obfuscate and avoid. But the point is, most of us are adept at rationalising something short of the unvarnished facts. I’d suggest it points to something within our evolutionary and emotional makeup; we don’t automatically incline to “truth-telling”.

It’s not a great leap to take this into the corporate boardroom or into the newsroom or into state office. “Truth” may be put aside, or adulterated, not only for nefarious purposes, but for what we might consider necessary and admirable ones. Last week, I discussed how this was expressed in relation to various hot-button matters, where verifiable details seemed to matter less than the overall narrative crafted by a particular presentation of claims. And more seriously, how we in South Africa (though we are hardly alone in this) have even managed to craft a vocabulary that justifies divorcing fact from “truth”.

The inevitable consequence of doing this is that “truth” itself is relativised and degraded. Everyone, or perhaps every interest group, can claim to have its own “truth” that is real and immutable to itself. The talk-show chatter about “your truth” might be okay for a heartwarming story of love and redemption, but it’s a dreadful basis for deliberation in a modern society. As the American historian Timothy Snyder has written: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.”

If there is to be a reclaiming of “truth” – and to my mind, that would be a precondition for “defending” it, or “speaking truth to power” – there is a pressing imperative to begin by reclaiming the language. Facts cannot be removed from “truth”, nor can “truth” be removed from what is verifiable. Pretending it is, “inventing” alternative “truths”, does considerable violence to that principle.

Once we accept that “truth” itself has a definition and not merely virtuous connotations, we recognise that it is an aspirational state that we should strive to establish. That means subjecting claims and contentions to scrutiny. Being willing to consider multiple or alternative explanations. Not confusing what we wish for the reality of what is.

And fortunately, as much as our human makeup may not lead us to towards “truth”, we have also developed the capacity to allow us to search for it. This too is part of our evolutionary heritage: the ability to observe and deduce and to draw connections. For our ancestors, this was central to their survival. It was how they learned what was edible, how plants grew and thus how they could be cultivated, and what materials were suitable for withstanding threats and capitalising on opportunities. Later, as a species we learned to proceed from more abstract premises of what outcomes we would aim for, and to reach those outcomes through observation and experimentation.  Here lay the rudiments of what we came to term the scientific method.

The late Carl Sagan – a renowned astrophysicist whose insights I tap in this column from time to time – once put this eloquently: “[Science] works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.”

Sagan was deeply concerned about the state of public scientific literacy, and the implications of this for the future of a civilisation that depends on science for its wellbeing. I would suggest that this is applicable too to the manner in which we conduct our societal interactions.

If we claim to respect “truth”, it is important to allow for the possibility that our assumptions may be incorrect, whether in general or in relation to a specific incident. This is irrespective of the fondness we may feel for any point of view. This is what I was getting at last week, when I pointed to the dominance of narrative in framing discussion around hot-button issues. Where an allegation of racism is made, there is invariably a rapid assumption that it is genuine, followed by assertions that it fits into some sort of “broader” social problem. Such evidence as may be sought will in my observation be aimed at confirming this narrative. This is precisely what I would argue happened in the case of the recent controversy around the Pretoria High School for Girls.

Perhaps there is also something very human at play here: the need for the affirmation of one’s status and virtue. I think most of us want to be recognised as moral beings, and to take a stand against racism. To be seen to take a stand against racism can be an alluring prospect. It’s the crossroads between the professional and the deeply personal.

It’s also ultimately a disservice to the pursuit of “truth”, for it disregards the curiosity and willingness to probe claims and assumptions that are foundational to exploring complex matters.

It is also a matter with grave implications for society’s mediating and sense-making institutions, such as the media (the “mainstream” media) and academia. It’s important to put this into perspective. Much of the concern around the spread of misinformation has grown out of the reach of social media and digital platforms. Many of us (probably most of us) no longer buy a daily broadsheet and a periodical such as the Financial Mail or Time or Newsweek, which we read from cover to cover. No, we can go online, and choose from a bewildering array of sites and channels, not all of which adhere to the traditional journalistic (“truth-seeking”) ethos. Call this the “new media”. We’re often attracted to their entertainment value as much as anything else.

Now I’m the last person to dispute the seriousness of misinformation, and how it is manifested in the “new media”. All media seeks eyeballs, and sensationalism can be a useful means of attracting them, even when its relationship with reality is highly tenuous.

If plentiful blame for the spread of misinformation can be laid at the door of “new media” and digital sources, a great deal can be laid at the door of so-called legacy media. In part, I would attribute this to a growing sense of activist responsibility among journalists, and the erosion of the line between reporting and commentary. We’ve seen this over and over again.

This is seen in the coverage of racism, for example; denouncing it frequently overwhelms interest in the details of the matter. Or, as one European journalist told me, she refused to cover domestic violence in her country, because migrant families are overrepresented in the pathology, and she would not provide the far-right with talking points. (She also claimed that she was “left-wing, and so only interested in the truth”…)

Nor is it a matter that exclusively concerns journalism. We have seen this in the so-called “noble lies” that were told during the Covid pandemic to promote particular public health behaviour.

In each case, one would hardly struggle to find apologists who would defend this conduct. Conceding that, well, it might not strictly be factually correct, the argument would likely be that it was nevertheless necessary and defensible given the “broader” issues at stake. It’s a variant of the lies and half-“truths” we tell our children.

And it mirrors the defence offered by one American representative: “If people want to really blow up one figure here or one word there, I would argue that they’re missing the forest for the trees. I think that there’s a lot of people more concerned with about being precisely factually and semantically correct than about being morally right.” The problem is that forests are made up of trees, and excessive focus on moral imperatives – or let us say “narratives” – to the neglect of the facts that constitute them invariably invites a free-floating approach to “truth” that merely compounds the problem that we claim to care about.

A similar concern arises in relation to fact-checking. I am not averse to this as a strategy to counter misinformation, and I believe it can play a valuable role in this respect. (I also believe that cannot be anything close to a solution, given the scale of the problem.) Still, I have argued that something like the Real411 service suffers from a problem of transparency, in that it’s not clear just who is performing the checking, and why such a determination should be accepted. There is also the problem of narrative checking. In other words, rejecting a particular point of view not because it is peddling misinformation, but because it is unpalatable.

A few years ago, Nicholas Lorimer and I addressed this in a paper about the “fake news”  phenomenon. Looking at the Real411 and the complaints it had adjudicated, we commented:

One example was a complaint about Roman Cabanac’s Morning Shot broadcast, and its comments about farm murders and the government’s approach to them. The finding states: “In spite of the speaker’s clear leanings towards a particular agenda, nothing he mentions around the topic of farm murders can be said to meet the requirements of mis- or disinformation, serving rather as the expression and conveyance of his personal views. However, by repeating the sentiments without evidence he nevertheless reinforces them and perpetuates the conspiracy of white genocide, which heightens fear and animosity.”

Belief in the “conspiracy of white genocide” certainly exists around the fringes of the country’s politics, and much of what is put in the public domain in support of it can aptly be described as fake news. But nothing that Cabanac says endorses it. The farm murder phenomenon is a complex one and its drivers are not well-understood. The “conspiracy of white genocide” is also regularly referenced by those denying a particular problem of farm killings (the implication being that concerns about this phenomenon are motivated by racism or by an unjustified sense of white victimhood). In this instance, the site seems to be holding Cabanac to account for his narrative, rather than for any factual inaccuracies, and for accentuating “fear and animosity”, which is a very tendentious claim to make

Or, as Jemima Kelly wrote in a similar vein in the Financial Times a while ago: “We must limit the checking to facts, which is tricky enough, and not opinions that the checkers don’t happen to like.” This is an inherent problem; fact checkers can quickly morph into becoming the arbiters of “truth”.

And in that respect, let’s also note that lumping together misinformation and “hate” is distinctly unhelpful. This is done by some online fact-checking services. Each may have a problem, but they are not coterminous. Misinformation may exist with the intention (even the consequence) of encouraging solidarity and societal harmony. Right now, in fact, a video is circulating showing South African firefighters winging off to battle the crisis in California; the footage actually records South Africans leaving for Canada in 2024. It’s a relatively harmless matter, even inspiring for a country starved of national pride, but misinformation nonetheless.

Hate – again, an idea that would itself need to be defined – need not be based on lies. Human beings are adept at sorting themselves into groups constituted in contradistinction to one another, and animosity may well be rooted in observations that withstand scrutiny. (Indeed, identitarian politics is now embraced by some politically “progressive” elements.) Conflating “hate” with misinformation is to misstate the connection between them, and complicate dealing with either. And in this conflation, truth will invariably be changed to conform with ideology.

So, we need more engagement and discernment from media consumers. That goes without saying. If something sounds implausible, or just too tailored to what we believe, it’s a good idea to check it out. Above all, avoid echo chambers.

But so too must there be some re-examination of the conduct of the institutions which seek to mediate our understanding of the world. Shoddy, slanted or agenda-riven journalism, supposed experts with pecuniary interests in the persistence of a problem (watch out for talking heads introduced as “diversity” or “anti-racism” experts, for it’s a lucrative field, as long as they can convince their clientele that the problem persists), or news constituted with an eye on changing the world rather than explaining it – all have done great damage to the cause of “truth”, even while loudly proclaiming loyalty to the idea.

Lastly, we need to rediscover the importance of pluralism. Multiple trains of thought can be equally valid at once. This may seem counterintuitive in light of what I have said above. But what I am getting at here is that there is a great deal that we might assert as “truth” that is more aptly rendered as interpretation, perspective, deduction and conclusion. These too are entirely part of the human intellectual repertoire, a wonderful part of it, that allows each of us to experience and interact with the world as sentient and entirely unique beings.

This typically holds for complex questions which draw on strains of evidence, connections between disparate pieces of information in an attempt to understand phenomena that defy an easy binary.

The reality is that much of what we term “truth”, or hold to be “true” is so only because that is how we process things intellectually. We believe it to be “true”. If we have acted in good faith, we have been open to a wide universe of information. If we have acted honestly, we will have digested this on its own terms. And if we have acted conscientiously, we will have examined alternatives. But even with all this having been done, we must allow that the dizzying variety – dare I say diversity? – of human intellect will produce a spread of responses to any set of stimuli.

And since we are also moral beings, we will inevitably bring our own normative convictions to bear on how we view the world, and hence, how we construe “truth”.

We would all be well-advised to take a step back and acknowledge that – however fond of this we may be, and however deep our commitment to it runs – much of this is simply not “truth” at all, neither in a definitional sense nor in the connotative sense that we tend to understand it, and that we assume others do.

And as an aside, let me address the gentleman who sardonically claimed that I was suggesting the IRR to be an avatar of “truth”. I say no such thing, although I would argue that our work is informed by a first-rate factual and evidentiary base. Nevertheless, we present analysis and commentary. And we have a set of ideological leanings. (If you don’t know what these are, either you haven’t been paying attention, or we haven’t been doing our work properly). For myself, I once did a talk for a group of high school students about my work. I emphasised that the writing I do is not about being “objective”. My work is about making arguments and trying to win people over to my way of thinking. I take positions clearly and openly. But I take equal pride in fealty with the information I base my work on: take issue with my arguments, but I am confident that my facts are beyond reproach.

Re-imagining this view of “truth” as a personal or partisan view on a matter confronts us with the prospect that we may in fact be wrong, or at least that we should reexamine what we have assumed. The ability to do this, to recognise deficiencies and onboard new ideas, has been foundational to human progress.

In the latter respect, following Zuckerberg’s announcement, one article in particular caught my eye. Phillip de Wet wrote an extraordinary piece in New24, its thrust being that the scale of disinformation and hate speech was such that serious consideration needed to be given to whether parts of the internet should be “shut down”. I was surprised to see this from a journalist. Perhaps he envisages a situation in which the government acts as gatekeeper of the information environment, while established media outlets like his own will supply the actual content. I’m not so sure this would be the outcome. It seems to me that a government that could go after social media because of the bad behaviour of some of its users might soon be tempted to turn those powers on platforms harbouring impertinent or nosey journalists. What starts with Facebook might well be turned on News24.

Those with long memories – and even with short memories – will recall that damnation of “the media” has long been a feature of government narratives about the country. It’s negative, unpatriotic, anti-transformation, counter-revolutionary and so on. The SA Human Rights Commission declared that South Africa’s media “[could] be characterised as racist institutions.” This was back in 2000, long before fake news and “new media” were talking points, and before Facebook and X existed. Be careful what you wish for.

What really stuck with me, though, was this: “Entire platforms can become hostile to the values South Africa holds dear, or can be weaponised in favour of a particular ideology.” I imagine that this is a case of constitutive rhetoric, an appeal to an imagined collective – “South Africa” – but I would suggest that what confronts South Africa goes back to a failure adequately to respect “truth” over generations.  What is happening on Facebook resembles a debased and democratised version of the manipulation of “truth” that has for generations been a part of our political culture.

And that, I’d say, is the kernel of South Africa’s problematic relationship with “truth”. We have abused the very idea of “truth”, intellectualised doing so, and abused what resulted as a commodity of political and social influence. This is a cultural malaise to be dealt with in cultural terms. Truth is too valuable an idea to be abandoned to the vicissitudes of imprecise and self-serving rhetoric. What we need is not a bald assertion that this or that is the “truth”, but a consistent willingness to seek a better understanding of and a proper respect for things as they exist, even acknowledging that this is no easy thing to achieve. I fear, though, that this is lost in outrage about the attitudes of tech moguls and the operations of their platforms.

 

SOURCE:Dailyfriend

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