Truth's boots

“A lie can run round the world before the truth has got its boots on.”

It’s one of my thousands of favourite Pratchett quotes and, for a change, it is a quote by a baddie, who sincerely believes that the above makes lies more powerful than the truth. He is, of course, eventually proven wrong, much to his astonishment, and justice triumphs.

Alas, there is no shortage of people like this character in the real world as well. Only they are not seen by many as baddies. They are the ones pursuing truth — a special brand of truth that is a cocktail of cultural heritage, sexual self-identification, and opinions and is touted as better than objectivity.

I came across this report a couple of weeks ago and to say that it elicited a reaction is to say nothing. All my professional life objectivity or any semblance of it that I could muster has been my ultimate goal. You may scoff because this here blog is not exactly the epitome of objectivity but its purpose is to act as a means towards a more objective discourse on energy —by offering what I consider a much needed counterpoint to the climate catastrophe narrative.

The Cambridge dictionary has a short and sharp definition of objectivity, describing it as “the fact of being based on facts and not influenced by personal beliefs or feelings”.

Oxford Reference does better with a longer, more detailed definition: “The idea that things exist, or that statements about things are true, in absolute terms and independently of human existence or belief. Such a view stands in opposition to subjectivism, which holds that knowledge and truth are not independent of human existence.”

I like Umberto Eco’s definition even better. Quoting from (recent) memory, Eco says that facts are the things that exist whether or not we believe they do.

Now let’s look at that report whose authors warn us that “misunderstood, journalistic “objectivity” or “balance” can lead to so-called “bothsides-ism” – a dangerous trap when covering issues like climate change or the intensifying assault on democracy.”

So, they can’t — or won’t — even acknowledge the actual existence of objectivity, so they put it in quotation marks and they do the same with balance. Because, of course, there can be no debate on either climate change or “the intensifying assault on democracy” whatever that last one means.

I’ve spent days trying to find the best way to convey exactly how dangerous this is. And the reason it’s dangerous is because the ultimate destination of this narrative shift is a place where there is no such thing as objective reality and no such thing as facts. Yes, I know there are certain philosophical camps that reject the idea of an objective reality anyway but this is not about philosophy. It’s about our life and our freedom of speech.

The report above suggests that newsrooms move beyond “accuracy to truth” in order to be able to produce more trustworthy news. Let me rephrase: newsrooms need to go beyond truth in order to be more trustworthy. No, let me rephrase again: newsrooms need to stop telling the truth in order to be more trustworthy.

Truth and trustworthy are frequently used words throughout the document, by the way, tied to things like emotions, culture, opinions, feelings, etc. Objectivity, on the other hand, is associated with white male dominance, which obviously makes it totally wrong because white male dominance is the Putin of human culture.

Unsurprisingly, the authors suggest morphing news reporting and opinions into one so reporting is inclusive and journalists can channel their cultural heritage and I honestly forgot what else.

Down here, we call this “grape casserole” only it sounds a lot better in the original. It means a meal that has too many ingredients with the taste likely to have been compromised by that fact. But it’s all been grape casserole for years now, you’d say and you’d be right. My problem is that this casserole approach is taking over places it should fear to tread, or trot, or whatever an animated casserole might do to get from one place to another.

Again, this has been going on for years. Newsrooms are turning into agitprop centres, presenting wishes, hopes, and fears as facts and omitting actual facts if they go against the grain. So, in the context of the report’s recommendation to go beyond truth, they’re already beyond truth.

Yet with such a public call to dispense with objectivity as something obsolete and no longer necessary, agitproppers are taking things to another level. It’s not about presenting non-facts as facts any more. It’s about putting the final touches to the planned obsolescence of facts themselves.

The authors, who say they’d interviewed 75 media people to come to the conclusions laid out in the report, equate objectivity with a set of reporting rules following standards set by – you guessed it – white, male, and rich editors and readers/viewers. I don’t need to tell you that this is not what objectivity is, right? This is what bias is. Yet the word is being redefined to mean something it never meant in yet another step of the way to post-fact reality.

Before this gets too long, which it easily can since there is a lot I could say in defence of objectivity, I’ll illustrate with an innocent sample lead to a news story that made a splash earlier this month. The story is about a massive increase in Californians’ gas bills.

Sample lead by objective me:

“Gas consumers in California saw a jump in their January bills, with the rise in some cases topping 300%.”

Sample lead by subjective me in a good mood:

“Californians saw a whopping 389% increase in their gas bills for last month, for which SoCalGas blamed wholesale prices, pipeline constraints, and the weather.”

Sample lead by subjective me in a bad mood:

“January gas bills shocked Californians as colder than usual weather combined with devastating state energy policies on pipelines and last year’s surge in wholesale prices to deliver a blow many may not be able to recover from anytime soon.”

Sample lead by subjective, culture+identity channeling me:

“The catastrophic energy policies of the Newsom administration have played yet another bad joke on Californians after years of blackouts: sky-high gas bills.”

Are all these truthful? Yes, they are. Does this mean they are all objective? Not at all. The last two are extra subjective and aiming to elicit a specific response from the audience — one of outrage at California’s admittedly idiotic energy policies and yes, I did it again, I know.

The only objective lead is the first one. It states the facts, facts being defined here as things that have happened and whatever you think about them, it will not make them unhappen.

This is exactly why we need to protect objectivity — because things do happen and this is what matters more than what someone wants us to think about the event of things happening.

If things continue to happen in such a way as to motivate a certain interpretation, let’s interpret the hell out of them, whether by a fact-based or a speculative approach. That’s what freedom of speech is all about. But it begins with the facts, not with the interpretation.

Once upon a time, The Guardian’s comment section had a heading that said “Comment is free but facts are sacred.” It was a quote by, I believe, the founder of the newspaper. The media world has certainly gone a long way since then. Unfortunately, it’s been going in the worst possible direction.

What the authors of the report above and their friends want is to effectively switch the places of facts and interpretation. If the media does this long enough, facts will stop mattering completely. Facts will be whatever you feel they are. And people will believe you when you tell them these are the facts. What a wonderful world this would be.

Unfortunately for the those report authors, truth has already put its boots on thanks to places such as this one here.