– Martín Montoya Camacho
The year that ended a few weeks ago has been labeled by many journalists and political analysts as the year of the post-truth. This term is the translation of post-truth chosen in November as the word of the year 2016 by Oxford Dictionaries. Its meaning refers to something that denotes circumstances in which objective facts are less influential, in the formation of public opinion, than the appeal to personal emotions and beliefs. Under these terms, whoever wishes to influence public opinion should concentrate his efforts on the elaboration of easy-to-accept speeches, insisting on what can satisfy the feelings and beliefs of his audience, rather than on the actual facts.
The introduction of this word in the Oxford dictionary is due to its wide public use during the democratic processes that gave rise to the Brexitand the presidential elections in the United States. Its inclusion in the aforementioned dictionary provoked thousands of articles in various languages in the media, especially on the Internet, causing a new increase in its statistics. Soon after, the German Language Society stated that postfaktisch would be chosen as the word of the year 2016. And in Spanish, the Fundéu BBVA nominated the word post-truth for a similar award.
In recent months, the identification of the post-truth with lies. It has been concluded, in many media, that the post-truth is not new, lies have always existed and, therefore, we are faced with a neologism resulting from caprice. So, should we take this word seriously? It seems to me that this assessment may be hasty, and that the normalization of the term "lie" is not a new one. post-truth deserves a finer analysis, if only for the simple fact of its great influence. The proper study of this question undoubtedly overflows these lines, so I can only limit myself to making a few observations.
How did this era come about?
The word post-truth was first used in the U.S. press in 1992, in an article by Steve Tesich for the magazine The Nation. Tesich, writing about the Watergate scandals and the Iraq War, pointed out that by that time we had already accepted that we were living in an era of the post-truthThe book, in which lies are told without discrimination and the facts are concealed. However, it was in the book The Post-Truth Era (2004) by Ralph Keyes that the term found some conceptual development.
Keyes pointed out at the time that we live in the age of the post-truth because its credo has settled among us: creative manipulation can take us beyond the realm of mere accuracy into a realm of truth narrative. Embellished information is presented as true in spirit, and truer than truth itself. Keyes' definition offers a certain key to understanding the events of the past few months. We will return to it shortly. But first we must ask ourselves how did this era of the post-truth?
To understand how it is possible that we find ourselves in such an era, we must take into account some factors of the media through which it has been propagated. To begin with, the era of the post-truth refers to the proliferation of fake news on the Internet, insulting comments bordering on defamation that are posted daily on communication platforms on lineand to the discrediting of institutions through comments -often anonymous- in those same media.
The director of The GuardianKatharine Viner, in her article "How technology disrupted the truth", indicated that behind all this is the intentional misrepresentation of the facts by some digital media that advocate a certain social and political stance. But, along with the above, there are also the efforts of this type of media to attract visitors to their platforms, with no other intention than to maintain a business that sells what the public wants to find. Viner explains that this is made possible by the algorithms that feed the news feeds of search engines such as Facebook's, or Google's, which are designed to offer the public what it wants. For the director of The Guardian This means that the version of the world we encounter every day when we log into our personal profiles, or search on Google, has been invisibly filtered to reinforce our own beliefs.
Information consumption on the rise
It is, therefore, an effort to mold the media, and the contents, to the taste of the users. Following Keyes' definition, we can say that we are shown a truth embellished and configured to our liking, something we accept as truer than the truth of the facts themselves.
A few years ago we were surprised to find, on any website, ads for the purchase of products that we had seen on Amazon, just a few hours before. Today this is commonplace.
It seems that nowadays, the strategy applied to the sale of products on the Internet is also used in the case of the news we want to consume. This should not surprise us.
The report of the Pew Research Center revealed a few months ago that half of Americans between the ages of eighteen and thirty consume news through Internet platforms, and that this trend is growing. Therefore, the information consumption market will continue to grow, and the strategy of giving the customer what he wants is a way to achieve customer loyalty. It is true that the purchase of news in this type of media is not abundant, but this is where the maximum possibility of influencing the future consumer public is offered.
This means that, on the part of electronic platforms, we will be less and less likely to find information that challenges us, that broadens our worldview, or to find facts that refute false information that people around us have shared.
Even for a social network as flexible as Twitter this can be the case, due to the constant posting of tweets that are most liked by the people you follow.
However, it would be absurd to impute all the blame for falling into the era of the post-truth to the media and their strategies for transmitting information. It is clear that this must be attributed to people who lie, distorting the truth of the facts.
But it also seems important to examine, albeit briefly, an attitude that can occur in users or consumers, and which is of direct concern to us.
Post-veracity and distrust
Ralph Keyes stated, in The Post-Truth Erathat the immediate consequence of the post-truth is the post-veracity. That is, a distrust of public speeches, but not of their content, which may be true, and even scientifically proven. The distrust generated by the post-truth Does this idea reflect something real about our society and the way we conduct ourselves in it? It seems that the post-veracity can only arise in times like the one we are currently living in, when there is an attitude of discredit towards public speeches because we expect, after all that has been revealed in the past months, that such information does not convey the whole truth. We might think that we should avoid drama, since we are still consuming news, and news still conveys many truths. However, large sectors of society believe that the truth has lost value, that it has been knocked down and lies on the ground mortally wounded.
The issue of post-truth
To think that truth can be killed may perplex us, but this has been happening in the case of its value in society. For this reason, the question of post-truth is not superfluous. For Keyes the radical problem is that we can live governed by it, and actively participate in its dynamics without realizing it. This would happen through an attitude derived from the justification of our own lies, and by accustoming ourselves to live in an environment in which truth is discriminated against according to personal interests.
This can occur when we do not reflect on the sources of the news we consume or, in a broader view of the circumstances, when we look away from those points of view that displease us.
Sometimes, we run away from all this without stopping to think about how things can be seen from another perspective, simply because we do not want to be deceived, as if everything that does not coincide with our ideas could be labeled as misleading propaganda.
Jason Stanley, in his book "How Propaganda Works" (2015), explains that certain types of authoritarian propaganda can destroy the principles of trust in society, thus undermining democracy. But it is also true that not every use of language that alters reality is a lie. There is always some truth.
But, in order to approach it, it is important to have critical capacity and the attitude of approaching it not with distrust, but with a free spirit that is reinforced by the careful study of reality. Even though the era of the post-truth has arrived in our time with a certain force, the last word is left to the users or consumers, free people who can decide to reestablish the value of truth. This means avoiding lies, one's own and those of others, avoiding getting used to living in circumstances where falsehood is commonplace. To put aside any way, no matter how subtle it may be, of being untruthful.
Superficial charlatanism
In an interview he gave to the Belgian Catholic weekly magazine TertioPope Francis made reference to several of these issues. He especially condemned the evil that can be caused by the media that fall into defamation by publishing false news. In his direct way of speaking, the Holy Father explained that media disinformation is a terrible evil, even if what is said is true, since the general public tends to indiscriminate consumption of this disinformation. In this way, he explained, much harm can be done, and he likened this tendency to consume falsehoods and half-truths to coprophagy.
The Pope's words are not anecdotal and have a deeper significance than can be seen at first glance. This is best appreciated if we compare coprophagia with the term used in English to designate one of the most subtle modes of misrepresentation of the truth, the bullshit. This term has been recently translated into Spanish as charlatanism in the work of the American philosopher Harry Frankfurt. In his book On quackery (2013), that this is less intentional than we may think. When we lie, we concentrate to do it, but the charlatanism requires no effort because it is inadvertently spontaneous: the presentation of facts is simply neglected. The charlatan keeps the distinction between true and false clear but, as he is unconcerned about the value of truth, he can use a fact to defend one position and its opposite.
The charlatan has no intention of misrepresenting reality, but lacks intentions with respect to it. His intention is centered exclusively on himself, on the superficiality of his projects or, like certain media or users, on his own propaganda. Lies have always monopolized our attention. This is understandable. The act of lying presents a malice that repels us. To tell a lie, one must have the intention to tell it. It is not a simple carelessness, it has to be worked on. For the liar the truth has a value in function of his own ends, hence his interest in manipulating it. But the charlatan does not take care of it, and with that attitude he can do a lot of damage, as it happens in this age of the post-truth.
Frankfurt indicates that the charlatanism is contagious. Some of this may have spread to us as consumers of information when we don't pay attention to the news we can spread through social networks.
In view of this, we are not exempt from liability for participating, in any way, in defamatory acts, even when we believe that what we do is not significant, or we believe that what is transmitted is true.
When this happens, it is because we have stopped considering that language is not only a vehicle for facts, figures, strategies, demonstrations and refutations, but also a carrier of values.
It is important to keep in mind that the knowledge of true and false, although very important, does not sufficiently define what is needed to do justice to others, and to act with true charity.
The figure of the charlatan, whether embodied in a media outlet that transmits news, or in a user who consumes and redistributes it, is the ultimate contributor to the post-veracityThe information that we provide: it fosters mistrust and tension in society. Therefore, the important thing is to recognize the relevance of the things to which the information we handle refers. Not everything can be the same for us. Reflecting on whether we respect the truth, avoiding manipulating it as we please, will allow us to begin to give it back its real value.
