I think accepting that is, in its own way a redefinition of truth for many.
It used to be that the truth was constrained by the information that gatekeepers in positions of power or media let us see, and all it took to be reasonably informed was to watch or listen to a reputable media outlet for half an hour in the evening, and ignore whatever they believed the bad outlet to be.
This masked the complexities of reality for most of the population.
The internet has exposed the turbulence beneath the surface of publicly accessible knowledge. Thanks to social media, the subjects of journalism can now respond to it, or head it off with nearly the same amount of reach as journalists themselves. The sane can be said of anybody with a half-formed opinion on anything.
Many journalists have seemingly gotten so busy responding to the gnats and the niggles, and the affronts to their authority that they didn't realize they'd been caught in the undertow (see Twitter and facebook's community's influence on what is/isn't covered).
This has become increasingly visible in their work, even as their platforms are being chipped away thanks to competition in an increasingly fragmented landscape with incentives aligned towards catering to increasingly niche constituencies.
As a result, the adversarial nature of our information landscape has been laid bare to a swaths of the public.
Does realigning our expectations as to where, how, and if we'll find the truth redefine it? Not literally. But from a cultural perspective it does.
For the better? I don't know. I doubt it. Esp. in the US, too many of us weren't prepared to operate in such an environment and we're culturally already predisposed to conspiratorial thinking (rich coming from me). But it's where we're at right now.
It used to be that the truth was constrained by the information that gatekeepers in positions of power or media let us see, and all it took to be reasonably informed was to watch or listen to a reputable media outlet for half an hour in the evening, and ignore whatever they believed the bad outlet to be.
This masked the complexities of reality for most of the population.
The internet has exposed the turbulence beneath the surface of publicly accessible knowledge. Thanks to social media, the subjects of journalism can now respond to it, or head it off with nearly the same amount of reach as journalists themselves. The sane can be said of anybody with a half-formed opinion on anything.
Many journalists have seemingly gotten so busy responding to the gnats and the niggles, and the affronts to their authority that they didn't realize they'd been caught in the undertow (see Twitter and facebook's community's influence on what is/isn't covered).
This has become increasingly visible in their work, even as their platforms are being chipped away thanks to competition in an increasingly fragmented landscape with incentives aligned towards catering to increasingly niche constituencies.
As a result, the adversarial nature of our information landscape has been laid bare to a swaths of the public.
Does realigning our expectations as to where, how, and if we'll find the truth redefine it? Not literally. But from a cultural perspective it does.
For the better? I don't know. I doubt it. Esp. in the US, too many of us weren't prepared to operate in such an environment and we're culturally already predisposed to conspiratorial thinking (rich coming from me). But it's where we're at right now.