An Alternative Look at Truth through the Media

Generally speaking, there are two types of truth:  platonic truth and worldly truth.  Platonic truth is interesting and intellectually simulating, but is, by its very essence, unknowable and somewhat impractical.  Sure, it “inspires” and whatnot, but how are you to know the “ideal” form of anything?  Geometry has been tried, but unless you think God is imprecise (aka fallible), then you shouldn’t attempt to find a perfectly round circle.  Save for the transcendental fuzzy feelings, let’s move beyond such open-ended speculations. I don’t want to get involved in any religious or platonic debates.  Save that for another life time.  What is far more interesting is the concept of worldly truth – the same type discussed by Nietzsche and more recently Michael Foucault.  Contrary to its illusional sister, worldly truth is not concerned with divine ideals or anything outside this world.  This type of truth is concerned with what is accepted as fact by society and how that “fact” is propagated throughout the ranks of the population.  Or as Michael Foucault puts it, truth is “the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true, it being understood also that it’s a matter not of a battle ‘on behalf’ of the truth, but a battle about the status of truth.”

In a society like ours, there is a politics of truth that involves the processes by which truth is collected, disseminated, and consumed.  Foucault calls it the “general politics” of truth, a thing of this world, an integral part of society.  He defines the function of this system as such:

[the general politics of truth is made up of] the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.

In short, the general politics of truth is the system that controls the flow of information and knowledge.  That which allows not only allows us to ascertain facts, but tells us which facts are “true,” and which are “false.”  This system is made up primarily, if not entirely, of societal institutions which operate according to what Foucault calls the “political economy of truth.”  This is the process of buying and selling truth in relation to the customs of society.  In other words, how, in a given society, the demand for “truth” is met by the supplier.  Within American society, our demand for truth, as much as our demand for bread, has created a monopolistic supplier:  the media.

In modern society, the media is largely responsible for the collection and dissemination of information.  Furthermore, they don’t simply “report” the news.  Their chief function isn’t simply to dump information into the hand baskets of the viewer.  They are expected not only to report but also to educate.  This educational process is the mechanism by which individual’s form their opinions.  It could thus be said:  those who control information control opinion.  Or in the words of Noam Chomsky, “manufacture” opinion.  However you want to look at it, the media controls the means by which people are educated on everything from the most mundane to the most vital.  And they do it in any way they see appropriate.  This is the politics of “truth.”

To clarify a potentially confusing or misleading concept, when I speak of “truth,” as Foucault speaks of it, I’m not referring to something necessarily true (or, by the same token, false).  I’m simply describing the process of the collection, dissemination, and consummation of information via the apparatuses of “truth.”  (e.g. the media)  “Truth” are the statements which are made known, circulated, discussed, and used.  To refer back to Foucault, “‘truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, circulation, and operation of statements.”  Truth is linked directly to the powers that control its production, propagation, and sustentation.  “‘Truth’ is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it… A ‘regime’ of truth.”  The model par exellence being the media.

Under this understanding of “truth,” the power of the media to control out perception of what “is” and what “isn’t” is extraordinary powerful.  The media is, in short, a great apparatus of “truth” control.  They collect and disseminate information in whatever way they seem fit.  And since truth is not separate from power and politics, the media doesn’t just give us raw information.  Individual discretion notwithstanding, the media controls our perception of events.  It analyzes data, breaks it down into digestible parts, and delivers it in a way that allows it to be consumed.  What one “knows” ultimately rests upon what one is fed by the media:  a powerful apparatus of “truth.”  It is then easily deduced that are few powerful media syndicates are in positions necessary to case events in a favorable or unfavorable light, to validate or repudiate claims, or simply to totally ignore others as if they don’t exist.  It seems as if the entire national consciousness rest upon the shoulders of a few media giants.  With that said, I want to turn to a few examples of how the media has, through the politics of truth, controlled our perception of particular events.  Furthermore, I want to point out how the popular perception has been less than accurate thanks to lackluster reporting, negligence, or outright lies.

1.  The lead-in to the 2003 Iraq War.  This is perhaps a glaring example of “uncritical” reporting by the media.  Analysis of the media’s scrutiny, or lack thereof, seems to point out that the media failed to act as an independent entity, instead relying on the Bush administration for strategic information regarding the reasons and justification for violating the sovereignty of Iraq.  Seen here is the failure of journalism to act independently of a powerful administration, thus failing at its job to serve as an alternative check on the powers of the Presidency and a supine Congress.  The result being a “level of mediated public deliberation  so diminished as to make the preponderance of journalism little more than an instrumental extension– a sort of propaganda helper – of the strategic communication goals of the administration.”  In other words, an insidious fusion of information control (e.g. the media) and the agenda-driven ambitions of a powerful executive.  A few honest questions and even fewer instances of public opposition notwithstanding, the result of this particular collusion was a dangerously one-sided message.  That message we are all too aware of now, but were, for all intents and purposes, unable to know in 2003 because the particular type of “truth” being fed to us.

2.  The current health care debate.  Since this is a current issue, it’s certain to be more “controversial.”  I don’t want to take a side here.  I simply want to point out the way in which the media’s coverage of the healthcare debate has affected people’s perception of what the Obama administration and healthcare reform proponents in the House are actually trying to accomplish.  Without getting too caught up in specifics, I want to point out a few popular beliefs misconceptions that have been either encourage or left untouched by the media.

The popular notion that Obama’s original health care proposal would create government-sponsored “death panels” to decide which patients were worthy of living seemed to arise from nowhere at the beginning of the healthcare debate.  Any honest inquiry, or critical media reporting, easily dispels of this outright lie.  That, however, has never happened in the way it could.  True, there has been honest reporting by the better part of academia and even some mainstream media outlets (e.g. The New York Times).  However, despite the obvious insincerity of the death-panel claim, a significant part of the population still believes in them.  There are myriad of explanations for this, but perhaps the most telling reason is the way the issue was treated by the conservative media.  The “truth” about the death-panel claim was “openly [emanated]… from many [political] pundits and conservative media outlets… including the editorial board of The Washington Times, the American Spectator magazine.”  So, despite the death-panel fiction – there was nothing in Obama’s original legislative proposal that called for the creation of the so-called death panels – it didn’t matter.  The “truth” of the issue was that certain individuals would be slated to die.  Via media outlets (pundits included) people were fed factual inaccurate “truth.”

I’m not stating that there isn’t any critical or factually accurate news reporting.  I’m simply making the observation that people’s perception of any given event is shaped by the message delivered by the media (duh, right?).  So, what does that mean for modern society and the day of the 24 hour news cycle?  It means that an increasingly uncritical, unscrupulous media is affecting the “truth” perception of particular events in such a way that people are either unable to determine what is true and false or are so misled that they believe something to be true that isn’t.  The notion that news reporting and journalism ought to be neutral and unassertive is a dangerous presupposition.  Obviously, some media outlets are going to “take sides.”  It’s a chimera to hope for the break ties between certain news outlets and political parties.  However, there is a strong need for intellectuals, independent journalist (and their syndicates) to make an aggressive effort to repudiate false statements.  The realm of media and news reporting is not a monolithic information dissemination machine.  It can – nay, must – make an assertive effort to check itself.  This is an imperative order in a free society built upon the enlightenment notion of the free market place of ideas.  Unfortunately, people are unable to be their arbiters of their own consciousness (one could say we’ve never fully reached “enlightenment“).  They depend upon the mechanisms of information dissemination to tell them the “truth.”

This raises a whole host of other topics, such as the inherent structural problems of democracy in “un-enlightened” societies.  However, given the current political economy, especially in America, there aren’t likely to be any major pushes towards a restructuring of the collection, distribution, and dissemination of “truth.”  So, given this condition, there is a huge responsibility on those who control the flow of ideas to do so aggressively and accurately.

*The quotes from Foucault were taken from Paul Rabinow’s Foucault Reader from the Chapter on “Truth and Power.”