An interesting column from Leonard Pitts Jr. about facts.
Here's the quote I've been mulling:
To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe.
In other words, does truth exist anymore? Did it ever?
I just heard David Maraniss on the radio talking about truth, and, as far as I'm concerned, he nailed it. I have to listen to the show again and write down the quote, and blog it, but basically, he said that truth isn't saying this is right and this is wrong; truth is much more than that -- it's complicated, it's layered, and so on.
ReplyDeleteI think when a lot of journalists these days talk about telling the truth as opposed to what's been called the falsehood of objectivity, they are talking about reporting what they believe to be the truth in (mostly) a political sense: Why should I feel the need to quote someone who is obviously wrong? Why can't I just report what I know is right?
But, as Maraniss is saying, it's not that black and white. It never is.