Democracy Dies in Darkness
With universal information platforms, we all become exposed
(literally) to the dangers of
misinformation. A recent article in Health
News Daily addressed some public-health threats associated with the
vulnerability of contemporary media:
People who believed conspiracy theories
in March were less likely to be wearing face masks in July, versus
non-believers. And their intentions to refuse any future COVID vaccine
intensified…distrust is extending beyond the usual "hardcore"
conspiracy theory crowd, according to [Dan] Romer, who is research director of
the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Public Policy Center in Philadelphia…But
to sway Americans, health authorities need their trust. And that could be a
tall order, Romer said -- considering the confusing "mixed messages"
that have come from government and the abundant misinformation spread via
social media and certain media outlets.
As the “information age” blossomed in the 1990s, there was a
great excitement about the impending democratization of data. For centuries
museums, universities, and a host of plutocratic organizations owned the
storehouses of knowledge.
With the explosion of digitization projects, scholars and
students could access an unprecedented trove of primary materials and data sets
from around the globe at any time of the day from the comfort of their own
homes or a terminal in their local public libraries.
Perhaps the most exciting elements of these new information
resources was that in many cases anyone could use them. Access to these
intellectual luxuries was no longer the sole domain of members of elite
institutions. Even the unaffiliated soon had full membership in the treasury of
learning, breaking what John Adams referred to as the “temper of mankind” that had
kept knowledge exclusively in the hands of the powerful.
Now that imbalance has been inverted — we all have too much.
It didn’t take long for educators to recognize a new,
desperate need for training in “information literacy.” When I was a student researching
some arcane subject, I might have been lucky to find five good sources over the
course of weeks. Now a Google search may yield a couple of million sources in less
than a second, but there still may be only five good ones. Knowing how to find
the wheat among all that chaff requires real skill.
Forty years ago, information literacy meant being able to
track it down, once you found a source, the probability of it being useful was
very high compared to today’s odds, because the choices had been curated:
librarians, archivists, publishers, and editors each had a chance to vet what
was available. The process was far from infallible, and probably more important
material was lost to the sifting process than kept, but there was some justification
for our confidence that what we found had applicable meaning.
Some of that same vetting continues out of a hive approach.
I am often surprised by the detail and sophistication of many Wikipedia pages,
and the scholar version is truly valuable, as are tens of thousands of
new-media sources. The challenge today is that these sources cohabitate the
internet with countless unlegitimated neighbors, and there is little to
differentiate them.
The challenges this places on scholarship are miniscule in
comparison to sifting through the comparisons of valid and manipulated news,
opinion, and social media.
On college campuses it is remarkable how many of our challenges
are tied to social media. Rumors become propagated as fact, individuals post
insensitive or hateful messages, and viral campaigns erupt without rhyme or
reason. That scourge is all the greater in the broader community.
Much of our contemporary rancor and divisiveness has been
bred and cultivated through misinformation. Some of that decline has been the
result of a steady onslaught upon the validity of legitimate news sources by
those who wish to insert alternate narratives.
The best practices of journalism have depended upon
corroborating sources, fact checking, and rigorous editorial oversight. As the
late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in the Washington Post, “Everyone
is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”
The Post’s motto is “Democracy Dies
in Darkness.” A free and open democracy depends upon a free, open, and independent
press.
Effective
citizenship requires being an informed member of society. Voting is a
remarkable privilege that deserves to be exercised responsibly. Being a member
of a free state is a privilege that also deserves responsible participation.
Our
local and national news sources are struggling mightily to shape good public
behavior, yet, every day, we see our neighbors flouting the recommendation of
the CDC and the federal and state governments to abate the pandemic. When confronted,
many of these scofflaws respond with conspiracies they have read on social
media or “alternate news sites” that thrive on delegitimizing the bona fide
press.
The
democratization of information has created great opportunities, but it has also
helped to obscure the truth, and in that darkness, our democracy is literally dying
— 313,000 and counting.
As
we prepare to emerge from this dark year, I hope that we begin to find a way to
regain our shared possession of facts and govern ourselves in light of them.
In a column in the Washington Post, 18
January
1983.