Has Anybody Seen The Truth Lately?
Have you seen, a picture of a blond blue eyed child, with a bruised and scared face. It has been circulating on social media for about two years. The headline says, that a young, Swedish boy, was attacked by Arabs who hated him for his blue eyes. This is a Lie.
The truth is that the picture, is of a girl, who was attacked by a dog. I have seen four or five versions of similar falsehoods. Frequently accompanied by tens of thousands of likes and comments.
In contrast, there is an image of a bloody and bruised man, the caption reads he is Algerian and was attacked by racists in France. This is also a lie, the truth is, that it was a Friday night brawl on the metro, between two friends in London.
Given the above, is anybody surprised that Kofi Anna recently posted, “I am worried by the new refugee law before the Danish Parliament today. It is in sharp contrast with Denmark’s humanitarian and social traditions, and highlights a worrying trend in European politics… http://bit.ly/1UoH5ti".
But the problem is not just with the present, it is also with out ability to assess the past. When searching on Google for images about famines in China, my search returned a long list of unreliable information. Some of the images were of Bangladesh, among other countries. Others were of China, but were mis-dated. There were famines in the 20’s, 40’s and 50’s, the quality of the pictures from each period is very different, however regardless of which famine, the pictures were tagged as famine from the 50’s. I am sure if I were to spend the time searching, I would probably find false history for every country in the world.
I am happy to face the truth, no matter how ugly it is, and it can be very ugly, as recent stories from Cologne show. I firmly believe that if we identify problems in a climate of truth, we can solve them. While problems become near impossible to solve when everything is obscured in accusations, counter accusation and falsehoods. Which is where we are today. Truth is veiled by censorship, but it is also obscured in a glut of lies.
We would not accept this quality of information about financial matters, so why do we accept this about social and political matters? So, how do we train ourselves as an educated and conscious public to identify truth from lies, because we need to make decisions and plans that are responsible, and future proof. This requires that we make telling lies difficult.
References
Title illustration: Lucas Cranach’s ‘The Bocca della Verità (The Mouth of Truth) 1525–27
BBC Wales, Girl 4, Attacked by Rottweiler: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_east/7337494.stm
Further Reading
Full Fact is a fact-checking charity, which seems to be trying to separate facts from claims in politics.
The Many Ways to Lie, Examples
http://off-guardian.org/2016/04/03/panama-papers-cause-guardian-to-collapse-into-self-parody/
Other Posts
On Truth
- News Neutrality and News Integrity — societies need for impartial and truthful information.
- Understanding Data in War and Peace
On Choice
- Good Robots
- Can we have a better choice then “Shoot to Kill”, please?
- Inventors, Engineers, Innovators — Where are you?
- Have you seen this Virus?
On Truth
- Understanding Data in War and Peace
- News Neutrality and News Integrity — societies need for impartial and truthful information.
On Change
On Progress
- Art, Heart and Progress — Art Activism
- Art, Heart and Progress — The Artists
- Art, Heart and Progress — Photography
