(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The somewhat heated debate currently on "fake news" and "post-truth" deserves a comment. Four new books are now discussing the phenomenon: Post-Truth. The New War on Truth and How to Fight Back av Matthew D'Ancona; Post-Truth. Why We Have Reached Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It by Evan Davis; Post-Truth. How Bullshit Conquered the World by James Ball; og Deciding What's True. The Rise of Political Fact-Checking in American Journalism by Lucas Graves. See the Times Literary Supplement (TLS) in August if you like. Yes, they are right: Media and the new talking class serve a lot of bullshit. A banalization is also ongoing with Facebook's Agree! / Disagree! and Ha-ha! The point is that people want to be where the "power" is, when things happen. An unedited medium like Facebook therefore has its 1,2 billion (!) Daily users. It's about identity – about belonging, showing contempt, applauding and keeping track of where the others are. In contrast, only 4,5 sees millions of BBCs News at Ten. With this relationship, I might turn to Nietzsche: that for every one with a will-to-truth, there are 250 more with a will-to-power. Regardless: The individuals who dare to investigate or seek the truth are probably among the minority of society.
On the other hand, people are now being attacked for "falsehoods" if you pursue something that cannot be fully documented. You are almost blindfolded, asked to apologize, or hanged and scolded. Maybe some kind of return of the affirmative positivism from Arne Næs's time? But the problem with the truth is that it is sometimes hidden, and therefore difficult to confirm or prove. For many of us, however, there are enough clues, indications and likelihood that something will be interesting.
Thus, one can experience massive attacks and ridicule from a number of Facebook's most talkative as well as a full-page shit packet in Dagens Næringsliv because of my "heartbreak" about 9 / 11 on my private Facebook page this summer. But despite this I choose now, as editor of ours edited newspaper, to dig more into this inflamed matter. Like we did in Norwegian Le Monde diplomatique in 2003. The point is that we doubt on the official explanation initiated by the previous US administration – that jet fuel was the full and complete cause of the Twin Towers (and especially the third WTC 7, which was not hit by any aircraft) collapsed vertically on its footprint.
There is much we do not know, or can see with the naked eye, that needs interpretation and reflection. What about an institution like new Faktisk.no? Editor Kristoffer Egeberg's oblique "untrue" about this 9 / 11 case referenced this summer – is an article that actually appears on YourNewsWire.com under the label "conspiracy". So the revelation "not true", is not very noteworthy? Egeberg told the protest festival in Oslo recently that they had revealed that the so-called macaroni at the Storting was a fake news. So we are talking about the new "fifth state power". Do we really need such a control body – does it not hold with common popular skepticism and common sense? And what will happen next – that they hire a few hundred "actual viewers", paid by NRK, Aftenposten, Dagbladet and TV2, to attack unedited media such as Facebook and "take" people for what they write there? Let me borrow Asle Toje's comment at the mentioned festival – it should then hold that we have «journalists and researchers who walk around with needles at the balloon party».
After 25 years as a newspaper editor, where I have published just as many thousands of articles, I must say that in the press we must be able to point at possible covert play and exercise of power – even if one can not yet, or perhaps never, document anything completely. We have plenty of entertaining balloons that shade the view. In Ny Tid this time you will therefore find articles by, for example, Ola Tunander (see next page) and Pål Steigan. Although healthy use of sources is important, the question is how much consideration should be given to a self-appointed utterance police or to bow to the swarm of hateful Facebook statements?
To the mentioned positivism I might add Helge Lurås' new Resett.no, where he proclaims the need for realism rather than what he calls idealism. Do we see here some self-righteous, boot-dressed, toasting pigs, standing around a table where "some are more like others"? An article on the website highlights the biological, "healthy" hated – that the foremost operation of every people group is survival, and therefore "naturally" hates others. As if the ability of empathy has not made our species a biological success? Does "realism" forget what most people learn through school and upbringing, the idealism behind charity, hospitality, international solidarity and humanism?
The proponent of old positivism, the philosopher Arne Næs, once stated that he could only believe in angels if he could pull in their wings to check if they were real, or just glued. But he also described truth like "a shining lamp on a dark plain," where we perceive only the small area that is illuminated. At the same time, he had the will-to-truth enough to add that beyond the line of sight, and in the close, deep pits, things lay hidden from us. And such pits you can quickly stumble into.
also read
"Obviously 9 / 11 was a blast"
The new fascism
Truls Lies private Facebook thread
