Once upon a time, there was a TV-anchorman named Walter Conkrite. It is probably false that he actually reported the news exactly as it in fact happened. No doubt he, too, put his spin on things. But there really was the sense that there was an awfully close resemblance between what he said happened and what in fact actually happened. And this sense is no doubt warranted precisely because the kind of manipulative editing techniques for sound and video and photos available to us now were not available then. Things are not quite like that, any more; and I should like, in this essay, to bring about the significance of that change.
Back in the day: If Mr. Conkrite showed a picture of a man showing his buttocks to the President of the United States, one could be reasonably certain that something very close that behavior, if not in fact precisely that behavior, actually happened. Nowadays, by contrast, one can legitimately ask whether such a thing happened or is it the case that picture was photo-shopped in order to express the reporter’s disgust for the President. The same holds for sound-bites. A person’s recorded-words can be moved around with such finesse that a person can be presented as saying something that she or he never did say or would have thought to say.
So, nowadays, it is all too reasonable to think that the news that presented to us by various anchor personalities is more likely than not to reflect what the anchor person wants to see and hear as opposed to what has actually happened.
The moral significance of this change is that truth has been substantially devalued. Indeed, it has been devalued by those who have chosen as a profession the aim of reporting the truth. The truth has been devalued by those who claim telling that truth is an integral part of their professional responsibility.
Nowadays, the news is treated more like a song to which a person rightly feels entitled to give her or his interpretation. Mariah Carey sings “Oh Holy Night” as does the Vienna Boys Choir, giving two fundamentally different interpretations of the very same song.
Who really believes that Brian Williams (NBC) or Katie Couric (CBS) or Charles Gibson (ABC) is merely reporting the news as it actually happened?
Now, my thesis is this: This retreat from the truth is having a most deleterious impact upon society in general. When those who take it as their moral responsibility to tell the truth in delivering the news feel entitled to manipulate this is tantamount to flaunting every publicly the idea that telling the is not important.
With many things in life, witnessing them on a daily basis either repulses us or appeals to us or we become indifferent to it. The second and third options constitute what I shall call moral numbing. And one of the most striking things about life is that there is very little wrongdoing to which we cannot become morally numb if do not take the requisite precautions. A case in point is profanity.
It was barely more than a decade ago when profanity is what was spoken in the movie theater and not on home television. There may have been the occasional “damn” here and there. The rare usage of this word marked the importance of the moment. Nowadays, of course, we commonly hear words like “damn” and “bitch” and “bastard” on television. We hear these words so frequently that their utterance barely fazes us. Utterances that would have caught everyone’s attention some 15 or so years ago can go relatively unnoticed at this point in time. Needless to say, this is an incontrovertible example of social numbness.
We can see social numbness in other areas of life, as well. The rudeness occasioned by cell phones is now par for the course. Unthinkingly, these days, many cell phone users do not acknowledge the clerk who is waiting on them at the counter, or it is nothing to put a person on hold in order to answer another phone call.
Well, there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to think that when it comes to truth human beings are immune to becoming numb when those in socially respected positions continually treat truth rather like a song that they can interpret.
Increasingly, we are becoming numb to the importance and significance of truth precisely because we seeing all around us that the importance and significance of truth is being made subordinate to ideological interests. And the distance between making truth subordinate to ideological interests and between making truth subordinate to personal interests is very, very short.
If it is acceptable for respectable anchor personalities—and that is what we often call them now: anchor personalities—to subordinate truth to their ideological commitments—making megabucks, then how wrong can it be to subordinate truth to our personal interests?
Again, if it is acceptable for lawyers, in the name of defending their client, to put forth exculpatory explanations for their client’s morally horrific behavior that simply fly in the face of the facts, then once more: how wrong can it be to subordinate truth to our personal interests?
From news programs to college campuses, it is manifestly clear that truth has taken a backseat to ideological concerns.
The most poignant and flagrante illustration of this in recent years is the case of the Duke University lacrosse players. The prosecuting district attorney, Mike Nifong (now disbarred), violated more than a dozen ethics rules in going after the now-exonerated Duke lacrosse players. There was very little evidence that those three guys had done what they were accused of doing. But a man who wanted to score points with the black community in Raleigh did not want to hear that. And there were way too many white Duke University faculty members and members of the black community who “indicted” the players without a hearing.
Truth? It had no relevance at all to the clamoring that was going on. This was so palpably clear that it is shameful. I am not for rape no matter who rapes whom. But when the charge of rape, of all things, has next to no semblance of truth, then we owe it to all to sort through the evidence before we go clamoring for someone’s very soul.
What we saw, instead, was rather like so many vultures descending upon a caucus presumed to be dead.
Increasingly, images matter; truth does not. The case of the Duke University lacrosse players is as pristine an example of this truth as one could possibly want, especially in light of the fact that the prosecuting attorney was disbarred. This case is an example that should give us pause—a reason to re-examine our priorities. It has not, though; and this, in turn, tells us how just how far down on the rung of values that the importance of truth has fallen.
Unless I am missing something, the importance of truth has fallen so far down that the lack of value we attach to it is quickly becoming a threat to the very viability of democracy. For democracy cannot survive when the denizens of society attach more importance to appearances than to reality; and the devaluing of truth entails precisely that.
