As a philosopher, intellectual, and academic, I am concerned with seeking truth. I want to know what is true and what is not so that I can make good decisions.
Sir Karl Popper, the philosopher of science, argued that (1) we can have objective knowledge, and (2) science (and the search for objective knowledge generally) is a community endeavor in which the “best” theories are those which are most tested and survive the widest range of tests. Popper is hardly alone in arguing for a social role in research, though many of these would not accept Popper's belief in objective knowledge.
This community vision of research is manifest in research institutions: each field has its journals and publications, and those publications are filled with a variety of different views of scholars debating each other. Whether in the humanities or the sciences, scholars debate a variety of viewpoints.
Each scholar, presumably, believes in the value of his or her own work, and presents it as something “true.” I feel that this is so even in the works of those who debate the existence of ultimate truths. Some of Derrida’s works are so cryptic as to be more like Zen koans—questions without an answer—but not all; his works sometimes read as if asserting truthful claims. But this is the condition of the scholar: to attempt to put down in words something of vast complexity. The Tao Te Ching begins by saying that the Tao that can be spoken of, is not the absolute Tao, and it still goes on to propound its views of the world. Every scholar has a bias in favor of his or her own work—not a malicious bias or desire to deceive for personal gain, but rather the bias of the individual who believes in the quality and integrity of his or her own work (let’s just put aside people who intentionally falsify for now).
Each scholar desires to do something original (which, on the whole, is the basic qualification for publication), and this originality manifests as the variety of published theories that make up the scholarly literature. While some kind of bias is inevitable—we all have to make choices of what to read and what to leave aside— biases based on ignorance are not desirable. Scholars ought to read widely, to examine a range of views, to test them, to challenge weak ideas.
To me, the same is true with journalism: two journalists doing good work with integrity may come to different conclusions on some issue due to use of different evidence. Different organizations have different biases just as different academic journals have different theoretical biases. As one who relies on the media for a lot of information about current events, it seems to me wise to read many different sources of news to get a wider sense of what is being said. With the internet, it is easy to read news from different news sources around the world and around the country. I read things that are obviously conservative and things that are obviously liberal/progressive, and my views are shaped in part by comparing the quality of the arguments and evidence presented.
This post was sparked by a line in an article in the National Review, a conservative journal (http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450626/charlottesville-donald-trump-alt-right-blame-both-sides-wrong). The line that struck me was the comment: “they know there were two sides out there [in Charlottesville, VA]. And they know the media has tried to obscure that fact.” What struck me about this was the comment “the media has tried to obscure the fact.” Firstly, it is worth noting the singular verb form “has,” which suggests that the author is thinking of “the media” as a single, unified entity. The use of the singular “has” could have just been a grammatical error (“media” is the plural of “medium,” and those concerned with grammatical correctness would say that it is grammatically correct to write “The media have”), so it’s not certain that the author is thinking of them as some unified whole, but it is suggestive. Realistically, however, many diverse people and organizations make up “the media” and they have not, en masse, tried to obscure this fact. Different media outlets have given different amounts of attention and blame to the antifa.
“The media” is not a unified bloc. It is made up of disparate voices. Fox News is one of the loudest of those voices, and it would be inaccurate to say that Fox News (as a whole) has ignored the antifa. If we’re talking about “the media,” certainly the most commonly viewed sources, including Fox, should be counted. And for that matter, the highly respected National Review, in which this article was published is also a prominent part of “the media.” So it’s not accurate to say that the antifa and violence perpetrated by the antifa have been ignored by the media. It’s unfortunate that this inaccuracy suggests an attempt to deceive about the range of opinions being expressed, but part of the current conservative worldview is the notion of a vast “liberal media,” while somehow not noticing that many of the biggest media outlets—the Murodch empire, Sinclair, and others—promote conservative positions and candidates. Are there news outlets that show a liberal bias? Of course. But liberal news outlets are not the only news outlets.
As consumers of media we need to review a range of sources, and to then use critical judgement to choose amongst them. Getting news from a single source—however high its quality—is ignoring the whole range of views that should be the fabric of any critical examination of an idea.
Many graduate students struggle to become independent researchers because they try to understand published literature as the truth, not as the fabric of a larger debate. Until they learn to challenge the sources that they read, they can’t really begin to develop the necessary critical vision to understand the wide scope of issues of concern. As consumers of media, we may be more willing to challenge news media, but too often these challenges become limited to an ad hominem dismissal: “if Fox said it, then it can’t be true,” or “if The New York Times said it, then it can’t be true.” This is crucial if we believe that arriving at truth is essentially a communal effort.
It is also essential if we seek social unity. If we seek a unified society, we cannot operate by dismissing what others say, and we’ll struggle to operate if we focus only on points of disagreement. To find any semblance of social unity, we have to look for points of agreement.
Of course, as I discussed in previous posts, there are limits: an egalitarian society that believes in free speech is obliged to reject those who believe that only a select group deserve free speech. It may seem impossible to find common ground with someone who espouses racial hatred, but the reality is that societies already are made of both those who desire egalitarian society and those who espouse racial supremacy which means that either common ground can be found, or there is war.
Seeking truth is a community activity. When communities diverge on what is viewed as truth, violent conflict can ensue.
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