In the words of Ludwig Wittgenstein, “The world is the totality of facts, not of things”. This totality of facts is what makes up the ‘truth’ as we perceive it, and is something that humans have been striving towards since the dawn of time. Facts and truth define what we know, and by extension who we are.
We live in an age where truth is becoming harder and harder to decipher, which is what makes it more important than ever that we find new ways to ensure that we think critically about what is fact and what is fiction. That is exactly what the final instalment of the first year of the Sheldonian Series convened by the University’s Vice Chancellor, Irene Tracey, sought to start a conversation on. The series aims to ‘promote discussions’ about the most significant issues of today, ‘informed by [the University’s] commitment to free speech’. Previous events in Michaelmas and Hilary terms have focused on the themes of ‘Democracy’ and ‘Life’ respectively.
At the event on Tuesday 13 May, the Sheldonian Theatre hosted Director of the Reuters Institute, Mitali Mukherjee; Professor of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University and a visiting professor at Oxford University, Professor Kimberly Johnson; and journalist at The Times and editor at The Spectator, Fraser Nelson, as panellists. Richard Ovendon, Oxford University’s Head of Gardens, Libraries and Museums (GLAM), was the moderator of the discussion. Each of the panellists was invited to give their opening statement of truth, and of what truth means to them. Johnson was the first to give her interpretation, beginning with an account of an incident of “greywashing” she observed on Twitter, which depicted a mural literally being painted over in grey. Erasure of this sort, she argues, is not a new phenomenon. There is no shortage of instances of data being removed, or intentionally removed from the record, because “history is public policy”, so the removal of truths may prove politically favourable in many cases.
Mukherjee and Nelson, both being prominent figures within the sphere of journalism, paid homage to their profession in their conceptions of truth: Nelson noted that “journalism is about truth or about nothing”. In a society where there seems to be information always and everywhere, but when much of this is resoundingly untrue, it seems prudent to consider that journalism is a realm whose existence necessarily relies on the pursuit of truth. What Mukherjee found concerning was that, whilst misinformation is ever increasing, there is also growing disengagement with news, perhaps due to a “systematic erosion of faith in institutions”, or a lack of perceived value in news. After all, if you do not see yourself reflected in news (which she argued is especially true for younger audiences, women, and other minorities), why concern yourself with engaging with it?
At one point, Nelson quoted Thomas Carlyle, contending that “no lie can live forever”. The implication of this is presumably that, at some point, truth will prevail. A comforting notion indeed. Despite this, Ovendon proceeded to ask one of the pre-submitted questions: “Are we in a post-truth world?”. The panellists seemed optimistic overall about the future of truth, but Johnson made it clear that perhaps there needs to be a greater focus on the role of those “creating” truth, through research. She claimed that research is frequently being “demeaned” and “demonised”; it seems as though many have lost faith where research is concerned, and this may be a pernicious route to a world of growing misinformation, and ultimately untruth.
The vice-chancellor posed a question to the panellists, asking them whether it is time for a “public service social media platform”, the idea being that the platform would be subject to a similar level of integrity to journalism. Nelson was concerned about the practicalities regarding the time it would take to fact-check. Indeed, it does seem inevitable that a social media platform operating under high standards of journalistic integrity would be rendered futile in delivering obscene quantities of information to a vast number of people at any given time. Perhaps, Mukherjee suggested, news providers need to capitalise on social media and its many advantages. Since social media is the language of the youth, and there is growing disengagement of the youth with news, she suggested that “news has to lead people”, instead of individuals having to seek out news themselves.
This event was a poignant reminder of both the importance of truth, and how elusive the truth can be in an age of mass misinformation. Our future does not have to be a bleak landscape of falsehood and lies, though. Institutions such as this university serve the purpose of seeking out truth, and we, as members of that institution, have a role as global citizens to engage in this mission. As Johnson eloquently put it, a university is an arena “in which everyone has their own truth, and every truth is equal”. It is the role of universities to keep the conversation going, to discern what is fact and what is fiction, and to never cease questioning truth. Mill said that “silencing of discussion is an assumption of infallibility”, and that is a mantra that should be front and centre of all of our minds. During a time when millions of people are silenced, and more continue to be, we must start discussions. This is the only way that truth will out.