What if the News Reported Only Facts? - Dilbert Blog

Scott Adams posted this on his Dilbert blog: What if the News Reported Only Facts? I should preface this by noting that Adams is not an unabashed Trump supporter. Adams says he didn’t vote in the last election and describes himself as liberal on some issues. He does admire Trump’s skillful use of persuasion tactics, which he discussed in his book Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter. Anyway, here is how Adams introduces the subject.

One of the biggest illusions of life is that we humans are good at deducing the inner thoughts of both strangers and loved ones based on observing their actions. The truth is that we are terrible at knowing what others are thinking. We just think we are good at it. No one is good at it. No one.

…

The business model of the news media has moved away from hard reporting and toward punditry and opinion. Viewers enjoy opinion-driven content and it costs a lot less to produce than hard news. And that means the news industry has moved from factual reporting to — for all practical purposes — some form of imaginary mind reading to fill the hours.

Adams doesn’t delve into why we have devolved into a world “where facts don’t matter.” For that I’d refer you to Stephen Hick’s book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault.

Postmodernism’s essentials are the opposite of modernism’s. Instead of natural reality—anti-realism. Instead of experience and reason— linguistic social subjectivism. Instead of individual identity and autonomy—various race, sex, and class group-isms. Instead of human interests as fundamentally harmonious and tending toward mutually-beneficial interaction—conflict and oppression. Instead of valuing individualism in values, markets, and politics—calls for communalism, solidarity, and egalitarian restraints. Instead of prizing the achievements of science and technology—suspicion tending toward outright hostility.

Metaphysically, postmodernism is anti-realist, holding that it is impossible to speak meaningfully about an independently existing reality. Postmodernism substitutes instead a social-linguistic, constructionist account of reality. Epistemologically, having rejected the notion of an independently existing reality, postmodernism denies that reason or any other method is a means of acquiring objective knowledge of that reality. Having substituted social-linguistic constructs for that reality, postmodernism emphasizes the subjectivity, conventionality, and incommensurability of those constructions. Postmodern accounts of human nature are consistently collectivist, holding that individuals’ identities are constructed largely by the social-linguistic groups that they are a part of, those groups varying radically across the dimensions of sex, race, ethnicity, and wealth. Postmodern accounts of human nature also consistently emphasize relations of conflict between those groups; and given the de-emphasized or eliminated role of reason, post-modern accounts hold that those conflicts are resolved primarily by the use of force, whether masked or naked; the use of force in turn leads to relations of dominance, submission, and oppression. Finally, postmodern themes in ethics and politics are characterized by an identification with and sympathy for the groups perceived to be oppressed in the conflicts, and a willingness to enter the fray on their behalf.

This means that postmodernism excuses news reporters and commentators from objectively reporting the facts without explicitly or implicitly injecting their own opinions or bias (or at least trying not to!). This frees them to push a narrative that favors a political agenda. Notice the reaction when someone wants to counter a narrative that is being pushed. Instead of being accused of not being objective the person responding will fall back onto the preferred language or axis behind their narrative. So, liberals will say a conservative or libertarian is being, say, racist (which falls into Arnold Kling’s oppressor vs. oppressed axis). Conservatives could say the liberal reporter’s position creates chaos (falling in the civilization vs. barbarism axis). And so on.

And this is why Adams’ question ultimately is a hypothetical question.