George Orwell was wrong!
About the date.
It wasn’t 1984, it was 2016, for which evidence continues to grow on a daily basis. Orwell had the concepts, though — “Double-Speak” — where the “Ministry of Truth” was actually the office of lies and propaganda — and so forth.
In the executive branch of our federal government, we have a racist attorney general who lied about a crime wave, the director of the Environmental Protection Agency who is a climate change denier, an education secretary known for her ignorance and a president who has told more than 2,000 lies in his first year in office.
Against this assault on reality, truth and, ultimately, our democratic institutions, our newspapers have had to step up and take the lead. In this, The Salt Lake Tribune has performed admirably.
Except — in last Sunday’s edition, there is an op-ed piece by Ashley Dean titled, “Time to realize how our news sources are driving us apart.” Ms. Dean quotes from “Newsweek,” “Uncle Sam’s Misguided Children,” “Blaze,” “Rawstory,” and equates all of these “news sources.“
Noooo!!! With the possible exception of “Newsweek,” these are not “news sources.” They are rumor mills and propaganda machines. Certainly, I understand that the Tribune is obligated to print some opinions of others, whether they are true or not, and Ms. Dean’s article was in the Opinion section, but The Tribune still owes its readers parallel fact checks.
Yes, Ms. Dean’s article was in the Opinion section. So how is the News section doing? Well, in that same Sunday edition, there is a little article on page A2, “Flat-Earth rocket scientist launches himself…”
Noooo!!! The subject of the article is not a scientist. He’s a limo driver!
With these kinds of misstatements, how are readers to render intelligent judgments? Also in Sunday’s paper, was a satirical article by one of the deans of American journalism, Don Gale, “Go ahead and build the stupid wall…”
Now, I know Mr. Gale was writing satire, but how many of those who read Don Gale’s article will think, “Wow, even an intelligent man like Don Gale is in favor of the wall.”?
I have been a psychiatrist for 40 years. As a physician, I was trained in the scientific method to critically analyze the validity of experimental data. As a psychiatrist, I am granted the extra skill in formal mental status examinations to evaluate a patient’s “reality testing.” While I’m granted that status, it doesn’t mean it’s easy to do, and I have to be mindful that I can be wrong.
I remember when I was a resident in psychiatry, I sometimes evaluated patients for the court, where a patient’s “lack of reality testing” was a cardinal symptom of psychosis that could spell involuntary commitment. As a resident, I had a devil of a time doing the evaluation, and the judge had even a more difficult time discerning the truth in my testimony vs. the patient’s attorney.
As difficult as that process was, how much more difficult is it for society at large, filled with people of diverse backgrounds and educational levels to discern the truth of data they are bombarded with from all over the airways and the internet?
In 1925, Adolph Hitler formalized the propaganda concept of the “Big Lie:”
“The broad masses of a nation … in the primitive simplicity of their minds … more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since … It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously.”
Since then, the “Big Lie” has been copied by many others, and we are seeing it being used in America now, at a level far in excess of anything we have seen before. It is now more important than ever that our newspapers diligently, and I will say even sacredly, safeguard the truth and keep it in front of us.
Michael A. Kalm
Michael Kalm, M.D., is a psychiatrist in private practice in Utah. He is also a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah Medical School and past president of the Utah Psychiatric Association.