Manufacturing ‘truths’

Hajrah Mumtaz, writing for Dawn, has an interesting take on Pakistan's current political situation. He starts his piece with a quotation from Goebbels.

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” — Dr Paul Joseph Goebbels, Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Adolf Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist regime.

He continues with,

The words hold relevance for Pakistan today. After a turbulent year that in itself augured ill for the country’s future, came the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Just over a week later, the government is engaged in a bitter blame game in the attempt to deflect responsibility everywhere but upon its own minions and shadowy agencies. As the dust slowly settles, some civilian politicians have fallen towards the relative front and this has resulted in a citizenry divided: where some people are referring with disgust to the politicians’ past reputations and practices, others are reacting sympathetically.

He talks of proof, or more specifically lack of proof, of allegations.

True, ample evidence of maladministration and corruption has been presented by the press. Little of this evidence, however, has been the result of independent investigative journalism. Most of the news reports upon the actions or statements of others. For example, when the press reports the dismissal of a government under charges of corruption or maladministration, the allegation is being levelled by the individual or institution doing the dismissing, not the press itself. Furthermore, such allegations are never proved or disproved through a credible trial. And what’s more, even if the press raised suspicions of misrule through solid investigative journalism, it would still be up to the courts to pronounce upon the veracity of the allegations.

He ends his article with,

The thinking person must ask himself, “How do I know what I know, and how do I know whether it is true?”

We know what we know by independently examining all sides of an argument. Many people today only get news from one source, whether it be a TV News station they like or the paper delivered to their door. The internet has become a great holder of the truth, not any one particular site or article, but the vast collection of articles from several different sources and sites, often vehemently opposed to each other's views.

Examining the news on Yahoo or Google is also not a well rounded way to be informed as articles at these sites are often repeated articles from the same AP, AFP, or Reuters journalists with changes to a few words. This article are often commentary without links to back up their claims.

This fact is why RSS readers are so vital. One can type in a subject and get articles and commentary from several different sources, The Times of India, Pakistan Daily, Dawn, The New York Times, The Washington Times, The Long War Journal, Alsumaria, The American Thinker, and Al Jazeera to name only a few. Reading several articles on one subject does not allow one to know the truth, but offers a variety of facts which leads one closer to the truth, which quite frankly, is the best that we can hope for.