It’s only been a month or so since Inauguration Day. But the Trump White House has already generated quite a few controversies, dominating media coverage in the United States and around the world.
What are the implications of an ongoing fight over facts between the Administration and the media? Is it going to be a new normal?
UNDERSTANDING THE CONTEXT
A good portion of those controversies has swirled around debates over what’s true, and what isn’t. Debates focus on actions taken, or not taken, by his new administration: whether his close aides and Cabinet appointees have the experience and temperament for their jobs; Trump’s preference for the combative campaign style; a hurried execution of an Executive Order on immigration, and the subsequent belittling criticism of the judges who have blocked its implementation, and so on.
Most recently, the President criticized the media at a White House Press conference, where he talked about his decision to ask for the resignation of his National Security Adviser, former Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. Gen. Flynn was let go after it was discovered that he had misled Vice President Mike Pence about the content of phone calls with the Russian Ambassador – leading to false public statements by the Vice President.
But Donald Trump has long been used to controversy. During his long campaign for the presidency, Trump promised to “drain the swamp” as one piece of his promised effort to “Make America Great Again.” He promised to shake things up once he got to the White House and, indeed to many it appears to be just what he’s started to do.
Many of his critics – along with his White House spokesmen, his aides, and Trump himself – have focused on the new President’s style of governing as a stunning change from historical patterns. But many in Congress, the media, and even the electorate find the change in the tone and level of discourse in Washington, and the ease with which the new White House attempts to portray as true things which are clearly not true, as something alarming.
The earliest example came just hours after President Trump was sworn in when his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed the ceremony attracted “the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period, both in person and around the globe.” Spicer backed up Trump’s earlier Twitter accusation that the media were guilty of “dishonesty” by under-reporting inaugural crowd sizes.
Media coverage gave an early hint of what was to come, when his former Campaign Manager and now White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway gave the term, if not the concept, of “alternative facts” – that the cameras may have shown one thing, but the alternative view of what they showed was, in the White House view, more real.
There are numerous other examples of disputes between the media and the President regarding perceptions of the reality of his new administration, and at times during the first weeks of the Trump administration these distinctions and the role of the media have become the dominant topic in public debate. This is eroding public confidence in both the media and the Trump administration – neither one of which has enjoyed high popularity ratings.
It may therefore be helpful to back away from the microscope and more broadly examine the critical issue of credibility – what it is that creates and ensures public confidence in government officials, and in the news reports about their activities. People in any society need a clear and credible understanding as to how reality is assessed – how it is measured, literally and figuratively – so that it’s possible to know whether something is a fact, something that is true, something that’s clear for all to see. This sounds easy, but like so many things these days, it’s not.
FACTS vs TRUTH
Kellyanne Conway’s defense of the use of “alternative facts” left many people scratching their heads. If you have facts, some asked, why do you need “alternative facts”? Can facts have alternatives – and what do we mean by “facts,” anyway?
The dictionary doesn’t leave much doubt. Merriam Webster’s says a fact is something that has “actual existence” – the words you’re reading, the sound of your voice if you read them aloud; those things actually exist. The Oxford English Dictionary is somewhat more nuanced, but has the same basic thrust: a “fact” is, “a thing that is known or proved to be true.” And here’s where it gets cloudy.
Whereas Webster’s says something is factual when it can be perceived by the senses – sight, sound, touch, taste – the Oxford definition introduces the concept of truth: “a thing that is known or proved to be true.” If something is known or proven, it is then believed by the individual who knows it – to whom it has been proven – to be true.
Okay, but… what does that mean? If I tell my child the sun comes up in the east, and I have a compass that proves it and books by astronomers that back me up, then my child accepts these things as proof that what I’m saying is true.
But if my child is blind and can’t see the sunrise, or read the compass or the books by scientists, and has no sensory perception that creates an understanding of what’s true and what isn’t, my son or daughter has only my word to go on – and perhaps the word of others who will say the same thing. The child’s need for knowledge on that issue will be satisfied, unless someone says in an authoritative manner, ‘well, no, the sun really comes up in the west.’ Factual or not, that person will have created doubt as to what the truth is.
So, what is “truth?” Ancient philosophers differed on details, but basically agreed that it is something that is revealed only after much thought and study. Plato believed truth couldn’t be seen or heard, and could be found only through contemplation. Aristotle improved on that a bit, saying it could be found through reasoning – but also observation. Ancient Hebrew and Islamic traditions held truth to be defined through faith, and known only to the faithful. Thomas Aquinas said truth is that which is in the mind of God. Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, the 12th century Islamic philosopher, Sufi mystic, and sage, saw God and truth as one and the same.
In modern times “truth” has continued to be defined as a matter of individual perception – but, since the Enlightenment in the 17th and 18th centuries, its meaning has been expanded to include legal reasoning and scientific findings. This dual identity – truth as a state of being, vs. truth as an objective observation – is seldom confused, and is almost always understood in the context in which the term is used.
There are times, though – as when political opponents disagree, or when disparate claims are made based on differing interpretations of evidence – that the word’s meaning and usage become fuzzy. It’s at times like that when Kellyanne Conway can cite a set of observations as “alternative facts” – the truth of a matter as seen from differing viewpoints, rather than from a single set of hard, cold, observable data points – like the number of people standing in the Mall.
TRUTH AND FACT – WHAT AND WHO IS RIGHT?
This might see like a flight of irrelevant fancy, a semantic struggle over meaningless details. It is much more than that, however; this matter of interpretation – how the President and his aides, the mainstream media, presidential historians and scholars, and America’s allies around the world – will likely lead to many more disagreements in years to come. These will be disagreements on small points and large issues, new political struggles quite different than any we’ve seen before. They will shape perceptions, stimulate confrontations, arouse passions, and harden the lines between politicians and interest groups and the media that report on them. Some experts say they even threaten to nudge America and other countries toward confrontation, and conflict.
In his remarks at the CIA the day after his inauguration, President Trump told the intelligence community, “as you know, I have a running war with the media. They are among the most dishonest human beings on Earth.” By his interpretation of the facts he saw the media as far removed from the truth about his administration. “We caught them,” he said, “and I think they’re going to pay a big price.”
Donald Trump sees himself as he always has – at the center of power, as a wise and fair man, as someone to be respected and believed. His critics see him through another prism, with refracted light illuminating darker sides of the same man and his base motives – and are likely to be criticizing him strenuously, with opposing views, beliefs, and action plans.
We’re likely to be stuck in this dialogue, and have no better luck than the ancient Greeks in finding unity in deciding what’s true and what isn’t. Protagoras, the 5th century BCE philosopher, said what many have said since – that the truth depends on the perspective of the individual. Given that “man being the measure of all things,” said Protagoras, and given the nature of humanity, “there are two sides to every question.”
Truth and facts, like beauty, are in the eye of the beholder; ‘twas ever thus, and is likely to remain so throughout the Trump presidency. We need to get used to it.
Opinions expressed by writers in the OpEd pieces are their own and do not necessarily reflect editorial policy of Views and News Magazine, which publishes a variety of views as part of the public discourse on important issues.
