The Disturbing Power of Information Pollution
What we&#x27;re seeing isn&#x27;t a breakdown in &quot;rationality&quot; or &quot;care for truth&quot;, we&#x27;re seeing a global breakdown in the trust of authority. Vast numbers of people, including the president of the country and his supporters, aren&#x27;t rejecting truth or rationality, they have so little faith in the supposed arbiters of truth, the mainstream media and academia, that they&#x27;re willing to accept shoddy reporting that confirms their worldview.  Indeed, what rational individual would trust a person who regularly shows prejudice and open contempt for their political beliefs, worldview, and concerns.<p>Instead of trying to to repair that trust, pieces like this hand-wring about &quot;fake news&quot; and the rise of anti-intellectualism:<p>&quot;Why won&#x27;t these dumb bigots listen to us?  Don&#x27;t they know we have their best interests at heart?  If only they were more educated, like us, they&#x27;d accept our reporting and science uncritically!&quot;<p>People like the author are unwilling to see how focusing on the &quot;truth&quot; of trite, inconsequential &quot;facts&quot; like whether Trump&#x27;s inauguration was the biggest ever is pointless when compared to issues that really affect people.  The fact that so much media attention was devoted to such a trivial dispute is a testament to the devolution of national dialogue and debate.  Instead of digging deep into the meat of issues that affect people and addressing the central argument, it&#x27;s a never-ending labyrinth of &quot;gotchas&quot;:<p>&quot;So and so was false when he said 64%, it&#x27;s actually 55%.&quot;<p>&quot;So and so said this, and this group came out demanding an apology.&quot;<p>This sort of reporting might be more forgivable if the rest didn&#x27;t read like propaganda, twisting news stories into things that are &quot;technically true&quot;, but designed to give readers a false impression.  Media writers have realized that most read only the headline and maybe the first few lines before clicking away, and the writers see this as an opportunity to inject hyper-partisan deception into the minds of their readers this way.