Theorizing about “the social construction of reality” won’t help us to find an effective treatment for AIDS or devise strategies for preventing global warming. Nor can we combat false ideas in history, sociology, economics, and politics if we reject the notions of truth and falsity.15

The electronic dissemination of information can be used to spread lies, but it can also be used to spread truth. If we have ideals worth fighting for, let’s fight for them. If our tools are being used as weapons, let’s take them back.

Are there better methods? According to Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of the fact-checking website Snopes, “pinching off fake news isn’t the answer. The answer is flooding it with actual news. And that way, people will continue looking for information, and they will find vetted, nuanced, contextual, in-depth information.”57 While this sounds sen

“the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction … true and false … no longer exist.”

propaganda as a means to exploit and strengthen a flawed ideology.41

Hannah Arendt when he says “what convinces masses are not facts, and not even invented facts, but rather, open defiance.”

the Los Angeles Times, and the Wall Street Journal to seriously mislead the public on climate change.29 The problem here was not any so-called political bias. It was

In a 2004 study entitled “Balance as Bias: Global Warming and the US Prestige Press,” Maxwell Boykoff and Jules Boykoff found that the norm of “balanced reporting” had caused the New York Times, the Washington Post,

The goal of objectivity is not to give equal time between truth and falsehood—it is to facilitate the truth.