The result is very harmful. It’s bad enough that some cable news stations and social media sites deliver only one side of the argument on many issues. But increasingly, they provide “alternative facts” that allow Americans to inhabit different realities. This leads to further polarization and to hostility toward those with whom one disagrees. It... See more

Uncertainty is an acid, corrosive to authority. Once the monopoly on information is lost, so too is our trust. Every presidential statement, every CIA assessment, every investigative report by a great newspaper, suddenly acquired an arbitrary aspect, and seemed grounded in moral predilection rather than intellectual rigor. When proof for and... See more

For the first time there are facts and (in Kellyanne Conway’s notorious phrase) ‘alternative facts’. As facts become fluid they become contestable; the truth becomes (once again) something you assert, not something you prove. It used to be a peculiar characteristic of totalitarian regimes that they made the facts fit their purposes; now it seems... See more