It's Dangerous to Allow Politicians and Officials to Decide What Constitutes 'Truth'"Governments realize that they are in an existential battle over who controls information."
By: J.D. Tuccille
1.10.2022
It's no secret that governments worldwide are increasingly hostile to scrutiny of their conduct. But, at a moment when too many media outlets see their role as working with the state to reinforce official narratives, one advocate of press freedom reminds us that the struggle isn't over the "disinformation" and "misinformation" called out by opportunistic politicians, it's over control of information. Will people be free in the future to decide for themselves what's truth and what's BS? Or will we be spoon-fed whatever the powers-that-be endorse?
"Governments realize that they are in an existential battle over who controls information, who controls the narrative, and they are waging a frontal assault against independent journalism around the world," Joel Simon, the exiting head of the Committee to Protects Journalists (CPJ), told CNN's Brian Stelter.
"This is the information age, and we are in a kind of millennial battle over who controls information," he added. "Who controls it? That's the power struggle. And so, governments recognize—repressive governments, but even democratic governments—that this is an essential tool that they need to maintain power and journalists are their adversaries."
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Truthful information doesn't require a government seal of approval because government officials are as flawed and biased as anybody else. They're prone to declaring debates over for convenient reasons of their own even as new evidence emerges and disagreements remain unresolved not necessarily because of rejection of facts, but often over fundamental differences in values and preferences. Powerful figures are in no position to save us from bad information because they're a major source of the stuff themselves and, if allowed, can use force to impose their versions of reality on dissenters.
We really are in an existential battle over who controls information, just as Joel Simon warned. It's not a battle over what constitutes truth, which remains as hard as ever to determine. Instead, this battle over control of information is a struggle over our freedom to decide for ourselves without having other people's decisions crammed down our throats.
Source:
https://reason.com/2022/01/10/its-dangerous-to-allow-politicians-and-officials-to-decide-what-constitutes-truth/
