A Matter of Trust

There has been something of a fuss lately about public trust in the media. For those of you who have been living in a cave for the last 8 months, and for those of you who are foreign (one and the same thing to an Englishman), there has been hand-wringing and soul-searching aplenty about the cavalcade of lies that the tellybox spews out on a daily basis. This has led to the print media doling out "TV Lies!" exclusives like a mad paedophile throwing sweets in a playground. Which has in turn caused the BBC to behave like a 12th century flagellant, so keen are they to reassure the braying herd that the Beeb is really sorry and can be trusted.

My initial thoughts about this were, it would appear, much the same as the initial thoughts of anyone who tries to project an image of themselves as cynical, world weary, and unsurprised by anything (i.e. anyone with a pair of testicles): "God, everyone knows that the media lie! What kind of loser doesn't realise that the information we're presented is manipulated with more skill than a Thai masseuse manipulates a lonely man to a happy ending?” Possibly you found that seam of thought was shot through with streaks of "Who cares if some mouthbreathing dolescum spunk all their coins on Richard and Judy phone in quizzes". Maybe that was just me.

That is all well and good, and I'm guessing that it's the best response that the Shitbox Overlords could hope for. In fact, judging by the recent "TV lies!" exclusives we've been seeing (does anyone really think that a children’s program calling a kitten by a name that wasn't voted for by all the sweet kiddies is an abuse of our trust?) one would be forgiven for thinking that we're being manipulated into thinking "Who gives a shit?" about the whole debacle.

But as I've thought about it a little more, I've found myself a little puzzled. Our reaction as a society to the notion that the people whom we rely on to bring us the facts about the world we live in are liars is something of a strange one. Rather than displaying the outrage that the print media has so desperately tried to manufacture, we've responded with breathtaking insouciance. We're all, it seems, at pains to point out that we were never so stupid as to believe what we were told by any media. We're all too clever and independent minded for that. Nobody has pointed out the very legitimate concern that if we cannot trust the media to deliver the facts about what is going on in the world, then none of us will actually know what is going on in the world. And in our ignorance, we'll be that much easier to render frightened and impotent.

Okay, I should explain myself before I'm written off as unduly paranoid. What I'm saying is that our collective reaction to the Media Lies To The Plebs shitstorm is not a healthy one for society. The role of the media in society should be to present us with the facts, perhaps with some basic analysis to help make complexities clearer, and allow us to make up our own mind. The role that it actually plays is to give us a version of events so skewed by subjectivity as to render it almost worthless. For example, any report on Fox News is going to present the right wing view of that event. The Guardian will always present a left wing view. So the same story will be presented with a totally different emphasis. We, the people, are (despite my more misanthropic moments) not that stupid, and so we will notice the disparity.

The logical conclusion to draw when presented with such disparities on a daily basis is "Sections of the media are lying to us". We can then either decide that the media that represents the political faction we agree with are telling the truth and condemn those opposing. Or (and this is the approach I suspect most of us take) we get so frustrated at being force fed conflicting viewpoints, each one presented as the unvarnished truth, that we decide that nothing in the media can be trusted and so grow apathetic about it. Thus when actual media lies are uncovered we simply sigh in amused detachment rather than reacting with the boiling fury that it warrants.

I think one of the reasons that this apathy is so terrifying to me is that it indicates that we don't actually care about the world around us any more. We don't care that we're lied to on a daily basis. All we seem to be fussed about is being made to look stupid or ill informed. But as it's the media who we rely on to keep us informed, we end up with the paradoxical situation where we don't listen to what they tell us (because we know they're lying, and we don’t want to be laughed at for believing their lies), but neither do we know what is actually happening because we have no easy alternative way to get the information. In other words we carefully maintain our own ignorance in order to avoid being mocked for our ignorance.

Some might say that the breakdown of trust in the media is no bad thing. We live in the Internet age and so we can avail ourselves of any information in an instant. Well yes, we can. However, being as any old yahoo can produce the information one finds in the self-professed Independent Internet Media, it's often of less value than the subjective news acquired from traditional media sources. An over-reliance on such sources leads inevitably to a Legion of Ottos (Otto being a fantastically stupid character from A Fish Called Wanda who insists, in the face of all available evidence, that he isn't stupid) who will make dunce-like proclamations of Oil being an inexhaustible natural resource that is produced by the earth's core, or that a high school shooter was being mind controlled by the government because "I saw it on the Manchurian Candidate" (I have talked to people who genuinely believe both of these things, and go so far as to take the piss out of anyone who doesn't go along with them. And people wonder why I have such a low opinion of humanity…).

So we find ourselves in a position where we cannot trust what we are told by the traditional media. Nor can we believe the reams of shite on the Internet. And because we cannot trust those sources, we have to make our minds up based on…well, based on nothing more than whatever our gut instincts might be. We have absolutely no frame of reference to help us come to an opinion. About the only news items that we can guarantee are not lies are those increasingly popular sections where once-respected journalists mindlessly read out the texted opinions of a public that, as members of, we know to be as ignorant as us. It seems that the media has seamlessly shifted from providing facts to recycling public stupidity.

So why do I find that so terrifying? Why am I, noted by all who know me as an anti-social despiser of people, so thoroughly pissed off at the willful ignorance of my fellow man? Jesus, isn't it obvious? The apathy generated by an endlessly lying media isn't just confined to our opinions of what is in the news. That apathy seeps into every aspect of our lives, because our lives are the news. We all know that governments are lying, self-serving, authoritarian drinkers of Lucifer’s jism. But rather than get annoyed, we tell a few ironic jokes. We're well aware that our working hours and conditions are causing health problems across the land, but we content ourselves with some blackly humorous grumbling. Because of our apathy, we're unconcerned at starting a war on terror that will last longer than the precious oil that is its root cause. And we dismiss anyone who points out that perhaps we might want to take better care of the only planet we have, or that our loss of civil liberties is a dark and terrible thing as someone who is just taking it all too seriously and should just relax because, hey, everyone knows the media are lying to us when they talk about global warming/terrorism/whatever.

And because of our apathy we're allowing people in positions of authority to abuse that trust with impunity. I don't wish to sound smugger than usual, but I'm no longer content to reassure myself that I'm still independent minded and clever enough to realise that we're fed daily doses of bullshit to keep up ignorant and compliant. I am, as the film says, as mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it any more.