One of
the overarching questions of this campaign is how our nation's national
political press, not exactly known for in-depth explorations of actual national
issues, and certainly not known for their skills at reporting the actual facts
of those issues, as opposed to which politicians are making which claims on
which days about those issues, would react to it. This may be the first modern
campaign to be premised quite so explicitly on truthiness, the Colbertian notion that what
sounds true is an absolutely more valid political sentiment than what
actually is true; that, in turn, would seem
to render the entire point of the national press obsolete.
Why bother reporting
at all, if each person can simply make up their own reality at will, assert it
to be true, believe it to be true, and act upon it as if it were true? If the entire premise of
informed democracy be separated from reality and rendered into a contest of pure
propaganda, it seems a thin democracy indeed; if the point of the press is not
to prevent such an outcome, but assist it, then they are not much more than an
outlet for free-of-charge campaign advertisement.
The superlative example (at least
so far: God help us, I am certain there will be more) would be the entire
premise of the Republican National Convention: We
built that. That this soundbite is manufactured from a doctored quote is
not in dispute. The same doctored quote—a ragged, James O'Keefe style editing of
a presidential speech crafted explicitly to
mislead listeners into thinking something was said that was not actually
said—was played multiple times during the convention itself. It was known to be
false; the origins of the edits were known as well; the media had already
pointed out, albeit to little effect, that the quote was doctored; it was made
the central talking point of a national political convention anyway, and with
staff assertions that the campaign was not going to be "dictated to" by
fact-checkers, ergo, by the actual facts.
