The Crisis of Fake News Isn’t News At All
Technological Change, Skepticism of Authority, and Relentless Politicization Have Always Undermined the Power of Facts
To be human is to have cognitive bias. And these human biases—and the institutions that benefit from promoting these biases—have fueled the current epidemic of fake news and the rejection of scientific data, said panelists at a Zócalo/Getty event titled “Did Truth Ever Matter?”
The three panelists—New York Times film critic A.O. Scott, Boston University philosopher Lee McIntyre, and RAND Corporation political scientist Jennifer Kavanagh—confronted the evening’s topic from perspectives ranging from the artistic to the scientific. Sandy Banks, former columnist for the Los Angeles Times, moderated the discussion before a full house at …