God Bashes Fake News

“You shall not utter a false report.” (Exodus 23:1) Fake news was as much of a threat in the low-tech world of the Late Bronze Age as it is in our high-tech media world of today. When I first wrote on this topic seven years ago (https://pres-outlook.org/2012/02/the-right-to-know-the-truth/), the term “fake news” hadn’t even been coined yet. And a huge number of potential examples had yet to happen.

Take the infamous case of Ferguson, Missouri’s Michael Brown. If the narrative “Hands up, don’t shoot” was false (not even attorney general Eric Holder was able to substantiate it), that falsehood produces evil results, whether the narrative is believed (resulting in an unjust conviction and punishment) or not believed (causing the public to distrust real reports of police brutality). That narrative also caused a lot of African-American businesses to be burned down.

Truth matters, immensely. Issues of truth, truth that is often in dispute, have a huge impact on our lives.

Truth and justice are inseparably linked. We cannot have justice, in the courtroom or anywhere else, unless we can establish what the truth is in any given situation. And we live in an age where people think that truth is whatever is “true for me,” or that truth is simply a product of whoever holds the shotgun or whoever can shout the loudest, lobby the longest, or manufacture the most sympathy.  Without truth, forget about justice – power is the only game in town.

Truth matters, immensely!  People deserve truthful information about matters that critically affect their lives, like what’s in the food they eat and the water they drink, or how’s their money being handled by Social Security or the Federal Reserve, or who exactly are these people we elect to office. And in many of such cases, who is in the position to know the facts? We talk about how big is the federal debt, but we’re just taking somebody’s word for it. (I haven’t personally counted the money!)  We even debate the truth about the health care law, which is right there on the Internet, but it’s so big, how many people have actually read it?

Until lately, society has been relying heavily on science to nail down truth for us. What’s scary is that now we’re hearing more and more reports of scientists faking their data. Decisions with huge price tags hang on data that is wide open to manipulation. Whatever the truth may be where science itself is in dispute, truth matters!

What does God say about the connection between truth and justice? In the Book of the Covenant, God says: Don’t use falsehood as a tool of economic violence (Exodus 23:1-2, which refers to “a witness that does violence”). Don’t let the crowd fool you into thinking that truth and justice can be calculated by the numbers (Exodus 23:2, “Do not follow a multitude to do evil”). Don’t discriminate, either in favor of or against the poor (Exodus 23:3, 6). And don’t take gifts of any kind that blind you to issues of truth and justice (Exodus 23:8).

Justice should not be based on class warfare of either kind. Because the poor could rarely if ever leverage enough clout to obtain justice in the Biblical world, it was the duty of the righteous to come to their defense. Yet the Law of Moses also warns against the opposite danger. Discrimination against the poor can end up being replaced by reverse discrimination, which is what I call equal injustice under law.

I believe our news media have been guilty of both malpractice and conflict of interest by obstructing the public’s right to know. When Donald Trump charged that joyful celebrations were held on 9/11, reports of such incidents were so few that it was claimed that they never happened. But all that may mean is that here is one more case where media chose to look the other way and bury a news story and refuse to cover it, as if it were not news. Then, years later, no evidence is to be found!

One of the most chilling lines in Orwell’s novel 1984 is the line, “If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say of this or that event, IT NEVER HAPPENED [emphasis original], that surely was more terrifying that mere torture and death.”

The dangers of a one-party press are as bad as the dangers of one-party rule. Where’s the accountability? And what happens to truth in such a scenario? Justice depends on an informed electorate. How else are we supposed to know whom we are electing, or to know good policy from bad?

Just as scary to me is the ability of Google, Facebook, and other media giants to decide what is fake news and what is not, and therefore to decide for me what I have a right to know, cutting off my access to facts that they deny or disagree with.

How do we figure out which sources of information to trust in today’s world? I watch over time to see: who gives me only half the story? Who has to backtrack the least when all the facts come out? Who ends up having to admit more of what the other side was saying all along?

I believe you could cut the talk radio audience by half or more, if you could show them a convincing alternative where they feel satisfied that they are getting the whole story on the news, with less surprises that lead us to say, “Nobody told me that – that throws a completely different light on the subject!”

Why do we get mad when we hear a story reported on a news site, and then find out that it’s fake? Is it just because we hate getting snookered? Or is it because the truth or falsehood of that story makes a difference? I propose that the same principle applies to Biblical narrative. With rare exceptions such as the parables that Jesus told, or Jotham’s parable of the trees seeking a king (Judges 9:7-15), the Bible’s narratives lose their punch if they are fake news, if they are nothing more than well-crafted fiction. (See my three-part article on this subject, starting with part one: http://pres-outlook.org/2009/07/historicity-does-it-matter/.)

Truth matters, immensely! It makes a huge difference in our lives, whether the issues are threats to our health, threats to our money, threats to justice for us all, threats to our environment, or threats to our nation’s survival. Truth is the only way we can establish justice, the only way we can right the wrongs in this world. And God is the only one who knows the whole story. Only God knows the score. Only God always knows whose case is just.

May God help us to recognize the truth that we need to know to survive in this world. May God help us to put honest truth into practice, and to ruthlessly root out lies, in order to make this a more just world.