The goal of modern disinformation campaigns is not necessarily to turn audiences into true believers but rather to turn them into cynics, to persuade them that you can’t trust anything said by any institution, whether media or science or government.

In this world view, there is no such thing as objective truth, everyone is biased or otherwise untrustworthy, so the conclusion is that you need a strong man—a Vladimir Putin or Donald Trump, say—to lead you through.

Today’s guest has an antidote to this dysfunctional belief. He’s Jonathan Rauch, a senior fellow at Brookings Institution, a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of A Powerful Book called the Constitution of Knowledge. 

Rauch says there is objective truth, although he’d call it objective knowledge. What matters is not the claim itself, but how the claim was vetted. Reality is a collaboration of people who may disagree on everything else but agree on the rules of evidence, on the process of argumentation, and it’s that process that eventually yields what is factual. 

Do listen. The conversation is bracing and really clarifying. 

Note: The conversation took place in my class on truth, disinformation and the media at the University of Chicago’s Graham School on Monday, September 9th. 

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Alliance for Trust in Media
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