We certainly live in times when facts are treated differently in public debate, but it is worth pinning down what has changed and what hasn’t. There is nothing new in politicians deliberately making inaccurate claims to suit their agendas; that is as old as politics itself. What feels different today is the way they respond when their claims are refuted.
“What has changed in recent years is that some politicians in democratic countries have shed the fear of being caught in lies.”
In the past, public figures tended to be uncomfortable when it was shown they had said something untrue, because public opinion frowned on demonstrable falsehood. Instead, they often relied on half-truths and equivocation – conveying the impression they wanted without explicitly stating falsehoods. The outright lie was associated with dictatorships, where politicians had no fear of public refutation.
What has changed in recent years is that some politicians in democratic countries have shed the fear of being caught in lies. They are prepared knowingly to assert a falsehood and, when rebuttal follows, to respond either by denigrating the source of the rebuttal or by brazenly doubling up on the falsehood. Thus Michael Gove was prepared to say, during the Brexit campaign, that the UK had had enough of experts, while Donald Trump dismisses press rebuttals of his claims as the work of the dishonest liberal media and U.S. mainstream journalism is currently debating.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/8QVqwNLJb7s?wmode=opaque
For this change to have occurred it was not enough that politicians became more aggressive. The public changed. While most people probably still dislike demonstrable falsehood, there is greater uncertainty about who is qualified to demonstrate it. Over a long period, and accelerating since the crash of 2008, trust in institutions, including the media, has declined. Many people feel hostility towards politics and towards social structures which they believe have served them poorly. Thus, the politician who lies brazenly today knows that many voters do not trust the experts and the mainstream media whose responsibility it is to challenge the lie. At the very least there will be doubt and confusion, which often seems to be enough, especially if another big lie follows in short order.
“For this change to have occurred it was not enough that politicians became more aggressive. The public changed.”
Changes in communications helped make this possible. The ‘filter bubble’ effect means that the increasing number of people who receive news online, and particularly through social media, may see only the lie and the dismissal of any rebuttal, or alternatively they may see only the rebuttal. Many people therefore never even glimpse the whole picture, or see it summarised. This effect is exacerbated in the UK, where the extreme partisanship of the corporate press (overwhelmingly pro-Conservative and pro-Brexit, for example) has led to very weak public fact-checking of claims by the politicians these papers support.