Since the election Terrain.org is hosting a “Letter to America” series from writers coming to terms with the present political moment. Here is my contribution.
Dear America,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” our Declaration of Independence announces—words so bold they clearly belong to a different time than our own. For we could never be so confident about truth; to us it does not appear self-evident. Increasingly, we have trouble seeing it at all.
In our post-truth era, facts grow fuzzy and rumor replaces substance. The strongest journalistic standard has to do not with truth or even fairness but with appearance only: Has equal time been devoted to each side?
False equivalences are simply false. . . . Read more at Terrain.org