A BBC article I was recently sent a link to set others to whom it was sent wondering how to distinguish the true from the false. Apparently-faked pictures of flood damage in Germany were cited as an example of unequivocal disinformation (thank you, Jill).
It seems to me that what is "real", if we can't verify it personally, is entirely determined by whom we accept as our authority, and that this choice of authorities is something over which we have very limited control. We are guided, shaped, into it by our society. But limited though our choice is, it is mostly reinforced by acceptable results, and to that degree we collectively trust it, and thus the creaking cart of civilisation lurches forward. If the RT broadcasts something we recognise it as an outside source and take it with a pinch of salt. If the BBC broadcasts it, we accept it far more readily. The BBC is more "us".
If our authorities were to lie to us over something only they control, it again seems to me that we'd have no way to tell, other than by accepting as true what was being said by people who were not our authorities, but rather outsiders to the system. This would be an act of betrayal of our group, and would meet with concerted opposition. What I am suggesting here may perhaps also be felt slightly as such an act of betrayal. I'm rather challenging received wisdom, and I'm not an authoritative source, i.e. one we would go to for this kind of insight, if that's even what it is. But look at this statement in the BBC article linked at the top -
"...just because someone died after having a vaccine doesn't mean they died because of the vaccine. They could have been killed in a car accident."
This becomes, with a single substitution of the word "vaccine" with the word "Covid 19", exactly what has been said countless times by mainstream deniers, re. the counting of C-19 deaths. If this irony in the BBC article is deliberate it again assumes automatic agreement with the BBC: that if it's Covid deaths then obviously car accidents won't be counted, so the objecting source must be an untrustworthy outsider, the allegation fictitious, and the high death count true. On the other hand If it's vaccine deaths being counted then we can legitimately surmise, in reverse, that the alleged car accidents are being falsely used to inflate our own, trusted authority's vaccine death figures.
On this view "fake news" and "disinformation" can be accurately defined as "Anything that contradicts my authority's assertions". Stated bluntly, a fact is whatever our authorities say it is. Jacinda Ardern, PM of NZ, very recently exhorted her public to listen to nobody in regard to C-19 except her government. You can either endorse this as assuredly from a trustworthy source, uncritically follow all NZ government C-19 directives, and humbly accept any penalties if you fail to do so, or you can see it as a rather Orwellian invitation to surrender free thought and speech. The distinction would be clearer had the exhortation been made by the less reputable leader of a less reputable government, and we might perhaps thereby be tempted to see it as an appeal to believe objective truth (the pronouncements of the NZ government) and ignore objective falsehood (any contradiction of them). This, as I see it, would be an error, but an exceedingly common one. The guide to the truth of whatever we can't personally verify is our personal allegiance to the authority that pronounces on it. There is no such thing as objective truth. Facts are shared, social agreements - conceptual conventions - based on collective trust in an accepted authority. Trust - which is essentially an act of faith - underlies truth.
Pablo
