All the News That's (Un)Fit

摘要

As this column is being written, in mid-November 2016, the U.S. presidential election is over, but the outrage, finger-pointing, soul-searching, etc., is still ramping up. I (really, really) don't want to get political here, but it's important to point out that although there was copious, organized fact-checking at every stage of this election cycle, it didn't seem to matter. Michael Rich, CEO of the RAND Corp., says, "This is to me really a dangerous and unusual time in history. Because Americans not only feel entitled to their opinions-and rightly so-but many of them, a growing number of them, frankly, across the political spectrum also feel entitled to cherry pick facts to support their opinion, or even commission up new 'facts' if necessary. ... When everyone has their own facts, then nobody really has any facts at all" (rand.org/blog/2016/11/ truth-decay-makes-facts-subject ive-and-polarization.html).