Objectivity is overrated. We need media that take sides and call leaders to account. And we all need to spend less time online
If I ruled the world, my first goal would be to make it easier to cut through to the facts. At the moment, we are all drowning in spin, smokescreens and lies. Those who perpetrated the two biggest policy disasters of the past ten years—the Iraq war and the financial crisis—could not have pulled their work off without a lack of transparency. So greater transparency would be at the top of my agenda.
Take WikiLeaks. Too much of the coverage has been “meta”—focusing on questions about whether the leaks were justified—while too little has dealt with what has actually been revealed. While the leaks didn’t contain a bombshell revelation, they delivered a consistent drip, drip of details that belie the Obama administration’s public statements.
For example, in December, during the same week Obama made a surprise visit to the troops in Afghanistan and spoke of how we are “succeeding,” “making important progress” and are bound to “prevail,” the WikiLeaks cables revealed a very different private assessment: of wholesale political corruption in Afghanistan, and, in the words of US ambassador Karl Eikenberry, of President Hamid Karzai’s “inability to grasp the most rudimentary principles of state-building.”
The irony here is that, during his run for the White House, Obama brilliantly harnessed the power of the internet to rally support, and waxed lyrical about using technology to foster greater transparency. “We have to use technology to open up our democracy. It’s no coincidence that one of the most secretive administrations in our history [George W Bush’s] has favoured special interest and pursued policy that could not stand up to the sunlight,” he said back in 2007. “Information maintained by the federal government is a national asset,” he added soon after he became president.
Cut to a few years later, when many of his own policies do not “stand up to the sunlight” and his administration is not so keen on the people having a chance to access this “national asset.” Making government accountable is now described by outgoing White House spokesman Robert Gibbs as “reckless and dangerous action.” What WikiLeaks reveals is how smart, good-faith diplomats and foreign service personnel have been trying to make the truth on the ground match up to the one the administration has proclaimed to the public. It’s like a foreign policy Ponzi scheme.
What can be done? The internet has already shown great promise in cutting through spin. YouTube, Twitter, email, and turbocharged search engines have made it easier to expose our leaders’ distortions. But if I were in charge, I’d go much further to protect the rights of disclosure and free speech on the internet, and challenge the press—particularly in America—to break its addiction to faux objectivity. Let’s face it: not every issue has two sides. Global warming is real. So is evolution. Sometimes the truth is on one side or the other—not to be found by splitting the difference.
My second decree as world ruler may seem to contradict what I’ve just said, but bear with me. I would order the creation of a high-tech tool that forces us to disengage from our 24/7 connectivity.
Why? “Knowledge has three degrees,” wrote the third-century philosopher Plotinus, “opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition.” Our always-on culture has contributed much to the first two kinds of knowledge—science and opinion—but has in many ways taken us further away from our inner resources of wisdom.
We need to pull the plug on our hyper-connectivity; to disconnect from all our devices in order to reconnect with ourselves. Which is why, as ruler, I would oversee the creation of a killer app that gauges the state of your mind, body, and spirit and suggests the steps you need to take to realign yourself. Think of it as an internal GPS, showing you the best, most direct route to your own wisdom and creativity.
We live in a time of high-tech miracles—and I see more explosive wonders just ahead. But, as world ruler, I’d strive to direct all that combustible creativity towards servicing our need for more truth, more transparency, and more wisdom. And getting eight hours sleep per night would be given my World Ruler Seal of Approval.
David Llewellyn Foster
Thank you Arianna for “cutting to the facts” – this is really a very wise article. In a recent comment on the feature “Prospects for 2011″ by Bronwen Maddox (Issue 178,) I somewhat facetiously suggested we adopt a hierarchy of “Universal Core Values” based on the empirical fact of ecological renewal through volcanic upheaval. Despite the tragic irony of this planetary trope, upon reflection I believe this should be read as far more than just a pun. It seems to me as (our awareness of) the scale of world events approaches catastrophic proportions, that accountable “transparency” coupled with an urgent sense of shared pragmatic values must be the essential components of any realistic planetary outlook. The task is to identify those first principles that unite our cultural and environmental differences. Hence the idea that our core values may indeed be literally volcanic. Surely we can agree on certain commonalities, like our shared marine environment, the atmosphere, the ecological scale of urban footprints, or the empirical evidence for damaging pollution? Here in Britain, given the tendency to defer to American dominance, there is perhaps less popular concern with the need for a broader global vision than in the US where “deep politics” is arguably now discussed in a more open way. Despite our shared susceptibility to US style celebrity PR & the spin-mechanics of the “Empire of Illusion” (Chris Hedges, Gore Vidal, Chalmers Johnson, Peter Dale Scott et al.) there is in Britain a nostalgic deference to authority that is still difficult to overcome. Transparency is absolutely essential, but its implications need to be discussed well and debated in the context of public policies about culture generally and education in particular – a debate that is assuming new significant proportions here. The art of government in a multi-media society is in great danger of becoming a simulacrum and parody of itself, yet while the instruments of communication may become less didactic, Internet-empowered anarchy is also a genuine concern. At present most advanced technology remains at the service of the military-industrial-corporate Behemoth. For people to think freely and function intelligently as a bio-diverse force for intelligent change, this predatory Collosus needs to be completely re-conceptualised as a planetary/environmental asset, not the iron-clad liability and ecological threat that it presently is – an uncontrollable self-directing automaton of mechanical doom. We have garrisoned ourselves in this bio-phobic cage labelled security, replete with the spectral demons of our own paranoid making. Transparency and accountability call the bluff and release us from this trap, but they require the creation of a new type of law, and vehicles of law empowered through precedent. This implies the need for a new hierarchy of planetary values informed by ecological fact, not reactionary fiction motivated by ideological agendas – a scale of values that will begin to offer us a realistic glimmer of civilised possibilities in an age of methodical confusion. This has been a long message, but perhaps not entirely without some merit. I sincerely thank you for your helpful and stimulating thoughts. DLF
Contessa Kopashki
‘…internal GPS, showing you the best, most direct route to your own wisdom and creativity’
Do we need another app or the willpower to press the off button? Gadgets are useful some of the time. What we need is to wean ourselves off the intravenous drip of data and information which our minds and bodies have become addicted too. Information is a bit like water: In moderation information it is extremely beneficial, in excess you drown.
There is plenty of creative potential online, when defined as the bringing together of disparate concepts and ideas to create something new. But new things are not inherently valuable, some are and others are not.
I think the article can be summarised quite succinctly:
- data secrecy is not possible in an age of global digital connectivity
- journalists need to focus on deeper issues and be more accountable
- creativity is about putting technology at the service of humanity not vice versa
- lack of sleep stifles creativity because our brains don’t have time to process all that data
moral: surf less, sleep more, be human
David Llewellyn Foster
I like your concise summary Contessa, that is eminently sensible, but I query the latter part of your second point: although I absolutely agree that journalists need to go deeper (i.e. not just acquire reams of “information” data to play Chinese whispers, but absorb the significant detail & elucidate the facts as forensically as possible – consider for example Al Jazeera’s handling of their current “Palestine Papers” disclosure, or the track record of the Covert-Action Quarterly – formerly C-A. Information Bulletin…however – it’s the instruments of government and particularly, the predatory interests and methods of the corporate “secret government” for whom transparency simply means naivete in the dog-eat-dog fraternities of power, that need to be called to account…through the agency and integrity of these courageous journalists and independent whistle-blowers. Would you not agree? Respectfully, David L F
Michael Rowan Scruples MBA
Every leader lives under the delusion of absolute power and no one likes to have their bubble burst, least of all those that have achieved their power through immoral and nefarious means. In this respect social media has been a great leveller connecting the common man with the great, the good and the evil. The cowboys might have got a head start and achieved so much by going for the low hanging fruit, but the indians are gathering pace and recognise the perils of pursuing easy money and treating entire nations like pawns in a massive game of chess.
Ramesh Raghuvanshi
Huffington`s wishful dream never came into practice.I think she did know the ABC of practical politics. In politics without show the hope to people, without manipulation the fact people donot believed to you.People always want illusion if you tell them truth they will through stone on you.