It's a Wiki world - Pt. 1

An article in the current Atlantic looks at the Sotomayor nomination news cycle in terms of demonstrating how "news" content is coming largely from political ideologues who are effective at skimming all those feeds out there in order to isolate the most incendiary moments. The author, Mark Bowden, calls this "post journalism."

The article then repeats the meme that serious journalism -- the pursuit of a story that is focused on understanding context and background and worrying "truth" out of a mess of facts -- is dying, if not dead. As the profession of journalism becomes smaller and smaller, the time spent on news programming is more often filled by uncritical commentary on little splinters of reality. The point is not to find the truth: "No, not the truth: victory, because winning is way more important than being right." And the Internet has a lot to answer for in promoting this type of post-journalism reporting.

That may explain a lot about our current political debate and the tenor of our news media, but just how long has journalism been around in any form? From its beginnings in the 17th and 18th centuries, journalism flourished as a tool of different power groups. Slanted, vitriolic, aggrieved -- the truth had little to do with it. We have been fortunate enough over the last 100 years or so to have, somehow, been blessed with an enlightened practice of journalism that did make, at least some of the time in some places, an effort to find the truth. We can bemoan its passing, but why should we expect anything different, people being what they are?

Which brings me to Wikipedia. The idea of a user-generated encyclopedia struck fear into the hearts of those who believe in experts and objective truth. While I accept that experts are important, there are a lot of "amateur" experts out there who, taken collectively, have a lot to add to our understanding of factual reality. The stories of bogus articles and slanders got a lot of attention, but a recent study showed that Wikipedia is about as accurate as the Encyclopedia Britannica. In other words, even the experts don't get everything right.

The real question concerns how we know whether something is a fact or ... something else. That comes down, I think, to trust. My own rule of thumb is  simple: In matters of truth, trust no one." My second rule of thumb, a corollary if you will, is: "Trust everyone -- to get it wrong."

Every story is incomplete, slanted, infected with an incomplete understanding of which facts count, which ones don't. But all those stories might help you (me) understand what the larger truth is. And as you pay attention to who tells you what, you might be able to trust some people a bit more than others. Which does not relieve you of the obligation to test and verify. And to keep track of those who just don't seem to get anything right about the facts.

Wikipedia is a fantastic tool, but you shouldn't rely on it as your only source, any more than you should rely on the Encyclopedia Britannia as your only source. Wikipedia is here to stay, and it should be. The power of the decentralized and distributed learning, I think, opens the door to views of reality with a less restricted point of view. And I believe that where we are right now with blogger journalism is just an early phase of this development towards a more subtle, varied and variegated understanding or factual truth.

As more of us learn how to participate in the Wiki world -- sharing our knowledge with others in a cooperative and skeptical conversation about our world -- I have great hope that we can all learn important lessons. Especially about trust.
But then, perhaps I'm a little too trusting.