The Brian Williams story continues to fascinate me, and not just because of what it tells us about our politics, ideological craziness, public communications and the “nature of truth” (whatever the fuck THAT means). How the human mind and perception work and how the shared historical narrative is molded by psychological, social and other forces is something I spend a lot of thought on, and (as you no doubt know by now!) write about a great deal. The nature of reality is negotiable; not because there is no objective reality, but because we can only know our subjective version of it.

Paul Adams has articulated some very astute comments on this issue, which I beg you consider, his short essay, written by someone in the biz, is worth careful study.

Journalists share the general postmodern lack of confidence in their grasp on the world. And so, aspirations to objectivity and “the best available approximation of the truth” have given way to lower-order ideals such as balance and accuracy.

Perhaps this explains why so much modern journalism–and historical/social thought–is so saturated with “equivalency” and yet still fails to make any point at all.

http://www.ipolitics.ca/2015/02/10/brian-williams-and-the-trouble-with-storytelling/

I stumbled on Mr Adams’ essay while Googling another, totally different ‘Paul Adams’ concerning an entirely different topic. It just goes to show you how what we know about the nature of reality is influenced, perhaps even molded, not just by our perspective of events, but by blind chance.

As for myself being overly seduced by “the general postmodern lack of confidence in their grasp on the world”, I cheerfully plead guilty. You’re free to disagree with me, but of course, that’s just your opinion.

Read the essay. Its worth the 5 minutes it will take you to do so.