Citizenship and Journalism

As a matter of some urgency, journalists need to set up their own new and effective peer review system to eliminate fake news.

Absurdist Surkovian misdirection and cynical sensationalism have always been with us, but lately they have threatened to overwhelm us, and are implicated in the subversion of democracy currently underway.

Because we are witnessing a worldwide Surkovian assault on democracy which is being accomplished by propaganda, misinformation, the framing of narratives in ways that deny the reader any reliable perspective, and the devaluation of fact by its constant immersion in falsehood. We are witnessing the overthrow of democracy by the democratisation of propaganda itself.

Why? As far as I can see there are two main reasons:

Why is this happening now? Technology has created ideal conditions for this Surkovian subversion of democracy. For example, the World Wide Web is the perfect Petrie dish for its swirling vortex of lies and absurdity to thrive. Our brains now communicate with each other without any intermediate encounter with reality to allow error detection and correction in the contents of their communications. News is becoming a psychotic collective hallucination more severe than the wildest prognostications of McLuhan. Meanwhile established investigative procedures have been overtaken by more rapid and lucrative, if less thorough and accurate, news products not subject to traditional bargaining.

Why is this happening at all? Technology again. The establishment is under severe stress as the technologies on which their wealth is based are rendered obsolete. This takes place on two fronts. On the supply side, the extraction of abundant cheap fossil fuels to deliver the energy needed to manufacture and distribute the largely useless products that inundate and bury us alive in our shared capitalist present is no longer sustainable. Climate change requires its rejection. Entire classes of energy asset are becoming stranded. 80% of recoverable oil reserves must remain under the ground if we are to have a hope of achieving our targets with respect to global warming.

Meanwhile, on the demand side, IT and renewable energy present alternatives that undermine all capitalist mechanisms for adding and expropriating value. The cost of reproduction of a digital property is virtually zero, and renewable energy is basically free.

Traditionally, the cost of manufacturing in general is reducible to the cost of the fuel, the cost of raw materials, and the cost of the infrastructure that facilitates their extraction and exploitation. But the cost of that infrastructure and those raw materials is ultimately reducible to the cost of the energy required to operate or extract them. Eventually all costs are reducible to fuel costs. And renewable energy fuel costs are zero. A digital economy fuelled by renewable energy exists in a condition of post-scarcity in which the very idea of being held hostage by capitalists, and paying the ransom that constitutes the value they expropriate and accumulate, is increasingly absurd.

Traditional concepts of wealth are doomed, but the wealthy will let the world burn to preserve them.

So when I said there were two reasons, they turn out to be the same reason - technology. Indeed, as with all world-historic processes, the only thing that ever really distinguishes us from our ancestors with the passage of time are the tools available to us for the indulgence of our impulses or the realisation of our dreams. Our desires remain fundamentally the same, even if technology changes the language with which we express them. The gods that were born at the back of the cave, the gods we raised and placed among the stars, are the same gods we affront with petulant denial or kneel before in obedience today.

So we should realise that what we are witnessing today, and what is being reported in our media, is not an anti-establishment backlash.

If it was genuinely an anti-establishment backlash, it would would be manifested as an authentic democratic grass-roots response to long-standing injustices, not the popular abdication of power to celebrity billionaires and corporate lobbyists currently underway.

And we would not see the utter contempt for evidence and rationality exhibited by those now embracing prejudice as if it was a legitimate political response to the deliberately chaotic discourse that has now replaced our electoral process. This is the opposite of democracy. It doesn't matter what the majority choose, if it is motivated by hate it is called bullying, not democracy.

No, we are witnessing reaction, not revolution.

Surkovian tactics are not new. They have always existed in one form or another to maintain existing power structures. They are the contradictions that keep us chasing our tails, the darkness at noon where we tolerate any crime because we believe history will absolve us. What we see now is a difference in degree, not kind, with respect to the influence of Surkovian tactics, due to the two factors I outlined above.

We are lost in a Gramscian interregnum and so behold the monsters that emerge from our unfettered imaginations to inhabit that wilderness without horizon.

And so we need now, more than ever, a reliable litmus of truth. We need a journalism that is up to the task of reporting what is happening. Because this is all happening much more rapidly than I suspect anyone ever expected!

We need a simple peer review process in which responsible and qualified members of the journalist community cross-check each other's articles. This will help restore clarity. New media have eroded the old safe-guards and a new decentralised and uberised approach consistent with global digital dissemination and consumption of news is needed.

The production of quality journalism will be slower and reduced in volume. However, its value will be enhanced, attracting an audience interested in rational interpretations of verified and corroborated evidence to inform their own opinions. This will then support the necessary revenue streams.

Existing models are in place that can be emulated. The progress of academic papers from arXiv pre-print to formal publication is one. The clear guidelines for wikis regarding NPoV and reverting frivolous edits is another. What is required is something syncretic and similar, that can be accelerated to fit within the news cycle. A form of agile and distributed sub-editing of all contributions by all contributors? Perhaps a system where you check three items for every one you produce and submit, and where you prove yourself by the extent to which you improve the work of others as much as the by the quality of your own first draft.

A virtual, online, clearing house of truth?

Fundamentally, there is such a thing as truth, however partial and incomplete our understanding of it may be. We have a duty of diligence and rigour to that truth, and to each other.