Bullshit. The world was never made of saints, but there were real institutional checks and balances (asking the accused for comment, publishing retractions, institutional fact-checkers next to editorial staff) and a far greater cultural sense that truth was valuable and lies were shameful. These are easy to appreciate, warts and all, now that they are gone. They leave a big hole.
There was one good innovation in factuality to come out of the social media revolution, but it has drawn the ire of its owner and looks like it will be put down shortly.
One of my favorite quotes (slightly edited for brevity and and readability):
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It is a melancholy truth that a suppression of the press could not more completely deprive the nation of it’s benefits, than is done by it’s abandoned prostitution to falsehood. Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.
I really look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens, who, reading newspapers, live & die in the belief that they have known something of what has been passing in the world in their time: whereas the accounts they have read in newspapers are just as true a history of any other period of the world as of the present, except that the real names of the day are affixed to their fables.
General facts may indeed be collected from them, such as that Europe is now at war, that Bonaparte has been a successful warrior, that he has subjected a great portion of Europe to his will etc. But no details can be relied on. I will add that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false.
Thomas Jefferson - 1807
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That would have sounded rather hyperbolic about 30 years ago, perhaps even more recently. But now it sounds just about right. I think what many do not realize is that the past ~70-80 years in the developed world, or in other words the complete living memory of just about every person alive today in those regions, was atypical in just about every single way - including some effort towards the pursuit of objective truth. We're not entering some scary unknown place, we're simply returning to the status quo that existed throughout the breadth of human civilization.
This also makes reading the ancient philosophers somewhat literally unbelievably insightful. Plato oft sounds far closer to a proven prophet than a philosopher when you read his writings on, for instance, politics!
> That would have sounded rather hyperbolic about 30 years ago, perhaps even more recently. But now it sounds just about right. I think what many do not realize is that the past ~70-80 years in the developed world, or in other words the complete living memory of just about every person alive today in those regions, was atypical in just about every single way - including some effort towards the pursuit of objective truth.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
>> The Gell-Mann amnesia effect is similar to Erwin Knoll's law of media accuracy, which states: "Everything you read in the newspapers is absolutely true except for the rare story of which you happen to have firsthand knowledge."[3]
That cite says it's from 1982.
So no, the news of 40+ years ago wasn't particularly accurate.
There was one good innovation in factuality to come out of the social media revolution, but it has drawn the ire of its owner and looks like it will be put down shortly.
Where we're headed, we won't need facts.