NP: Delta Spirit, Delta Spirit

In the past week, I've read about Mike Daisey and Apple's factories in China, and about Kony 2012. There's also Rick Santorum making outrageous statements about euthanasia in the Netherlands, and pretty much the entire GOP presidential field inventing quotes and stances from the Obama administration on a daily basis.

All of these cases take liberties with the actual truth, sometimes embellishing to make a point, and sometimes just completely making things up to fit their worldview. Stephen Colbert effectively skewered Santorum on what the underlying issue is here -- Santorum's people said he was "speaking from the heart," which is appropriate, since Colbert launched his show on the exact concept, even if the anatomical origins were a little lower.

We live in an era of truthiness. If it feels true in your gut, or in your heart, it may be repeated as fact.

Particularly with the Mike Daisey case, I've seen it said that there's a growing trend of "punching up" your nonfiction elements or reporting to tell a better story. It's James Frey's fake memoir applied to journalism, which goes back to that old chestnut that the Tribune here in Chicago always falls back on -- the news is not newsworthy in its own right. Some of it is the confirmation bias of living in media bubbles. Some of it is just flat-out lying to get ahead.

But what's interesting is how it plays out in the current media landscape. As the atomic elements of newsgathering explode across blogs and "citizen journalists" and the major news organizations become aggregators, quality control goes out the window. Every blogger wants their story picked up, so they become salesmen of their content. With a lot of these folks being complete amateurs -- and this is where the Kony case may come in -- there might be plenty of cut corners and other behaviors that professionals know enough to avoid that can taint an otherwise compelling piece of work.

Couple that with the speed of viral video, and you literally have lies going halfway around the world before the truth can get its shoes on. This is why I'm still dubious of Twitter as an actual source of news. It's more like a source of raw material for news, and to drive that into a metaphor, consuming raw meat will make you sick unless you know how to prepare it. To date, the mainstream media still occasionally undercooks the meal and makes us sick.