Open Journalism: Principles and Practices/Truth

Current Interpretation of Truth in Journalism
Traditional journalism understands a vital part of its role as being oriented towards publishing the truth, or “the world as it is.” (American Journalism, p 12).

Breakdowns with Current Interpretation
But this notion of the “world as it is” has been problematic since the beginning of journalism. Human beings are concernful individuals, whose worlds are shaped out of the concerns, moods, and narratives that they are. To approach human beings differently, or better to say “human realities”, as objective individuals, produces confusion, conflict, and blindness. ...

Emerging Articulation
Our claim is that truth exists differently for particular historic communities. Here, we claim that there are multiple dimensions of truth.

Proof
In mathematics and logic, truth shows up in the following style of question: “Is this statement made in this mathematical universe true or not?” Truth here is a claim on the validation of a particular logical statement made in a well-defined context. Mathematicians can determine whether a statement is true from logical rules, axioms, and previously verified mathematical results. A consequence of this contextualized and rigorous approach to truth is that the number and quality of statements that mathematicians claim to be true are significantly restricted. We call this form of truth, proof.

Scientific Knowledge
In science, truth shows up as a claim on the explanatory power of a particular theory – what we call scientific knowledge (structures of scientific explanations). [compare with journalistic explanations --> fairness --> publish a way to evaluate journalistic narrations] For example, in biology it is “true” that many diseases, such as rabies and strep throat, are caused by microorganisms like bacteria and viruses. Before scientists like Pasteur and the development of the “germ theory of disease,” individuals believed that diseases were spontaneously generated. However, as the germ theory of disease began to explain more and more phenomena in the labs and the natural world, it became dominant and the “truth.” [story misses key points]

Scientific knowledge changes as the scientific community agrees that a theory better explains phenomena in the domains of physics, chemistry, and biology. A popular example for explaining “cosmic” phenomenon is how Einstein's theory of relativity displaced Newton's theory of motion in the early 1900s. When Einstein first introduced his theory, most physicists were widely skeptical of it. However, in ___, physicists measured a bending of the light of a star, something Einstein's theory predicted (verify/build story). Truth in science is not a permanence but is a historical

Authenticity
Claim on what belongs authentically to a particular individual or community

Reality
Another form of truth is what we call reality, a consensual articulation of a shared world. A reality is different for particular historical communities – the reality of an American in a rural town is different than that of a child in Darfur today or for a colonial American. ...

Credence
Credence is a claim on the explanatory power of a narrative. [tweak]

Assertion
An assertion is a verifiable, witnessable event for a particular community. When we use the word fact, we are often distinguishing assertions.


 * (“Assertion” arises from analytical philosopher, J.L. Austin's work in “How to Do Things With Words.” In this work, Austin distinguishes categories of performative verbs – verbs which not only describe an action but also perform that action, with a specific illocutionary force, producing a possible future for the speaker and listener.  Let's take the following example: “We assert that the car crash happened at 5:30 am on March 17, 2007.”  In this moment, we not only described an action of us asserting, but we asserted, allowing the listener, perhaps a reporter, to take specific action from it.  However, if we instead used a different illocutionary force, “We assume...” or “We guess...” a different future would show up for the journalist.  She might have to find other sources or ask more questions of us.  Different illocutionary forces show different levels of commitment the speaker has to her action.  J.L. Austin also distinguished the following forms of performative verbs: requests, offers, promises, assessments, and declarations.)

[Commit to provide evidence /Social witness /”true or false” /Standards – criteria for evidence /Risk & trust /Produce certainty and capacity for tight coordination ]

Disclosing
The distinguishing of truth as “what is happening in the world” is problematic. As we said before, to separate the “world” from the observer of that world is impossible. The world we “see” is based in the biological unity – with concerns, moods, and narratives – we are. As we “talk about the world,” we are disclosing the observer we are of the world, and are orienting ourselves and our observers to certain future possibilities. We claim this dimension of the truth is the most relevant for journalists as the primary truth they are oriented to producing. Disclosing is the articulation of the consequences – or horizon of possibilities – a particular event has on a set of relevant dominant collectives and marginal emerging collectives.

Relevant Collectives and Marginal Emerging Collectives
[By distinguishing disclosing, we have produced the distinction of relevant collectives and marginal emerging collectives. Now have a new problem about what are the relevant audiences, which is an assessment. So relevant audiences are directly affected by the events (an assessment), indirectly affected people from local community, marginal perspectiveson the events (what does the punk/expert/minority think about the city, etc.) (currently bring expert not as marginal speaker but as objective opinion on matter) (what are standards for determining what is each style of collective?)]

[You will be a good reporter if you are able to bring that whole map of conversations and to articulate the important opportunities and tensions in that.]

[Building practices (networks, conversations) to unsettle your assessments on which are relevant communities?]