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5 6 December - January 2017
MEDIA
L
IKE ALL those possessed of genuine wisdom,
Plato taught in stories that touch the heart. His
famous ‘allegory of the cave’ from ‘The Repub
-
lic’, is a prime example of how the use of poetic
tropes lead to a discovery of the truth. There is
a cave in which a group of prisoners are chained facing
a wall. Behind the prisoners burns a fire which projects
their shadows onto the wall. Unable to turn around, they
confuse these images with reality. They linger in this
deluded state until one of their number escapes his
chains. He climbs the stairway to the mouth of the cave
and, in staring at the sun, is momentarily stunned.
Having known only a pale imitation of the sun in the false
light of the cave, he is blinded by the real light outside.
For the first time, he is able to distinguish appearance
from reality, an image from the genuine article, false-
hood from truth. Seeing reality is, for Plato, the goal for
all those intent on pursuing the good life.
Plato’s great insight was that we humans are naturally
tempted to take refuge in illusion and fantasy. We run
from reality by creating virtual worlds which enable us
to evade the responsibilities of the real. All addiction is,
in some way, an attempt to create such a world – an
attempt to use the virtual in an effort to suspend the
actual. Our world is, of course, still plagued by all the old
addictions, but never before has Plato’s analysis seemed
more apposite. For now, we live in
what I have termed in my recent
writings: ‘Cyberia’ – a virtual space
of images, appearances and shad
-
ows. It is as though, having briefly
glimpsed the sun, we have retreated
to the cave and to our chains. In
Cyberia, there is endless chatter but
little real communication. It is a
space in which subjective opinions
ceaselessly circulate, but where
objective knowledge is in short supply. In such a world,
it is as though the ancient distinctions between appear
-
ance and reality, truth and opinion, simply do not exist.
The consequences of this are far from benign, espe
-
cially in those areas of human life which aim at truth and
excellence. In education, students rarely consult the
original source, opting instead for recycled ‘research’ on
the internet. Instead of staring at the sun, they google
the shadows. In confusing this second-hand information
with truth, the result is very often a mishmash of opinion
masquerading as knowledge. In journalism, likewise,
there is always the temptation to avoid the hard road of
truth in favour of the easy option or the quick story.
Instead of permitting truth to guide the story, the story
takes risks with the truth. It is then that truth and knowl-
edge are sacrificed on the altar of mere expedience.
Today, we often air our stories publicly on radio, TV
and across the web. This has resulted in the collapse of
the ‘public-private’ distinction, a distinction that relied
upon some stories being kept to ourselves. Reality TV,
gossip columns, ‘kiss-and-tell’ tales – all of these have
the same effect of revealing those elements of people’s
stories that, in a previous age, would have been kept
secret. If anything, therefore, our culture has become
even more confessional, but also more prurient. It seems
that we no longer have any right to our secrets, what we
might call our personal or hidden stories.
Cyberia is, thus, an obsessively confessional culture
where there are absolutely no secrets or privacy, but also
Staring
at the Sun
What Type of News and Information
Society do we Need?
by Mark Dooley
Our culture has become
even more confessional,
but also more prurient.
It seems that we no
longer have any right to
our secrets
Truth
December - January 2017 5 7
one where the old established criteria for distin-
guishing between stories rooted in fact and
those rooted in fiction have completely col
-
lapsed. In our virtual culture, everything - no
matter how shocking - soon becomes a drama to
be viewed as we might a soap opera. Pain, death
and suffering are no longer occasions for empa-
thy, but are very often sensationalised for the
purposes of entertaining a passive public.
Our ‘tell-all’ confessional culture is based on
narratives that are self-indulgent, distorted, and
often the stuff of fantasy. As I see it, our job as
journalists is not to fan the flames of fantasy, but
to tell our stories rooted in truth and reality.
An inaccurate news item, a misquote, playing
loose with the facts – all lead to a distortion of
the story. Such distortions are not without moral
consequence, for if a person is the sum total of
his or her stories, then it follows that in playing
loose with facts we simultaneously play loose
with lives. If our stories demand research,
fact-checking, trust-making and truth-telling, it
is because we know – or at least we ought to
know – that what is at stake are people’s reputa-
tions, their life-stories. In the old literary culture
– the ‘culture of the Book’ - there was a sense
that all stories had to be underpinned by hard
work or labour – what the Greeks called techne,
meaning a production that took time, effort and
care. By contrast, in this age of immediate satis
-
faction and gratification, an age of rolling news
and rapid output, there is often little time for the
type of labour that ensures accuracy. The conse-
quence is that, very often, truth is compromised.
As such, people are also compromised because
in getting the story wrong, you get them wrong.
You re-create their lives by re-creating their
story.
Recently, for example, I was interviewed by a
journalist for a leading daily on a matter of public
interest. I spelled out, in very precise detail my
role in this story and carefully went through the
facts as they unfolded. However, when I opened
the paper the following morning, I found that
there was a major distortion, one which I had
specifically cautioned against. I immediately
wrote demanding to know why this person had
broken a promise made in good faith to a fellow
journalist. There was no plausible reason given
and it was only when I threatened legal action
that a correction was made in the paper. By then,
of course, the damage had been done. Moreover,
it was not as though the story would have been
compromised had the truth been told. It was
simply that someone felt it could be spiced up by
toying with the facts.
If this is a grave error, it is because, in our age
of opinion, the journalist ought to be an agent of
truth. We very often forget that journalists are
primarily authors – people who still rely on the
written or spoken word to tell a story. The pad
may have replaced the pen but the moral voca-
tion of the journalist remains constant. He or she
In the ‘culture of the
Book’ - there was a
sense that all stories had
to be underpinned by
hard work - techne
5 8 December - January 2017
has a duty to drive us from the shadows into the
sun and to rescue us from our cosy illusions by
forcing us to face reality. That is why, when illu
-
sion becomes all-pervasive, journalists become
indispensable to the moral health of society.
Their authorship assumes an authority which
elevates them well above the ‘chatter sphere’ of
Cyberia. This relationship between authorship
and authority is not popular in an age of equal-
ity, an age when the very notion of authority is
routinely dismissed as an elitist concept. Either
way, we shall always have need of those whose
authority is not assumed but earned by convey
-
ing the truth in a way that challenges the popular
consensus. These are the people we look to, and
rely on, to tell us what really happened. Their
authority is founded on the fact that they have
earned our trust.
The moral vocation of a journalist is, in my
view, that he or she tells a story that is rooted in
truth and based on solid evidence. There is, of
course, a big distinction between knowledge and
information – the latter being the raw dissemi-
nation of factual data. Knowledge, on the other
hand, is predicated on a deep understanding of
our world and the human condition. It cuts
through images, illusions and appearance in
order to reach the heart of the matter. To possess
knowledge is, thus, to have authority over your
subject, to understand things objectively. If
Cyberia is a sphere dominated by subjective
opinion, journalism ought to be a domain in
which people write objectively, truthfully and
authoritatively. That is because journalism is the
last redoubt of the written word in a world which
has withdrawn behind the screen.
An age without imagination hungers for imme-
diate and limitless stimulation. Having made the
transition from book to screen, we are no longer
satisfied with stories that leave something
unsaid or unseen. We crave every lurid detail,
and those stories that fail to reveal their darkest
secrets run the risk of falling stillborn from the
press.
Again, however, we must always remember
that stories – all stories – are what constitute
life, and upon those stories rest, not only repu-
tations, but very often a person’s survival. That
is why trust and truth are so important and the
basic moral lamps which should guide our way.
All of this has convinced me that the best train
-
ing ground for journalists is amid the flickering
embers of our dying culture. We need to see our
-
selves, in the first instance, as authors – writers
whose goal is to use language in the service of
truth. We need to use our pens and our pads in
the service of something greater than ourselves.
It is not easy to stare at the sun. It is not easy to
follow a story wherever the facts and details may
lead. An anecdote from my own experience high-
lights the point.
Having taken temporary refuge from academia
at the Sunday Independent in 2003, I started
writing on the issue of
Islam in Ireland. I had
been approached by
some concerned Mus-
lims about the
radicalisation of their
community. The
group was led by the
son of Saddam Hus-
sein’s former physician,
a woman who had been
in the dictator’s favour until
she openly voiced moral con-
cerns regarding the brutality of
his regime. His response was to have
her summarily shot. Her husband fled to Leba
-
non, but her son was apprehended and
imprisoned in Abu Ghraib prison. While there,
he was subject to ritual torture and humiliation,
resulting in one side of his face being hacked
open with a broken bottle. His injuries were so
extensive that he required facial reconstruction.
It was this courageous man - a doctor in exile -
who revealed to me the full horror of Hussein’s
tyranny and the equally disturbing nature of rad-
ical Islam in Ireland.
When, thanks to this brave and good soul, I
revealed that the Irish Muslim community was
being terrorised from within by individuals who
were travelling to Syria on Irish passports in
order to commit atrocities in Iraq, and that the
spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Yusuf al Qaradawi – a man banned from entering
the United States and known as the ‘Sheikh of
Death’ - was chairing meetings of the ‘European
Council of Fatwa and Research’ in Dublin, I was
threatened for my troubles. This resulted in
police surveillance of my home and phones over
the course of many months.
The truth had led me to a dark place, some
-
where I was not eager to go. However, as
someone trained in philosophy and theology, I
had some understanding of the nature of Islam,
and my writings on its spiritual values and way
of life were appreciated by most Muslims who
took the time to read them. Hence, the charge of
‘Islamophobia’ could not so easily be levelled by
those who see any criticism of Islam as a cover
for prejudice and racism. The big problem is that
those who have subse-
quently written about
the subject possess
little or no insight
into the theology of
Islam. This means
that they can often
sound ill-informed
or even bigoted. In
other words, even if
the truth leads you to
places you would rather
avoid, a comprehensive
understanding of the details of
your subject will enable you to make
vital distinctions. In my case, the distinction
between Islam and Islamism made all the differ-
ence and, in drawing it, I earned the trust of the
silent majority of Irish Muslims. In the absence
of a literary culture rooted in philosophy, art,
religion and politics, those distinctions, and the
deeper understanding they promote, are rou-
tinely ignored.
Truth demands that we pay attention to detail
and to language, but it also requires a heavy
dose of moral courage. Practically speaking, this
means abandoning the thick fog of ideology – or
what American theologian Mark C Taylor calls
‘imagology’ – for the pure light of truth. The pris-
oners in Plato’s cave had become slaves to ‘a
dictatorship of relativism’. Their vision had
become so restricted that they could only see
things from one very partial and parochial per-
spective. Plato called this doxa (opinion) in
contrast to epistêmê (knowledge). The tyranny
of doxa is, of course, operative all across Cybe
-
ria, but it should not, I believe, be a feature of
the mainstream media. If we are to serve as
agents of truth, we must break free of our ideo-
logical chains or from the imagology by which
we often become constrained. This does not
require abandoning our core convictions, but it
does mean challenging the cosy consensus that
often surrounds them – especially when truth is
at stake. That is because our profession is not a
means of ‘manufacturing consent’. Neither is it
there to determine the political direction of a
country solely on the basis of ideological agen-
das backed up by ‘opinion polls’ – something
which, as we have witnessed in recent elections
and referenda, is lamentably becoming estab-
lished practice. If anything, our purpose is to act
as agents of integrity, even when doing so con-
flicts with our innate ideological instincts.
Mark Dooley is a philosopher, broadcaster and
columnist with the Irish Daily Mail www.
drmarkdooley.com.
This is an edited version of a paper he gave to
the recent Cleraun conference on investigative
journalism in the digital age, co-sponsored by
Village.
In our age of opinion, the
journalist ought to be an
agent of truth. We very often
forget that journalists are
primarily authors.
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