Com 310:  Foundations and Ethics

The Issue of Truth

Dr. Janet McMullen

Copyright, 2009

Updated:02/23/2009

Reading Assignment: Chapter 4 in Day; also note reading assignments linked throughout the lecture.  All are considered required unless otherwise indicated. Check your calendar for Mass Media readings.

Q: Why is truth important?

How is deception associated with truth? [Discuss]

Def: DECEPTION: The communication of messages intended to mislead others, to make them believe what we ourselves do not believe."

This is a very important concept in the area of communications ethics.

Over the centuries human beings have had a serious commitment to truth.

Truth is an absolute defense in our legal system.

Cheating is essentially lying; not telling the truth.

Your author asks the question, "...if the truth is so sacred, why is honesty so often the first thing to be compromised when it is in our self-interest to do so?" [Discuss]

It may be part of our nature. Dishonesty may be as much a part of us as telling the truth. Bible seems to indicate as much from the Genesis story forward.  Anyone who has raised a child knows you don't have to teach a 2 year old to say "I didn't do it..."

But does our culture say that truth is always GOOD? [Discuss]

Day says that modern philosophers have ignored truth-telling in their discussion of ethics and modern philosophy. Why do YOU think that's true?

Truth has been devalued; situational relativism is the dominant philosophy.

Day summarizes by saying that telling the truth never needs any moral justification; lying and deception ALWAYS do.

 The existence of a norm of truth-telling is a MORAL condition of language!

Discuss: What does that mean? What are the ramifications?  (Be sure you can discuss this in an essay....) 

Now the question for you is, "Do YOU believe in absolute truth?"   If you don't, is that a problem?  

A 2002 survey conducted by the Barna Group revealed some interesting results:

In response to the questions, "Is truth always relative to the person and their situation?"  responses were:

(The Barna Group, "Americans Are Most Likely to Base Truth on Feelings." 2/12/2002 at http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=BarnaUpdate&BarnaUpdateID=106  Recent research supports these findings.  For more information, see http://www.barna.org )

But if truth is a condition of language, the basis of law and social stability, what does that mean for our society?

How do we compromise truth in our society?

Our culture has developed a number of creative ways to compromise the truth or to LIE:

We can all find examples of this type of behavior in our own lives and in the lives of the politicians, advertisers, and others we see in media and in real life. ALL of these are methods used to avoid truthfulness and fabricate an Untruthful perception or LIE.

 Why is truth so important to media practitioners?

"So many of our waking hours are spent absorbing media, we have the right to expect that they are telling us the truth." Trust is essential in that relationship. Media should have the same integrity as the rest of society. (Day, p.71)

When truth is lacking, consequences are serious:

THREE CONCEPTS ARE BASIC for TRUTH IN JOURNALISM

1. ACCURACY: The story must be accurate. That means

This is the most basic requirement of journalism.

Problems: ATTRIBUTION.

When a reporter doesn't witness the event about which he is reporting, he must get the information from someone who did. That information must then be attributed to the its source and the source must be identified. Sometimes, time and pressure to get the story on, cause problems with attribution.

When President Reagan was shot in 1981, ABC reported that James Brady had been killed. He was, in fact, alive. The news team rushed to get the story on without thoroughly checking the story, and Frank Reynolds, chastised the reporters on camera.

Casualty figures in disaster situations are frequently inaccurate because of the difficulty getting good figures from people in authority.

Does accuracy insure that the truth has been given? [discuss]

A truthful story should promote understanding as well as being truthful.

Reporters are faced with clear time and space limitations. There is no way you can be assure of comprehensive understanding.

The journalist should then have has a goal to provide an account which is as complete as possible providing an understanding of facts and a context for them.

Decisions about what should be left out should be decided on the basis of

3. Story should be fair and balanced.

Common errors occur with

A good video to see in to illustrate these point is Television's Vietnam put together by Accuracy in Media. It takes specific news reports and compares them to the historical records of the case. The contrast can be striking. The video is available in the LRC, if you'd like to see it.   

Where does the "entertainment factor" enter this issue?

Edward R. Murrow and the news people of his time, believed that there should be a complete separation between news and entertainment. This was absolutely necessary for the credibility of new media, both at the programming level and the financial level. News was separated from programming departments, budgets and influence. Not so any more.

There are new journalistic trends which tend to blur the distinction between news and entertainment.

There were charges of the tabloidization of news in the coverage of the Clinton scandal.  See Witcover, Jules. "The Scandal: Where We Went Wrong" in CJR March/April 1998 at http://archives.cjr.org/year/98/2/witcover.asp  (Link no longer active.)

Technology is making it harder to recognize what truth is....

"Would you expect to sit at a ball game and watch a portable TV and see a "customized image" on your TV screen....A different billboard than the one in the park? or a different sponsor on the billboard? (Morris, 1997)  It's common practice now. 

One of the earliest cases of photo fakery to become really well known, involved the now in-famous 1989 TV GUIDE  cover which featured Oprah Winfrey.  It actually had Oprah's head on Anne Margaret's body!!! The deception was discovered when Anne Margaret's husband noticed his wife's ring on one of "Oprah's" fingers.  There was an uproar over the cover because it was not identified as a composite.   In fact, the first chapter of Dino Brugioni's book on photo fakery is titled, "Photo Fakery is Everywhere." ( p. 3)   While some major news organizations have policy that news photography may never be altered (AP, The New York Times and The Chicago Tribune, among others), some organizations have guidelines for limited manipulation, and some have no guidelines at all.  Stephen Isaacs, Acting Dean of the Columbia School of Journalism in 1994, told a gathering of the Associated Press," To distort reality is a journalistic sin." and a former picture editor for the National Geographic said that altering photos electronically is "like limited nuclear warfare.  There ain't none." (Brugioni, 1999, p. 5) 

We used to say that seeing was believing. ..... CAN you believe what you see?

We all are familiar with the "yellow line" which denotes the yardage required for a first down on televised NFL games.  The line isn't really there.....but it sure looks like it is.  What else really isn't there?  In many games now the bill boards around the ball park or even the designs on the playing field are changed to different advertising messages depending on to what market the game is being sent.  In other words, if you watch the game in Texas, you may be seeing a different billboard than the folks watching the game in Atlanta, and both of you may be seeing something different than the folks who are actually AT the ball field.  Do you see a problem?

Could you tell which soldiers were real and which were digitized in the movie Patriot?

This year (2001) the Supreme Court will hear Reno v. Free Speech Coalition  in which a group of artists and sex merchants challenge whether current laws against child pornography are constitutional.  At issue is virtual porn -- so real that they don't need to hurt real kids to make it.  (Parloff, 2001)

What happens when you put your truth in the hands of someone else who has the power to "spin" and "edit"?

The following examples provide some insight into how media can blur the truth......

Docudramas and films...

Reality Shows:  This new genre has achieved enormous popularity, but there have been concerns about the truthfulness...

Talk Shows:

Question: What responsibilities do you think film makers and television producers have when they are telling a story based on historical fact? Why?

USA Today recently ran an editorial on the highly acclaimed 2005 Spielberg film, Munich. 

Written by Michael Medved, a respected film critic, the piece points our numerous factual errors in the movie that change the ideology of the parties involved and misrepresents events portrayed in the film. 

Ben Stein wrote an interesting column about truth and the entertainment industry.  The article appeared after the 2006 Academy Award program.  Stein, Ben (3-6-06) ?Missed tribute" the American Spectator. at http://spectator.org/archives/2006/03/06/missed-tributes .  Stein always offers a thoughtful and interesting perspective.

Advertising:

During the 2009 Super Bowl, a Pepsi commercial aired which had appeared on Saturday Night Live the night before.  Pepsi had bought the time and paid the performers for their work in the commercial, but at the time it aired, it appeared to be another Saturday Night Live skit.  Most people didn't realize it was a commercial until it aired in the Super Bowl the following day...  What are the ethical issues involved here?  What are the truth issues?   The following link will give you some information about the commercials, but don't really address the truth/ethics questions.

In children's programming, there has to be some kind of separation between program and commercial content.  Do we adults need the same thing?  Has the need for new advertising methods and the prevalence of product placement blurred the need to recognize when someone is just trying to sell you something?  Does that matter?  Why?

On the same Super Bowl Sunday, Matt Lauer appeared in a cameo role in a movie promo.  What truth/ethics questions are involved here?

News coverage is a little tougher because more is at stake:

There are lots of issues when we discuss news and lack of truth...

What is the difference between "spin," "bias," and "staging?"   I

While not about news, an interesting point is made in an October, 2000, article in Brill's  which focuses on the 'revenge memoir' -- a memoir in which the writer is known for little else than being "close" to someone famous.  In many cases these people aren't happy with the famous person, and use the memoir to get back at them.  Some examples include books written by Bing Crosby's son Gary and Ronald Reagan's daughter Patti. How true are these books?  (Merkin, 2000)

What happens when the story is rushed or sensationalized for competitive purposes? 

Time and competitive pressures are big factors, and several recent articles provide good examples...

"Standards are the First Casualty" in AJR, March, 1998.(The ajr This story examines the coverage of the Lewinsky story and how it was dominated by rumor, innuendo and under-sourced stories.(Ricchiardi, 1998)(AJR links may not function since their site is being reorganized.)

What happens when information is omitted or withheld?

Richard Clurman writes in his book Beyond Malice ( p. 230-1), 

"    At times there are stories that journalists -- often mistakenly -- think can't or shouldn't be written.  Once in the late 60s, I was on an overnight patrol in Vietnam with a National Guard company of amiable, middle-class young soldiers from California.  As we moved toward the the shore of the China Sea through high grass, we were fired on.  Two of the Americans were badly wounded.   When the company came upon an ancient Vietnamese man on their flank, they attempted to question him through their Vietnamese interpreter who barely spoke kitchen English (true of most of the army's field interpreters).  They got nothing from their captive.  So while Time's correspondent David Greenway took pictures, and the company took a smoke break, the laughing GIs turned their hefty scout dog loose on the terrified prisoner.  He was chewed bloody from arm to neck until he "confessed."  The GI medic then patched him up.  Neither Greenway nor I ever reported the incident, nor sent in the pictures (which I still have).  Too grisly, we decided--and how to explain it?  Any more than the fact that embittered U.S. soldiers had been collecting the ear lobes of dead Viet Cong long before anyone reported it."

"    The day after Spiro Agnew was picked to be Nixon's running mate, another Time-Life correspondent, Charles Eisendrath, who had covered him for the Baltimore Evening Sun, described Agnew to me as a 'hack Maryland politician on the take,' 'We can't sue that ' I said, even though Eisendrath assured me that such reporter were common knowledge among Maryland reporters.  We never printed it, until Agnew was discovered to be taking cash bribes in his vice-presidential office....." 

What happens when the story is false?

The Mercury News recently had to back-peddle big time over a story that literally fell apart. The story dealt with CIA participating in drug smuggling, but after it was published, it turned out the paper had the facts wrong....Columbia Journalism Review did a major story on the event and the issues surrounding it. (See: CJR: July, 1997 "Soul Searching in San Jose" ) LInk no longer active.

What happens when stories don't sell? Is the news really the news?

Recently there have been serious concerns among journalists that television news is getting softer. How does truth fare in a competitive environment?

What happens to truth when journalists LIE to get the story?

We'll be spending considerable time discussing the 1997 Food Lion decision and the issues surrounding deception in the acquisition of the story. See the excellent discussion in "The Lying Game," by Susan Paterno.  (very important)

What happens when journalists MAKE UP the story or plagiarize it? 

What happens if journalists can't be trusted to TRY to tell the truth?  What if they are just LIARS?  Jason Blair refocused the profession on that issue.  He resigned from the New York Times in 2003 after it was discovered that he had plagiarized or fabricated dozens of articles he had written for the paper.  His book, recounting his work at the Times was released in March, 2004.   

For continuing updates relative to this issue, check Poynter.org. and Journalism.org.   Currently available resources include the following linked sites.   While you don't have to read all of these, this is good bibliography on the issue.  You need to be familiar with the Blair story.

As bad as the Blair situation was, he wasn't alone.  Stephen Glass was fired from the New Republic in 1998 after it was determined that portions of 27 (of 41) stories he had written for the magazine were fabricated.  In his various comments and apologies, he said he liked the attention that the dramatic headlines and stories he wrote brought him.  In a 60 minutes interview that aired May, 2003, he said" I think I confused  them liking my stories with them liking me.  So I did it again. I wanted every story to be home run." (AP, 5/7/03).  Glass published a book, The Fabulist, recounting his error and a film about the scandal was released in the fall of 2003, Shattered Glass.  A search at Poynter will turn up a number of recent articles, but none that I will require at this time.  If you choose to read the book or watch the film (for extra credit) BE SURE you have done your homework / research on Glass BEFORE you see it.

Michael Kelley was fired from USA Today for fabrication in his work.  See Morrison, Blake, "Ex-USA TODAY Reporter Faked Major Stories" USA TODAY 3-28-04 at http://www.usatoday.com/news/2004-03-18-2004-03-18_kelleymain_x.htm  

 

What about VISUAL Fabrication?

A February 28, 2005 issue of Newsweek has Martha Stewart on the cover. Rather it has her HEAD and someone else's body.  Newsweek called it a "photo illustration" that would not confuse or mislead anyone who knew Stewart's situation at the time (She is in prison.) (Memmott, 2004)

What happens when the truth is too harsh or "politically incorrect?" 

Oprah Winfrey did a series of programs in Feb. 2006 -- "What Should I Be Worried About?"  Part 1 focused on Terrorism and Part 2 on the Bird Flu.  These were powerful programs that presented information most viewers had never heard or seen before? WHY? See:

What happens when political correctness dictates truth?

Some say that revisionist history is being taught under the guise of multi-culturalism I recently read an article by someone who was shocked when watching the D-Day memorials on television in 1994 with his daughter heard the girl and her friend say they never knew that happened?

Only so many hours exist in the classroom, and D-Day wasn't as important as something else.... ....Western history and American history is being eliminated in school systems or reduced to a minor part in the curriculum. In even worse cases, distortions are being presented.

(Charles Colsen article is presented in packet which discusses new text book which declares the Bill of Rights offered no "rights" for minorities and women. An examination of the document reveals the word "people" describes those protected. That wasn't apparently enough for the authors of that book.)

Please don't misunderstand my motives. Respect for differing views, cultures and beliefs is at the core of my value system. I wouldn't purposefully hurt or disrespect anyone. But I expect the same respect, and attempts at pure fabrication must be addressed as what they are.

(DICTATORSHIP OF VIRTUE: pp. 89-90. in class)

What IF researches actually found genetic reasons for specific talents? What if those talents could be statistically documented to be more prevalent in one group of people than another? Would that research ever be published?

.In 1995, ABC ran John Stossel special which dealt with the differences between men and women.  Throughout the program people like Gloria Alred and Gloria Steinham argued that research -- truth -- about those differences was detrimental to women and should not be done.....  The program was updated and rerun in 2006 with much less fanfare or protest.

QUESTION: CAN you tell the truth? IF you know it? If it's UNPOPULAR?

So this brings us back to the issue --

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE TRUTH? WHERE DOES IT COME FROM? 

Recommended Reading Assignment:  Chapters 3,6,7,8,9,10,12 of Colson. How Now Shall We Live? On permanent reserve at Collier Library.  

What did Socrates, Plato and Aristotle say about the existence of truth?

What do YOU think about truth? Does it exist? How do we know?

Beliefs about truth and its existence are fundamental to the nature of a society. When concepts of truth change, everything else changes.  To really appreciate the changes that have taken place, let's look at attitudes toward viewing and producing television in the early 1950s.

It is interesting to go back to 1951, when in a radio "town meeting" on the new technology of television social critic Charles A. Siepmann said that left to its own devices commercial television would reduce us to "A nation of passive gawkers, instead of active intelligences, credulous instead of critical, mass-minded instead of individual, more and more dependent upon outside stimulus, and progressively devoid of inward resources. "   We might call it "dumbing down...

In 1950, the DuMont network put the following card in its control room:  "Attention, producers, directors and talent: Your audience is the average American family -- Mom and Dad -- Junior and Sit -- Grandma.  You are a guest in their living-rooms.  Any violation of this privilege through  the use of material in bad taste, immoral business, situations, dialogue, lyrics, routines, or costuming will not be tolerated by the DuMont Television Network."  (Knight, 1998)

That's a bit different than the attitude of programmers today. 

See http://www.parentstv.org and browse. 

How did we get from "Guest in the home..."   to bare buttocks, "alternate life styles" and four-letter words in 50 years?

Change of world view:

Philosophers characterize three periods in recent western culture, and understanding those will give us insight into what happened.  Each represents a world view .

Traditional

Modern

Postmodern 

But what is a world view?  A world view is a way of looking at the world and the nature of reality.  It helps us make sense of the world and forms the basis of our beliefs and our behavior.  For example, theists believe that the world was created by an intelligent being.  It wasn't an accident, it wasn't by chance.  Because it was purposeful, and created by intelligence, it has an intelligent and intelligible order. A world view must answer some very basic questions:

Charles Colson has written an absolutely wonderful book explaining these issues.  It is called  How Now Shall We Live, and I wholeheartedly recommend it. 

(It is written from a Christian perspective, but addresses in a readable but academic way the hard questions associated with these issues and their applications to many aspects of life today.   It is an outstanding book review book, and you will have a hard time putting it down -- Great reading for spring break.  You can sit out in the sun --with sun screen--for hours and not feel like you're wasting any time at all!  It's a little longer than the others, so if you read this one, you can get 50 extra credit points or a possible 25 extra credit points in addition to regular book review points.  Colson has also written another excellent [and somewhat shorter] title that works for this course:  The Good Life.  Most of his books are philosophical in nature and appropriate for this course as extra reading.)

In his How Now Shall We Live, Colson relates a personal experience which illustrates how world view can alter our perception.  Colson leads a prison ministry that works in penal institutions all over the world.  On one particular occasion he was visiting a prison in a communist country.  When he mentioned to the prison warden that crime was a moral problem, the man did not understand.  The warden saw crime as a sociological problem.  Colson responded that people choose to do right or wrong. ...

"He demurred politely.  'It seems to me that crime is caused by social and economic forces, that people respond to environmental conditions.

My turn to demure politely.  "The moral dimension transcends social forces.  People are genuine moral agents, and they make real moral choices." It cited several studies, including one showing that crime decreased during the great American religious revivals and one concluding that crimes are the result of 'wrong moral choices.'

As our conversation continued, the outlines of the minister's own worldview became clear, and I could see why he was having trouble understanding me.  Educated in a communist school system, he had been steeped in Marxist philosophy.  In Marxism, human beings are merely a complex form of matter, and their identity lies in the way they relate to other forms of matter--that is, how they shape and make material things, or the mean of production.  Economics is the foundation, while everything else--culture, art, morality, religion--is mere superstructure, reflecting the dominant class's economic interests.  Because of this, the minister couldn't even grasp what I meant by individuals making moral choices. 'What I don't understand,' he said, 'is why some people know the law of the land but blatantly disregard it.'

He set his cigarette pack on the table, using it to symbolize the barrier that the law sets up against certain behavior; then his hand jumped over the pack to illustrate a criminal ignoring the law. 'It seems that only fear will stop people from committing crimes.' And he alluded to Talleyrand, the nineteenth century French foreign minister who hung corpses in the street every night to deter the restless masses from fomenting revolution.

'No, sir,' I responded. 'Fear does not stop people. If it did, no one would smoke.' The official juggled his cigarette pack nervously, and we both smiled.

'Only love changes human behavior, ' I said. 'If I love another person, I want to please him or her; if I love God, I want to please him and do what he wants.  Only love can overcome our sinful self-centeredness.'

I soon realized, however, that before I could even begin to explain....I would have to address the huge gap between his worldview and mine, the gap that kept him from grasping concepts such as sin and guilt, responsibility and forgiveness...." (p. 29)

For us to really understand the nature of thinking about truth in our culture it is important to examine each of these world views and to figure out what our own beliefs are.

Traditional Thought

This perspective is rooted in the philosophies of the Greeks, the Bible and traditional western thought: TRUTH exists, it can be discovered, and it should be sought. Socrates taught that truth comes from God and the closer one comes to the truth, the closer one comes to God and the best form of existence. Judeo-Christian tradition and Islamic tradition support this position.

Theistic traditionalism (or absolutism) holds that truth is the "standard" or the "plumb line" for ethical reality and behavior.

The plumb line provides the foundation for everything else which follows. Let me provide an example.

When I worked in my Dad's store, I taught lots of people how to install ceramic tile. The first thing you do is establish the plumb line. You take your level and determine a level line above the bathroom tub or the counter top. Then you draw or use a chalk line to mark the line on the wall. Then you take the level and determine a vertical line and mark it as well. When you apply the mastic to the wall with your notched trowel, the lines show through. The first row of ceramic tile is laid right along those lines. If you didn't do that, the joints in the rows of tile would be all "whopperjawed" (another Dad-ism), and the job would look terrible.

If you have ever hung wallpaper (and, boy, is that fun.....!!!!!  --Talk about being attitudinally and verbally "challenged"........grrrrr...) you've used a plumb line as well.  It's the only way to make sure the stripes in the paper go straight up and down....

If a slab or a footer for a house or other building is not level, the whole house will be crooked. Everything else that is built on that foundation is totally out of whack because the foundation is wrong!

These examples are very significant for the issue of truth. If the foundational ethical truth is not there or is not "plumb," everything that is built on it will be "whopperjawed."

Similarly we all know what a "standard" is. You know what standard equipment is for a car: it has to have tires, a steering wheel, and an engine would be nice, among a number of other things. You can add what ever options you want, but you start with the standard.

This issue is of paramount importance to the absolutist and especially to the theist. For them, everything else depends on the issue of truth. All else is built on that. For the theist, truth is created by and is the very nature of God.  But one does not have to be theist to be an absolutist.

Socrates held that objective truth or objective reality existed. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Milton, among many others believed in absolute, objective truth.

From the absolutist point of view, TRUTH has the following characteristics: It is

What do these terms mean?

OBJECTIVE: existing independent of any thought or emotion.

UNIVERSAL: it applies to all people everywhere.

CONSTANT: it does not change with time.

Josh McDowell defines it this way:  Truth is true for all people all of the time.

Paul Copan writes about the universal application of truth by saying truth is true even if...

Where do we find this standard? Philosophers and clerics have been asking this question for years. As a result of these questions, two models of truth have emerged:

 1. Absolute or objective truth.

2. Subjective or situational truth.

Summary of Traditional perspective:

Modern Thought

Experts hold that the Modern age spanned from the storming of the Bastille in France in 1789 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. With the fall of communism, the entrance into the postmodern era was assured.

Modernism is characterized by  

Scientific method is based on modern philosophy. Science examines that which can be observed, quantified, studied. This perspective is sometimes called naturalism. (It should be noted that naturalism can include some forms of religious belief, but these are beliefs that place "nature" in the position of deity, such as some New Age beliefs.)   Theories and results must be replicable and consistent across disciplines. The whole premise is that if results disagree, one cannot be true or they are not mutually exclusive. (Check your Com 314 notes for the nature of science for more information on this.)  The focus here is on that which is sensate, which can be observed through the senses.

This reliance on that which can be observed, tested, and proven, has removed the concept of God from modern thought, and with it, the foundation of morality. Man is left to figure that out for himself and to provide justification of his efforts. The humanist belief that man is inherently good, reasonable, and with proper opportunity can create utopia is the result /and the foundation of such thought.

Out of modernism comes 

In the beginning of the period, philosophers may have believed God existed but had a hands-off policy.  By the end of the period, the existentialists had taken over.  God not only didn't care, He didn't exist at all.

Summary of Modernist Perspective:

After removing the divine element from the equation, and humans not doing a particularly great job in the development of utopia (i.e. the fall of communism), others came to the conclusion that since man couldn't ever discern truth, it therefore did not exist. So what's the point?

Postmodernism

The accepted philosophy became that is truth does not exist, any one's attempt to discern it is only a belief and not a logical assumption or fact. Why? Because we each see the world through our own individual perspective, experience and world view. Those things will remove our objectivity and make us unable to make anything more than OUR INTERPRETATION of reality. With no discernable truth, any idea that claims to be truth becomes as plausible as the next, because who's to tell the difference? One can't prove it anyway? Therefore, any belief system can be blown off as as superficial or silly as any other.....So Hitler was "right?"

Robert Knight makes an excellent point in the introduction to his book, The Age of Consent.  

"Disdain for the truth itself is superficially liberating.  When all opinions are given equal weight, we are free from the risk of every being wrong."

Think about that statement for a minute.  Write down an illustration of it from your personal experience or observation.

        

 

He goes on to state that the existence of churches and synagogues or other theistic organizations is a reminder that "sin" may indeed exist and have very serious consequences.  The only way to get around that is to make those religious institutions disappear, make them irrelevant, or "capture" them for anti-theistic purposes.  That can be accomplished by 

Why would I mention those here?  Because as we look at post-modernism, can't help but see a vehemence against all things traditional or absolute.  I think Knight's point offers a motivation and certainly a means to better understand many of the postmodern positions and representations in our culture.

In the 1960s post-modern ideas were beginning to catch on, and the E.S.T. movement became popular among some intellectuals of the time.  Aldous Huxley  (Brave New Word) and Timothy Leary (who advocated LSD for mind expansion) were a part of that movement.   The idea was to free people from all moral and psychological limitations.  One exercise including forbidding participants to leave to use the bathroom....  Love was just another form of self-interest.  Human potential could only be found when people freed themselves from all the tradition "stuff" that had held them back.  In 1969, honored guests as the E.S.T. Institute were Charles Manson and his followers.   (Knight, 1998) 

Larry Z. Leslie, in his book  Mass Communication Ethics, Decision Making in Postmodern Culture, writes that postmodernists see the modernist approach to world as "inadequate, harmful, and costly"  failing to come to terms with issues of the day and to realize their approach just doesn't work.

According to Leslie, postmodernism began in the 1960's and some themes of the period illustrate the adoption of postmodernism in American culture.

The focus of all of those catch phrases was that the glue was gone....The tradition and foundations of moral, ethical and traditional thought were rejected for anything "young and free."   Then came Watergate, Cable and satellite TV, and the Internet... Things changed so fast, we didn't really have time to absorb the changes, let a lone understand what they meant.  Now I understand that human cloning is not only possible but will probably occur very  very soon! (According to a report on 20/20 on ABC 2/17/01) Leslie summarizes:  "In terms of cultural environment, intellectual activity, and social norms, our times lack continuity, cohesion, and logical sequence." (Leslie, p. 7)

Characteristics of Postmodernism:

So how do we confront moral problems and challenges as a society?  Is there any unity at all?  How can we transmit moral values to a new generation in this context?

Other authors provide some other characteristics of postmodernism.  Because we are concerned with communication, these will be especially meaningful as we consider mediated communication and how these characteristics apply.

What are the basic tenets of postmodernism?

An assistant philosophy professor recently won a lawsuit against a university in which he was denied tenure because of his comments in a faculty meeting. What had he said? He said that he was against multicultural education and believed certain societies were wrong in some of their practices, practices such as slavery in some African countries, bride-burning in India, and female circumcisions in the Sudan. He said he believed these practices were wrong and that "Westerners have a moral duty to stand up against such subjective evils." The professor won his case, but what does this say about free speech and the pursuit of truth in institutions of higher education? (Hudson, 1998)

Joseph Feeney characterizes postmodernism in the November, 1997 , issue of America. In the article he discusses how his college students are "wounded" by postmodern thought, and he offers four predominant characteristics of it:

"Postmodernism is a set of attitudes: Human feelings, human art, and the world itself are exhausted; humans are limited and lonely, human existence is random, impermanent, nightmarish, without firm values; humans cope with absurdity by laughter and parody."

He goes on to say that in art, human beings are characterized as cartoonish, action is foremost, colors are bright, fact and fiction and the bizarre all run together. The absurd and contradictory are lauded and art forms refer to themselves and not to the real world. Those who attend to art should never expect rationality or meaning. Parody and sarcasm are the overriding themes.

It's as though humans should never expect much, and so should never be disappointed and should always be depressed, finding humor only in sarcasm and parody.

Feeney sites some clear examples of postmodern thought in current media:

Add your own nominees to the list:

Postmodern Film, TV Show or Lyric Why you classify it a postmodern
   
   
   
   

Summary of Postmodernism:

Jamie Tarsis made her way to the top of the network ladder as programming chief at ABC.  She did so with a series of ads in trade and consumer publications in the fall of 1997. How does the following text illustrate postmodernism?

TV IS GOOD.

"For years the pundits, moralists and self-righteous, self-appointed preservers of our culture have told us that television is bad. They've stood high on their soapbox and looked condescendingly on our innocuous pleasure. They've sought to wean us from our harmless habit by derisively referring to television as the Boob Tube or the Idiot Box.

Well, television is not the evil destroyer of all that is right in this world. In fact, and we say this with all the disdain we can muster for the elitists who purport otherwise - TV is good.

TV binds us together. It makes us laugh. Makes us cry. Why, in the span of ten years , TV brought us the downfall of an American president, one giant step for mankind and the introduction of Farrah Fawcett as one of "Charlie's Angels." Can any other medium match TV for its immediacy, its impact, its capacity to entertain? Who among us hasn't spent an entire weekend on the couch, bathed in the cool glow of a Sony Trinitron, only to return to work recuperated and completely refreshed? And who would dispute that the greatest advancement in aviation over the last ten years was the decision to air sitcoms during the in-flight service?

Why then should we cower behind our remote controls? Let us rejoice in our fully adjustable, leather-upholstered recliners. Let us celebrate our cerebral-free non-activity. Let us climb the highest figurative mountaintop and proclaim, with all the vigor and shrillness that made Roseanne a household name, that TV is good." TV GUIDE back cover, Sept. 9, 1997

A look at some of the men who led us down this road to postmodernism can offer some real insight.  As you look at their lives and what Socrates would call the "fruits" of those lives, you may find some perspective about their ideas.  For a summary of key philosophers, a little about their background, and their primary philosophical concepts, see  Key Philosophers: A Quick Summary 

So what does all this mean for you? What does this mean for your job? YOUR profession? The decisions YOU will have to make? What does truth have to do with our future?

ALAN KEYS made a statement which sums the issue up fairly succinctly:

"We are really reaching a point in this society where people are denying that there is any line to be drawn between truth and falsehood, right and wrong. But if that's the case, then our whole way of life can't work any more --- because it is based on the sense that there are certain self-evident truths, that those self-evident truths support a certain idea of human justice, which requires respectfor human rights, that, therefore, you must have electionsand due process, and all the other things we consider tobe the hallmarks of freedom. If there is no differencebetween right and wrong, then none of that is true andthere is no need to respect individual rights, there isno requirement that to be legitimate government has to be based upon consent, and the only thing that separatesus from tyranny and despotism is that, at the moment, nobody has yet gained the upper hand.  (Keyes, 1996)

I hope you will really take some time to think about these issues. Do you believe that truth exists? Why? Why not? What does that mean for your future decisions? How does that fit with your religious beliefs?

Required Reading:  

 

This is a very serious issue, perhaps one of the most important we will discuss. Think hard.

Dr. Mc

Resources and Related Web Resources of Interest:

 

For additional resources, see Dr. Mc's personal pages: Truth, Worldview....

Copyright, 2007

Janet McMullen