Truth is always elusive: difficult to define, hard to arrive at, rarely agreed on. It lately appears to have become even more slippery: it is said that we now live in a “post-truth” world, especially when it comes to politics.

Oxford Dictionaries last week declared post-truth as Word of the Year, defining it as: “Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.”

The word was actually coined seve­ral years ago but events of 2016 have made it highly fashionable. These events include the embrace of proven un­truths and dismissal of expert opinion during the Brexit campaign; and more recently and notoriously, the disregard for fact and the outright lies resorted to by Donald Trump.

The US election has also provided rocket fuel to the false information and wild conspiracy theories that swirl around social media, to the point that Facebook and Google are taking action to counter the spread of “fake news” and President Barack Obama has just denounced it as a threat to democratic freedoms.

But while the internet may have accelerated the volume of misinformation and speed of its dissemination a million-fold, it is not as if we once lived in some purer past where truth was more respected – or less disrespected – than it is now.

One of the characteristics of “post-truth politics” is the repetition by politicians of statements shown to be manifestly untrue. Sound familiar? A maddening trait of local politicians in general down the years is their disregard of any information that runs counter to their previous declaration or stand. Repeat a falsehood often enough, it is hoped, and it becomes true in people’s minds.

Unfortunately, in the post-Panama era, political dishonesty and deception have become even more rife, seen as necessary for political survival.

In Malta’s own post-truth culture, party-owned media have a lot to answer for. They understandably seek to promote their master’s voice and damage their opponent. In doing so they all too often sacrifice truth, if the search for truth in the journalistic sense is to be understood as the inclusion of relevant facts, proper context and opposing views. ‘Fake’ news – news with any semblance of objectivity spun out of it – has long been alive and well in Malta.

While The Times newspapers are far from perfect, we are unreservedly dedi­cated to delivering facts that are as close to the truth as we can ascertain them to be. We constantly seek to reduce the occasions we do not live up to this commitment.

What are the antidotes to post-truthfulness? In the long term, given that our children spend so much time on the internet, the need for media education in schools has become more pressing than ever. Our internal antenna for the truth needs to be honed from an early age and, as per the Oxford definition, children taught to beware appeals to their emotions or beliefs and to base opinions on facts.

Another way to counter the spread of false information is good, old-fashioned journalism. It has helped shape the free society in which we live – please continue to support it.

However, a Eurostat survey out last Thursday showed that only 45 per cent of Maltese respondents saw newspapers as their most reliable source of information.

A draft code of ethics just published by the Institute of Maltese Journalists speaks of the need to verify facts, separate them from opinion and use them with precision. While we do not hold out much hope that this practice will be adopted by the political outlets anytime soon, it would be heartening to see the code advance the cause of truth in the local media scenario.

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