The search for 'truthiness' in today's media world

If we made a video about today's media world, we could title it Truthiness, MMXII - and watch it go viral.

On Thursday, the advocacy group Invisible Children Inc. was scheduled to post online the sequel to the spectacular and notorious viral video Kony 2012, about Ugandan strongman Joseph Kony. Kony 2012 started a wildfire controversy over Invisible Children and whether it's telling the truth or rather sensationalizing to attract supporters. Will Kony 2012 Part II throw gunpowder on the fire?

It's just the most recent in a flood of stories in which the central character - battered, elusive, debated, denied - is named Truth. Or, to echo Stephen Colbert, Truthiness.

"In the present media atmosphere," says Anthony R. DePalma, writer-in-residence at Seton Hall University (and former New York Times correspondent), "you're being bombarded. It's too much, all the time. So when people present neat, simplistic stories, you reach out for them. And if they confirm what you already believe, you reach out even more."

"There's a lot of confusion in the media marketplace," says Mark W. Tatge, professor of journalism at DePauw University (and former longtime journalist). "I'm horrified by a lot of what I'm seeing. Truth claims routinely get mixed up with opinion or entertainment."

In the last month, the confused consumer has had to contend with a lot.

On March 1, the blogger Andrew Breitbart died, renewing debate over his techniques. They tested - some say destroyed - the distinction between truth and falsehood. They had impact, though, prompting the July 2010 resignation of U.S. Department of Agriculture officer Shirley Sherrod and the June 2011 step-down of U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner (D., N.Y.) after Breitbart made public sexually explicit texts and images Weiner sent.

This January, the popular Public Radio International show This American Life ran performance artist Mike Daisey's story, alleging abuses at electronics manufacturer Foxconn in China. It turned out he fabricated much of his presentation. On March 16, the show retracted his work, apologized, and devoted a full hour to discussing its error. Other sources cite troubles at the Foxconn factories - but Daisey never saw much of what he said he'd seen.

Consider, too, the media war over the shooting of Sanford, Fla., teenager Trayvon Martin, allegedly by neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman. It has flared into an angry debate over racism, vigilantism, and self-defense laws. It's also led to celebrity howlers. A Twitter post at @RealWillSmith purported to share Zimmerman's address. The director Spike Lee, with more than 250,000 Twitter followers, passed it along. It turned out to be the address of an unsuspecting couple, the McClains, who fled to a hotel to avoid the resulting spasm of attention. Lee has apologized and reached a settlement with the McClains.

Truth stretched, spun, misrepresented, pretzeled.

Kony 2012 is the biggest viral video ever, with 86.8 million hits on YouTube as of Wednesday afternoon. It takes aim at the alleged depredations of Kony, wanted for human-rights abuses and terror killings. The issue is less whether Kony is a bad man than whether Invisible Children overdramatizes and stylizes just how bad he is, to stoke a movement to bring him to justice. Critics say Kony 2012 takes advantage of naive younger viewers to spur outrage and action.

"I watched it," said Christopher Harper, codirector of the Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab at Temple University. "It just seemed the story they were telling was too bad." He doesn't mind the advocacy: "But with such productions, what I need and don't get is a way to check the facts, to drill down to the authentic truth."

The debacle at This American Life was, in Harper's words, "A failure at the institutional level, much as with CBS News and Rathergate," in which CBS anchor Dan Rather based a 60 Minutes report about President George W. Bush on documents that turned out to be bogus.

As for Martin, DePalma says, "I'm using to teach my students how to approach news in which all sides take extreme positions." Harper says, "That's a case where everybody needs to take two steps back and let the investigation determine the truth."

Kony may well be evil. Foxconn has issues. It's wrong for a man, in public trust or not, to "sext" unsuspecting women. And the killing of an unarmed teen stirs understandable emotions. But does being on "the right side" get you off the hook for sideswiping the truth?

Invisible Children, Breitbart, and Daisey have their defenders. Blogger David Wain cites the " '100 percent true, except for the parts that aren't' " memoir tradition, which he calls "well established." John Cook, writing for the website Gawker, says you can't lie in the service of a "larger truth." He blasts this "Sedaris exception," named after the funnyman and memoirist David Sedaris, known to have fun with facts.

How did we get here? "The old media silos have broken down," says Tatge. "We used to have a few papers and a few networks, and they were our sources for news. Now there are hundreds of sources. And the economic/distribution model of news has also broken down. Some call that a good thing. The problem is there's no control over what has replaced it."

Another problem: "Anyone can set up a blog," says Tatge. "It's quick, it's easy. But not everyone is a journalist." DePalma says the ease and speed of posting and sharing "makes people willing to accept what they see on their favorite sites."

A third problem: "Media illiteracy," says Harper. All of the sources for this story are teaching students where news comes from and how to think critically. "People are lazy," says Harper, "when they need to be their own media filters."

DePalma teaches his students "the Four Ds" of critical thinking: Doubt (question the truth of too-simple, too-pat, or one-source stories), Detect (seek out sources that confirm or disagree), Discern (assess the background, standing, and stake sources have in what they publish), and Demand (stand up for your right to get the truth).

In the Gospel of John, an anxious Pilate says to Jesus, "What is truth?" Good question. In an increasingly busy, complicated media world, the first step to answering it may well be to ask it.

Contact John Timpane at 215-854-4406 or jt@phillynews.com, or follow at @jtimpane on Twitter.

See the Invisible Children ?"Kony 2012" videos at:? www.invisiblechildren.com