The Truth About "Post-Truth"

Is the post-Christmas, post-New Year lull a time to consider your "post-truth" strategy?

Such has been the penetration of the "post-truth" era that reached rich fruition in the political arena is 2016, it must be worth anticipating whether "post-truth" can be applied to other forms of communication – like financial and corporate communications perhaps?

Currency was given "post-truth" in 2016 when experts were belittled and banished by Michael Gove in the Brexit debate and with the triumph of Donald Trump's untested assertions about, about...well about most things actually, via his preferred channel of Twitter.

Is "post-truth" really new?

"Post-truth" was declared "Word of the Year" by Oxford Dictionaries defining the term as, "Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief". Oxford Dictionaries parent, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (online edition), widely considered the august pillar of the ultimate truth, seems to have been taken by surprise by the word and doesn't yet include it.

By contrast Wikipedia, that child of the "post-truth" playground, the internet, already has its definition to hand:

"Post-truth politics (also called post-factual politics) is a political culture in which debate is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored. Post-truth differs from traditional contesting and falsifying of truth by rendering it of 'secondary importance'".

So according to Wikipedia a lovers' tiff which, "...is framed largely by appeals to emotion disconnected from the details of policy, and by the repeated assertion of talking points to which factual rebuttals are ignored," could well belong to the "post-truth" era. But haven't lovers been at it forever? And doesn't that make "post-truth" and "ante-truth" term? Ages are identified by falling before or after the birth of Christ – BC or AD. Do we need to demarcate when truth passed from being before – to after truth.

Calibrating truth

Isn't "post-truth" just a euphemism for lies – lies of a variable intensity? Where does "post-truth" fit into Mark Twain's calibration of untruths: "Lies, damned lies and statistics"? Does it fall between "lies" and "damned lies" or after "statistics"?

On a scale of deception, the Gold Standard of lies must have been set by Goebbels or Pol Pot. But is it a crime to appeal to the emotion? Do people "love" Coca-Cola because, if its branding and marketing are to be believed, it brings happiness, youthful good looks and startling white teeth?

Journalism cannot escape the taint of "post-truth"; many a report has been crafted by a tabloid hack that would, "Never let the facts to get in the way of a good story".

Or perhaps we in corporate and financial communications can, in a post-Orwellian twist, claiming credit, with our branding campaigns, messaging for being in the very vanguard of "post-truth" for years!

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