Fact check: is the truth always what it's cracked up to be?

The role of a newspaper and incorrect information in fanning the revolutionary flames of America illustrates a paradox of the modern "fact checking" frenzy.

by Rob Corbidge

Published:

Many news publishers now dwell in a world of disputed truth, and strive for some version of impartiality, but a lesson from history shows that the truth is an elusive quality, and sometimes something not quite true can be beneficial.

So can disinformation be good? Or can it at least serve a noble purpose? A controversial idea no doubt in our current binary political landscape, but it's a fact that some of the most fertile seeds of the American Revolution were planted by something that simply wasn't accurate.

At the heart of this was a printed newspaper, the primary mass media platform of that age. Even as most modern publishers try to swim a relatively straight line in a treacherous whirlpool of opinion and dispute, and platforms and their owners stir the pot of unbalanced content, it's important to remember this is how it has been pretty much since the printing press was invented.

In this age, an unexpected and vicious fact war can break out in the comments section of an anodyne local newspaper article about a new skate park. Is this a sign of civilisational decline, or the lively debate required to service democracy? Is it how it's always been, even if disputes were conducted by word of mouth rather than keyboard taps? And for publishers, does the much sought after "user engagement" actually always mean argument? 

Reading Professor Fred Anderson's excellent book Crucible of War, which entertainingly charts the period of the British Empire in North America between 1754 and 1766, I learned of how serious unrest across the American colonies against the imposition of The Stamp Act by London was helpfully fanned into flame by a false report asserting Virginian colonists' unwillingness to pay an unfair tax.

Patrick Henry, a young, ambitious lawyer and political firebrand who sat in Virginia's General Assembly, wrote what we now call the Virginia Resolves of 1765. Containing five resolutions, four were relatively uncontroversial. Not so the fifth, which effectively denied the British parliament's authority to collect such taxes. It was a bombshell. Such a bombshell in fact, that it was removed from the official Resolves by more senior, cautious or craven politicians once Henry had left the Assembly to tend to his farming interests.

It didn't matter.

Picked up by a newspaper, the Newport Mercury, an account of the Resolves were published, crucially with two additional and similarly intemperate Resolves added, the sixth and seventh, the origins of which remain disputed to this day. They certainly were not the official response of the Virginia General Assembly. Equally of importance is the fact that the Mercury didn't publish the official account of the Resolves, nor is it clear that its journalists ever had sight of the official account.

Again, it didn't matter. Reports of Virginia's apparent willingness to defy London raced across the North American colonies via other newspapers, causing such previously unknown unity among the early Americans that even the infamous North and South Mobs of Boston, typically accustomed to fighting each other, pulled together to enthusiastically riot against The Stamp Act under the direction of disaffected merchants known as the Sons of Liberty.

As they say, the rest is history. A chastened London repealed the act, but a line had been placed down by the colonists, and we all know how events would subsequently unfold.

The role of the Newport Mercury in spreading such falsity is, in retrospect, a cause for celebration, is it not? 

The tax was blatantly unfair. The newspaper might not have captured the facts, but it captured the mood. Disinformation be damned, as Patrick Henry might have said. There's a part of me that always delights in a publication causing trouble for the wealthy and powerful. "Journalism is to politician as dog is to lamp-post" as H L Mencken observed.

To stress, I'm not making an argument for lies, untruths or deception; the argument being made is one that urges the consideration of human complexity and of context when discussing human affairs.

While our information transmission systems are faster than the assemblymen of 18th century Virginia could even imagine at a time when America's news took weeks or months to reach London, the value and use of information, of any kind, hasn't really altered. There's just more of it, if not necessarily variety.

I do wonder if the editor of the Newport Mercury could have defended himself with a claim that it was merely misinformation they had published. That is to say, information that was mistaken, rather than published with motive. It's a fine line to be sure.

So in our disputed factual landscape, where we debate the value of crowd-sourced moderation versus professional "fact checkers", or while others seize on bland-o-bot AI moderation as the answer, which it isn't, it's important to remember the role of human agency, and that people will most often believe the thing that suits them at that time, to their gain or peril. 

It has worked pretty well so far.