When Myths Become Media ‘Facts’

A CNN guest claimed recently that Thomas Jefferson raped a 14-year-old slave.

No one at the table challenged the contributor. The assertion was presented as an indisputable fact, and the panel moved on to other topics.

It was an enlightening moment, given that we live in the era of instantaneous information.

Though most academics and even the caretakers of Monticello agree that Jefferson fathered several children with a teenage slave named Sally Hemings, some scholars, though a minority, have published extensive studies raising reasonable doubts. Maybe the account is true. Maybe it’s not. Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle.

The point is: There is a difference between an incontestable fact and something we believe is probably true, especially when it comes to history. That this distinction appears to be lost on so many people who talk for a living is frustrating, to say the least.

More frustrating is that the incident on CNN is hardly the first of its kind. This sort of thing, in which a theory is presented as a cold, hard fact, is common. The habit of packaging theories or even myths as the truth isn’t new; we’re all susceptible to the distortions of reality that occur naturally over time. What’s frustrating right now is that there are fewer excuses for said distortions. We no longer depend on massive archives of physical records, having to sift through mountains of paperwork to find the truth. We no longer rely on oral history and traditions. We each keep a supercomputer in our pocket, all day, every day; it’s always ready to share the world’s accumulated knowledge with us. All it requires is a swipe of a finger or a few spoken commands. We’re in a golden age for the curious. You want to know more about a topic? It’s all right there, at your fingertips. You only need to ask.

It’s exasperating, then, that theories, myths, second-hand anecdotes, etc., should still be allowed to go unchallenged, evolve into “facts,” and eventually become the consensus view when the tools for double-checking abound. Unfortunately, few seem interested in the simple act of fact-checking, which only makes it easier for half-baked beliefs and tales to take on the appearance of truth.

In 2017, for example, the New York Times claimed that former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin inspired the 2011 mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz. There is no evidence to support this claim. There never has been. Palin later tried to sue the New York Times for defamation. The idea that the former governor incited the shooting originates from the wild speculations of the New York Times’s Paul Krugman, who leveled the accusation just moments after news of the shooting spree first broke. The myth then gradually grew over time until it became a commonly accepted belief in certain social circles. The idea transformed from the unfounded speculation of an angry crank to a generally accepted “truth,” as declared in an official New York Times editorial.

Another good example of this sort of thing, where a false assertion eventually becomes the accepted prevailing narrative, involves that damned tan suit former President Barack Obama wore in August 2014. It started out as a bit of a joke — the idea that the worst scandal of his presidency was that he wore a tan suit to a press conference. But the joke has since metastasized into something of a sincere talking point. Obama had a scandal-free presidency! He was as clean as a whistle! Why, Republicans were so desperate for a scandal, they pretended as if it was a major crisis that he wore a tan suit! Obama obviously didn’t have a scandal-free presidency. This is a straight falsehood that many now treat as truth.

For the record, the press conference where Obama wore a tan suit was the same one in which he reluctantly admitted he had no plan to counter the Islamic State, which had, at that point, overrun much of Iraq, committing acts of mass murder, razing sites of significant cultural and historical importance, and capturing women for the explicit purpose of sexual slavery. But more to the overall point, even the characterization of how Republicans supposedly reacted to the suit is a good example of how myth becomes “fact.” The right didn’t lose its mind over the suit, though that’s now the story. A few Fox hosts and Republicans bellyached, sure, but it was not a great, multi-day scandal. There were a few snide remarks, and that was it. Most of the conversation was people having some fun on social media. It’s simply not true that there was a collective freakout on the right. I was there; I remember. But you won’t have any trouble finding people who genuinely believe the story as it’s told today, especially because the depiction of Republican desperation reinforces the now-sincerely held belief that it was a scandal-free presidency.

There are many more examples of this sort of thing, where “vibes” and legends develop into the consensus, “fact-based” view.

The right wing is responsible for nearly all political violence since 2013! Never mind that the numbers have been manipulated to include prison gangs and prison gang-related violence in the “right-wing” category; no other group is held similarly responsible for either of these things. Matthew Shepard is a martyr for the LGBT community. He was murdered for being gay! Or so the story goes. Or maybe not. There is a genocide happening in Gaza, and the Israelis are trying to exterminate the Palestinians! The war is undeniably brutal, but the claims of genocide and extermination are clearly false. Israel is a nuclear power. If it wanted to eradicate all Palestinians, it would surely choose a more efficient and less costly method.

State Senator John Hoffman and the late Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman were explicitly targeted for their politics! Maybe, if you ignore that the alleged gunman, who claims Democratic Minnesota Governor Tim Walz ordered him to murder the lawmakers and that he had been secretly “trained by U.S. Military people off the books starting in college,” is very obviously an unwell person and not a political agent.

Last one, a personal favorite of mine: Every year, like clockwork, on the anniversary of the horrific bombing of Hiroshima, there is some academic or pundit who asserts with 100 percent confidence that Japan was prepared to surrender when America dropped the bomb. Someone should tell this to the Japanese generals who chose a coup over surrender. Someone should inform the Japanese officials who witnessed the extraordinarily rare event of the emperor himself breaking the Supreme Council’s voting deadlock on whether Japan should surrender to the United States. Remember: The coup and the voting deadlock came after the U.S. had already nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

All of this can be found through a simple internet search.

It’s common for people to confuse legend for fact. The issue today is that, in this age of instant information, when you have to practically beg your computer and phone to stop offering “read more” suggestions, when there’s a newsletter boom, and when there are about 1,000 new TV shows, podcasts, and streaming documentaries every year, what good excuse is there for someone not to double-check whether a story they haven’t investigated thoroughly is accurate? What excuse is there to parade any apparent fact without having first asked, “Is this true?”

Perhaps it’s yet another example of man’s cursed duality — that he has created for himself a world where humanity’s accumulated knowledge is readily available for the taking, but that he has also become too lazy to enjoy its benefits.