Elizabeth Holmes was just the canary in the coal mine
A lot of ink has been spilled, and now the new documentary You Can See Everything has been a expose of not only Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, but how the journalistic world covered her. While the documentary focused largely on Holmes, I think it’s a much better question to ask ourselves “If it was so obviously something was wrong all along, why did none of these journalists see it? How could she go on so long telling such clear lies under such intense media and journalistic coverage and still get deified on the front pages of top publications? What does that tell us about the news we get today and journalist feeding it to us?”
Holmes is not alone, there’s a reason Forbes ’30 under 30′ list has been jokingly called the ’30 doing 30′ list for how many of these supposed super-geniuses have been put in jail for comically simplistic lying and fraud. How is this happening? How are such obvious fraudsters tricking media experts for years before getting caught?
I give Justin Caffier some credit here – he’s realized the Theranos scandal is also saying something about the problems in the tech journalism field and the media industry as a whole. He rightly realizes what has happened in those journalistic circles allowed scandals like Theranos to happen. He partly thinks it’s because narratives are controlled by ‘right-wing oligarchs’, but actually spends the majority of the article calling out a lot of what I think are the real issues. After all, lies only work as much as the people want to believe them.
I think the problem, and answer, is far more simple.
Real investigative journalism, and those that practiced it, are largely gone. Market forces have and the internet has largely destroyed those large news-room institutions as economically viable. They’ve been replaced by social media and streaming stars now hired as paid advertisers and semi-reporters in the same breath – who have no requirement to speak the truth and often without any clear disclosure they are paid for reviews, interviews, and exposure. If you look at the job requirements for a news reporters at any outlet from the New York Times to NPR – you’ll find social media savvy is listed as far more important criteria than investigation or journalism skills.
Journalist are now invited to company and political events where they are wined and dined, told what to say in slick presentations, and then given a wonderful gift bag to go back and regurgitate what they were told – which they largely do. Rarely does a modern journalist ever question what is said, for fear of losing access or not being invited back to galas.
“If she had not been a woman, I would have been less motivated. That was part of what compelled me,” journalist Caitlin Roper admitted to WIRED
Narratives have also become an issue. There are things that in a polarized, cancel-culture environment, you simply cannot say – even when they are true. We deify people who often make questionable statements or have questionable skills because we simply want something to be true. We then try to silently bury it when we find out they are not. This blinds people and allows bad actors to lie openly. It’s acting with bias – or worse.
So what is the solution? I would say we already know the answer. We used to do it.
It’s called finding The Truth and not just sitting with ‘the truth‘ – as Lionel Hutz would say.
This requires us to be honest about a few things in our society.
This means you cannot buy the line that everyone ‘Has their own truth’. Or that ‘my truth’ makes ‘your truth’ wrong. It’s ironic we’ve gone from the idea of ‘Bringing people together to a common understanding’ to solving a problem to the current atmosphere of ‘Everyone has their own truth. Truth is now decided by arbitrary, often emotional, measures – and my truth trumps yours’. The basic premise on which the entire idea of science stands tells us: there is objective truth in the world and we can find it out. If you do not believe this – you don’t believe in science, nor reality.
“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there, but it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid. That is how an RBMK reactor core explodes. Lies.” – Chernobyl
Marketing spin, highly stilted political statements, and the current word salad that comes out of the average star/corporate report/HR director/political leader is simply a way to tell lies. We must demand more.
When people do lie, why does it seem we need to wait until there is critical mass before we call them out on it. We sit silently, sometimes in a room full of people knowing they are lying, and nobody says anything. All that evil needs to do to win is for good to do nothing. Even when truth is on their side to disprove the lies.
For Caffier and other journalists, it means asking questions and verifying facts. In the famous book by Ryan Holiday “Trust me I’m Lying” that was published in 2013, he said that in all his years manipulating the media, not one journalist ever checked his references or sources. All it would have taken to dismantle Holiday’s manipulation was one phone call – and nobody ever did it.
But MOST OF ALL – each and every one of us fights this slow creep by simple speaking and demanding truth in all we do. It seems so simple – yet it is so clearly lacking. If we each hold ourselves to standards of truth in deed and speech, we start turning the tide. First in our homes, then our relationships, then our companies, then the country, and then the world.
This is why Jesus so heavily stressed personal conversion of one’s own heart. He didn’t overthrow the Romans who had a military dictatorship – he taught to treat them with compassion. He didn’t try to lead a rebellion against temple leaders – he sat at dinner with them and taught them. He taught everyone the Truth. He encouraged each of us to convert our hearts so the lord of love and truth could enter in – giving us everlasting peace and truth. Each of us can fight this battle every moment of the day – by simply living and speaking truthfully.
The truth is like a lion. It does not need defending, it simply needs to be set free.
