Why do people click so frequently on false stories? How do these lies spread so rapidly? It is certainly true that facts and non-facts circulate at a speed that would have been inconceivable before the Internet and social media. Most people do not have the means, or perhaps inclination, to fact check the things that […]

This post was first published on Engaging Media, the website of the Lausanne Media Engagement Network. Oxford Dictionaries chose ‘post-truth’ as its Word of the Year for 2016. Editor Casper Grathwohl said, Fuelled by the rise of social media as a news source and a growing distrust of facts offered up by the establishment, post-truth […]

This article was first published in Culturewatch. © Tony Watkins, 2012. My discussion guide is here. Meryl Streep and Jim Broadbent in The Iron Lady. © 2011, Pathé Productions Ltd. Used by permission. An old lady in a headscarf is buying a pint of milk in a local shop. She’s surprised by the price of the milk, […]