The truth is not out there

I started subscribing to the International Herald Tribune again. I had let my daily newspaper lapse for a year, then some people from Hong Kong got on the phone, convinced me to re-enlist, offered me extra months free, a gift, blah blah blah. An offer I couldn’t refuse.

Then I realized something about reading print newspapers. They somehow seem more “real” than news gathered from the Internet. And I don’t just mean the fact that you’re handling pulp.

In lieu of the Trib, I had tried various online apps. I signed up for the New York Times app (www.nytimes.com), but found — surprise! — that it was no longer free. The online site used to cost nothing with limitless viewing; now the Times has decided: no more pro bono; it charges for online subscriptions (as any newspaper would).

As a taste, you can view 20 pages/stories per month for free. And that’s it. You could be in the middle of scrolling down a lengthy New York Times Magazine profile on Tiger Woods, and a nasty little window will pop up to remind you, “Hey, cheapskate. We said ‘20 pages.’ You wanna read more? Pay a subscription!”

I also tried the Herald Tribune app for iPad (visit iTunes or iht.com), but it’s also limited, only letting you view a handful of stories. But it does have video.

But here’s what’s really weird about reading newspapers online: I find I don’t trust them as much. Not that the facts are any less real or fact-checked; it’s just that they exist as part of a matrix of information that is — instinct tells us — often contradictory and untrustworthy.

The Internet is a grab bag of fact and fiction, good and bad. It falls upon us to choose what sources we place our trust in: whether it’s Huffington Post or Fox News online. So theoretically, we, as consumers, can select what we feel gives us an accurate reflection of the world. It’s a grand, empowering information engine! At our fingertips!

And yet… Somehow everything I read on the web feels essentially tainted. Like I don’t know what’s really “real.” Take a respected site like Wikipedia, which was conceived as “the people’s encyclopedia,” gathering together submissions and citations from countless people around the world. Millions visit there daily to nail down pesky little facts or answer trivia questions. Then you learn that Sarah Palin supporters were trying to sneak online to the “Paul Revere” Wikipedia page and change crucial details of the entry to conform with Ms. Palin’s recent gobbledygook uttered at a Boston press conference. (She had been visiting the Old North Church; when asked by the media about Paul Revere, she started prattling on about “bells ringing, firing those guns” to warn the British, when any American fifth grader is taught Revere lit lanterns in the Old North Church to warn American colonists; no guns or bells in sight.) Anyway, the Palinistas were caught and the Wikipedia entries were deleted, but it makes you wonder how much is fabricated online.

There’s a nagging sense, reading online news sources, that there is no such thing as “the truth”: that the very medium — the Internet — offers an endless stream of competing versions of reality. You can be scrolling down a story about Japan’s ailing nuclear reactors, fully aware that other media accounts a click away will contradict what you’re reading. And if that doesn’t convince you the world is a very uncertain place, check out the demented screeds that inevitably follow any posted story — yup, the “Comments” section is where one really starts to stare into the abyss online. Here is where “world wide web” starts to feel less like a unifying weave, and more like a tangled morass of confusion, misinformation and prejudice. If that’s the web we’re supposed to be relying on for the truth, then, well… the truth is definitely not out there. 

Not that print newspapers are always ster-ling true or gospel perfect. We know even the New York Times has had its fair share of Pinocchios on the payroll — folks who really should be banging out novels instead of journalism. But for the most part, a newspaper feels more real because it’s edited content. It has a viewpoint. I know, I know: the news is supposed to be “objective”; but anyone in journalism knows the mere selection — or non-selection — of news items bespeaks an editorial viewpoint. So when I read the Trib, I realize there’s a liberal tilt involved; it’s basically an international version of the New York Times, after all. But ultimately, the Times is owned by large corporations, so you could say there’s a counterbalancing conservative voice behind even those day-to-day selections. These are the competing versions of “the truth” — left and right — that ultimately result in a daily newspaper: I can at least identify them, understand them.

But what about what’s online? I couldn’t even begin to identify “the truth” out there. I wouldn’t know where to begin to look. “The center cannot hold,” wrote Yeats in “The Second Coming.” That’s because online, there is no center. In cyberspace, no one can hear you scream. Or fact-check.

I’m aware that my preference for printed newspapers is old-fashioned. It’s a generational thing, maybe. But it’s also a physical thing: the fact that humans still stay up most nights putting a newspaper together (people like me and my colleagues), the fact that there is care taken with most paragraphs and the wording of most sentences, is somehow reassuring. It speaks of a guiding hand — the hand of journalism, if you want to call it that.

And the fact that the print newspaper is a separate entity from that teeming morass online — well, the farther away the better, I say. Put it this way: a newspaper is a record, a document, something meant to convey a certain moment in time. Whereas the Internet is… bits of data with no firm connection to the real world. Digital manipulation is the rule of the web, not documentation. Time is irrelevant. Proof: people still collect newspaper headlines commemorating famous events, such as “MAN LANDS ON MOON” or “NINOY AQUINO SHOT.” It tells them about what was happening in the world on a certain date. No one ever holds up a website page. It wouldn’t prove a thing.

Plus, let’s face it: it’s just not as much fun doing the New York Times crossword online.