WASHINGTON – Richard Stengel, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, bluntly states the problem that has been worrying him, and should worry us all: “In a global information war, how does the truth win?”
The very idea that the truth won’t be triumphant would, until recently, have been heresy to Stengel, a former managing editor of Time magazine. But in the nearly three years since he joined the State Department, Stengel has seen the rise of what he calls a “post-truth” world, where the facts are sometimes overwhelmed by propaganda from Russia and the Islamic State.
“We like to think that truth has to battle itself out in the marketplace of ideas. Well, it may be losing in that marketplace today,” Stengel warned in an interview. “Simply having fact-based messaging is not sufficient to win the information war.”
Stengel poses an urgent question for journalists, technologists and, more broadly, for everyone living in free societies or aspiring to do so. How do we protect the essential resource of democracy – the truth – from the toxin of lies that surround it?
Stengel argues the U.S. government should sometimes protect citizens by exposing “weaponized information, false information” that is polluting the ecosystem. But ultimately, the defense of truth must be independent of a government that many people mistrust. “There are inherent dangers in having the government be the verifier of last resort,” he argued.