Lani Watson’s The Right To Know
Lani Watson, a research fellow at Oxford in both Theology and Philosophy, wrote an important book last year called The Right to Know: Epistemic Rights and Why We Need Them. After learning about it in a recent article, I read it.
Here is my brief summary of her argument.
- Since humans have value, we have a human right to seek, receive and impart truthful information: our right to truth.
- Beyond what is prescribed by law, the people and organizations we transact with have corresponding moral duties to seek, receive and impart truthful information: the duty to truth.
- Our right to truth is increasingly being violated by those with a duty to truth, resulting in substantial damage to individuals and society.
- Our laws and institutions are not keeping pace with the widespread harm in our rapidly accelerating Information Age.
- Damage ranges from community leaders being disempowered by lies, to individuals and communities being disadvantaged by lies, and includes the resulting physical, psychological, emotional and sexual harm caused by lies.
- We are all subject to violations of this human right, and “ultimately, the crisis is one of life and death”.
While she touches on a variety of situations, including education, law, healthcare, media and government, her primary case is OxyContin. Purdue Pharma was found guilty of intentionally marketing OxyContin fraudulently and dishonestly as less addictive than other pain medications although their firm knew it was as addictive as heroin. She explains that Purdue lied, misinformed, ignored the truth and abused both the authority of doctors and their reputations for being truthful. And she argues that the law is still insufficient to punish those responsible (the Sacklers) fully or to protect the public from similar damage, quoting former Sen Arlen Specter (R-PA) describing the $634 million fine as “expensive licenses for criminal misconduct”.
The Story of Isaac & Shukree
About a week ago, the NYT had a story about two Americans who literally jumped off a boat in the remote Pacific and vanished due to conspiracy theories. Isaac was an impressionable 20-year-old who may have had some mental health issues, and Shukree was a 26-year-old married Chemistry PhD candidate. The captain of the boat also believed Covid was a government plot to subdue citizens, but he returned alive. There was a fourth man involved in transmitting the conspiracy theories both via YouTube and in person, and the NYT casts some blame in his direction, as well as unhelpfully blaming all of us in general.
“Most of us take part in a world that incentivizes sharing of misinformation and disinformation. On social media especially, the boundary between merely strange beliefs and true detachment from reality can blur. After so many hours of clicking and watching, the susceptible among us lose the ability to discern truth from fiction. When such alternate realities take hold, we dismiss the believers as delusional.”
To me, especially after considering Watson’s analysis, the two men presumed dead are victims of social media giants including YouTube. All four men went on social media to “do their own research” on Covid, and all were dangerously misinformed. Shukree and Isaac were loved by their families and are missed. They had value, and they had a right to the truth. YouTube had a moral duty not to subject them to the lies that would cost them their lives. But YouTube valued the revenue from spreading the lies more than they valued the lives of these two customers or any of the other thousands who died as a result of Covid misinformation conspiracy theories, like my friend and neighbor Dan.
When I first met Dan, he lied to me. I asked about the neighborhood, and he told me all sorts of horror stories, before I realized that he was making them up for fun. Obviously, he has a right to lie, just as I had a right to tell him to get vaccinated. Freedom of speech is protected in our Constitution. But that does not mean that all lying is legal, nor that the current levels of lying are either moral or sustainable. When I last saw Dan, on oxygen, he lied to me again, telling me that the doctors were wrong in their diagnosis and that he would be fine soon.
When we go to YouTube to learn how to replace a light fixture, we are entering into a transactional relationship with YouTube, where we learn something of value and they present us with ads that bring them revenue. As such, we have a reasonable expectation that we will receive something valuable from them and not be lied to in a way that endangers our lives. YouTube has a moral obligation to check whether their video is causing electrocution and, if so, to stop displaying it or any other videos from that maker.
Media’s Moral Duties
A year ago, 82% of Fox News and 97% of OANN viewers mistakenly believed that the 2020 election was stolen. As news networks, they are responsible that their viewers are so misinformed. These news networks fail in their moral duty to truth, violate their viewers’ human rights to truth and profit by victimizing their viewers. Trump’s elevation to power, the rise in hateful right-wing extremism and the insurrection were all fueled by these networks’ and complicit social media companies’ moral failures and lies.
When viewers like my Mom watch Tucker Carlson spread lies, hate and conspiracy theories, they believe him. She has been watching TV since it was invented, and the news has been a reliable way to learn about the world for most of her life. She doesn’t understand the Information Age model of ‘anger-tainment’ and doesn’t believe me when I say Tucker is a liar any more than she would believe if I said Walter Cronkite lied about the moon landing. When she mimics Tucker’s views in public and is shunned by many of her old friends, she is confused, sad and isolated. Tucker is ruining her last years on earth by lying to her for money.
We Only Get the Rights We Demand
And media firms are not the only corporations that lie. Why build a better mousetrap when a misleading ad campaign will be more profitable? Why risk having controls on gun sales when Republican Senators will lie about mass shootings for campaign donations? Why stop polluting when a social media campaign can raise public doubt on the climate crisis?
Unfortunately, the problem has gone far beyond misleading advertising or even creating whole business models based on lies. A billionaire can single-handedly cause a global resurgence in anti-semitism, bigotry, violence and authoritarianism, by buying a media giant and making it even more immoral. There’s little penalty for polluting our public forum with lies, but plenty of profits. Lies now threaten both global Democracy and the future of a livable world.
No doubt a few in the comments will defend the rights of the powerful to lie. But why do the rich have the right to lie and no duty to the truth? Why do we have to suffer all the consequences of those lies, even as we pay them by watching their ads? Are we so worthless that we have no right to the truth?
This is our Democracy, and we can vote against lying for profit. This is our blue-green world, and it has value to us. We live here, and we have value. Our future has value. We have a basic human right to truth, and they have a corresponding duty to truth. Our civilization will continue to degrade and our planet will burn, until we demand our right to truth be recognized and protected by law.