Dear Editor,

In Jamaica’s current political, media and communications context, where there appears to be an unprecedented surge of interest in verifying and ensuring factual accuracy, it is important to note that while facts and factual accuracy are critically important, truth is even more important.

We should appreciate that facts and truth are neither always equal nor identical. Even genuine, accurate facts, (data, information, statistics) are only a part of the whole story, or the whole truth.

It is good and right for media practitioners to engage in serious fact-finding exercises. This is the least they should do in every situation, as professional reporters and public commentators, whether they are clearly partisan or aspire to be objective.

To complete the communication cycle – to the best of their ability – they must now move to the next stage.

As a rule, news reporters should be concerned primarily with reporting the facts accurately. Major investigative journalists and commentators, on the other hand – again to the best of their ability – should extend their concerns to an appreciation and/or presentation of what is true or false about the facts.

Note, for example: To establish what is true about the fact that I may have “killed a man” – and whether I may be guilty of “murder” – it is necessary to go beyond the basic “facts” to discover what really happened and why.

Media practitioners should themselves not be as careless as they have often been with the facts, and with many of the conclusions drawn from their own presentation of “the facts”.

They should bear in mind that presenting or repeating factually inaccurate information, or even withholding information strategically does not automatically make one a “liar” – whether pathological or otherwise. To find the truth, we must ask and get accurate answers – from the heart – as to why?

Part of the problem, however, is that so many of us have no real interest in truth, as we prefer to believe the lies that make us comfortable, or to which we have become accustomed.

Carlton A Gordon

carltongor@gmail.com