Truth News.
Massive Announcement: OneSub is now TruthNews
Oh no, see. I did it already. I lied.
We need to be honest about what “truth” really means — especially in the context of things like news and AI where there’s a presumption of authority.
But truth is not an immutable object. It’s not a binary thing. It’s about honesty — not about facts.
Putting the word “Truth” in your brand name does not turn a dishonest person or brand into an honest.
It doesn’t matter whether that’s “TruthSocial” (Trump) or “TruthGPT” (Musk) or “TruthNews” (not really!).
“Truth” in a brand name is only ever ironic.
Writing the news is about five things: who, what, when, where & why. It is about telling people the facts… and often about giving them your opinion too.
When we do so in an honest way, we’re being truthful.
What most media does though — and this is where the rot sets in — is to obscure some of these things from the news cycle.
The most common obstruction we see in the “mainstream” media is obscuring the what. It’s the easiest thing to do. Some papers focus on some stories and bury or ignore others… while their counterparts on the other side of the isle focus on the other stories at the expense of the first.
This massaging of “what” is happening creates a reality-distortion field for people on the left and the right and pulls society apart. It is the first and most important thing that OneSub seeks to fix.
But more than that — beware people who sell themselves as those who will tell you the “truth” — like Trump and Musk particularly — as though they are some authority on what *you* should or should not believe.
When people start telling you that only they will tell you the truth it’s probably because they are being actively dishonest with one or more of those five things — and most commonly it’s the why.
Be very wary of any news that tries to tell you, too confidently, #why something has happened or been said. Journalists and editors have opinions of course, but they do not — in the end — know the minds of others. They can only project their own assumptions — and now they’re telling you why they believe something has happened or been said — not actually why. It is dishonest to mix the two — and it is definitely not the truth.
Providers of news, ai models and social media have a responsibility to be honest — and that is about giving equal weight to all the facts about all the stories, it’s about giving you all the perspectives and it’s about trusting your to make your own mind up from all the information available.
Truth is not about facts. It is about how we behave.
Beware anyone who tells you otherwise.