The truth fights back

ONE of the more fascinating things I observed as they counted the votes in the 2020 US presidential election was the manner in which non-partisan network anchors and journalists started calling President Donald Trump a liar -- right there, live on air, while the votes were being counted.

Some were even from Fox News – perhaps the most Trump-friendly mainstream network there was.

I’ll confess: Having been in and around the media for some two decades, it still made me a little uncomfortable. In essence, media aren’t really supposed to behave this way, or make comments like that.

In many senses, it was highly unusual. The thing is though, these are hardly “usual” times.

Trump is an unprecedented phenomenon in so many ways, and his unprecedentedness has produced a slew of more and more unprecedented things.

On an emotional level, what I felt watching these news anchors take this stand was akin to watching a dam that had been overstrained and near breaking point for so very long, finally burst free.

I am quite convinced that we live in a “post-truth” world – where essentially the facts now play second fiddle to spin. It is a world where, as they say, a lie can run round the world before the truth has its boots on (the first recorded writer of this concept probably being Jonathan Swift in 1710).

In no way do I believe that this is how things should be, but I do very much believe that this is how things have become.

We could write books on why this is so, talking about things like echo chambers, how telling people what they want to hear will get you further than telling them the truth, and so on.

Basically, to quite an extent in this day and age, if you are adept at manipulating emotions and narratives, you no longer have to let facts stand in your way.

The election of Joe Biden will not make this go away overnight. He received some 75 million votes in total. Trump received 70 million. Almost half of the people who voted in this election were perfectly fine with Donald Trump’s relationship with the truth – a relationship that was probably as faithful as his relationship with women.

All that said, Biden’s victory was still undoubtedly a sign that things (for now at least) were moving in the right direction.

More than that, it was a sign that when you fight the truth, the truth will eventually fight back.

The post-truth era must be a particularly interesting and challenging one for journalists – whose profession revolves entirely around information and facts.

I can only imagine what it was like for them to endure four years of Trump’s spinning, twisting and obfuscating – all the while having to maintain a veneer of impartiality.

It appears that “impartiality” has its limits, and when Trump started making bald-faced, totally unsubstantiated claims about voter fraud, the media could no longer even pretend to be on the fence – there was blood in the air, and they went in for the kill.

Interestingly, it was not only the media, but a fair number of prominent Republicans who started insisting that Trump either produce evidence or stop making such incendiary accusations.

Beyond giving a glimmer of hope that not all Republicans have completely lost their mind on the Trump bandwagon, this phenomenon was interesting in a few other regards.

Those of us in the proverbial “Third World” are no stranger to accusations of voter fraud. Hell, in our part of the world, it’s barely an election if someone isn’t accusing someone else of cheating!

I guess it’s really not the same for Americans. It turns out that to question the integrity of America’s precious democratic process – a bedrock of its national ethos – was nothing short of sacrilege.

When Trump bit at that integrity, a big chunk of America bit back.

One of my favourites was when Trump had a press conference, from the White House itself no less, to openly insinuate that there were fraudulent mail-in votes, and more than one network literally cut him off.

On CNBC, they cut the audio, and the anchor said simply: “Well, we’re interrupting this because what the President of the United States is saying, in large part, is absolutely untrue ... We’re not gonna allow it to keep going because it’s not true ... There is not a scintilla of evidence that this is true. None. There’s only words here, no truth.”

The CNBC anchor, who had an earpiece in his ear in which they were piping the audio live from the press conference then said: “If you could take him out of my ear please.”

Yet another mic drop moment. One that could have been applied to so many instances, and to so many words that came out of Trump’s mouth.

In conclusion, I think there are two main takeaways here from the US election, especially for people in my line of work.

Firstly, as the saying goes: there are three things that cannot long remain hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

You can only pull the rubber band of lies, spin, and manipulation so far, before it snaps and hits you back in the face. People will self-correct eventually.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, they are not likely in the short term to self-correct completely.

As we will undoubtedly be reflecting on for a long time to come, the difference between 70 and 75 million is nowhere as big as we would like it to be.

Those 70 million Trump voters are a clear indication that the post-truth world is alive and well, and I believe many will take Trump’s success (even though it did not bring him across the finish line this time) as proof that spin is more important than facts.

Two wrongs don’t make a right however, and I will never advise anyone to twist and turn facts just to serve selfish or political purposes.

I think we can however, take it upon ourselves to learn the importance of making emotional connections, of understanding how to most effectively reach people and touch their hearts.

As most people in my line of work already understand well, we are well past the time (if ever a time existed) where facts and figures will be the primary determinants of what influences people’s decision making.

This doesn’t mean we should ignore or twist facts. It does mean however, that being communications savvy in this day and age means understanding all the modern nuances of mass messaging – the power of memes, what makes something viral, how to wrap facts in the right narrative, and the very human psychology underlying it all.

Coming back to Malaysia, it simply has to be said that this fourfold increase in the allocation for government propaganda arm the Special Affairs Department or Jasa in Budget 2021 is truly preposterous – especially given that we are in the midst of a pandemic.

From 2011-2017, the Barisan Naisonal government allocated somewhere between RM20mil and RM25mil for this unit. The Pakatan Harapan government eliminated it completely in 2018. This year, the Perikatan Nasional government wants to bring this unit back with a budget of RM81mil, nearly four times the amount in 2017.

It has been said multiple times over that this money could have been put to so much better use. People’s livelihoods are all tanking because of this pandemic, and frontliners are becoming increasingly exhausted, having been worked to the bone to try and keep the rest of us safe.

How on earth can it be conscionable to give propagandist cybertroopers so much money at such a time?

Someone like me could never say that communications is not important.

But the only type of marketer that tells you the quality of your product doesn’t matter, is a marketer trying to make as much money off you as possible, without caring about how well your product sells in the end.

To that end, I would advise the government to focus and invest more in improving their services and product, rather than trying to cover up inadequacies and feed feudal cybertroopers via institutions like Jasa.

As no stranger to the world of political communication, my considered opinion is that with better management and less cronyism, a comprehensive and effective communications plan for the entire federal government can be conceived and executed for about 5-9% of the existing budget for Jasa, or less.

With even that amount for money, I guarantee that we could at least achieve better communications regarding clear and unambiguous movement control order rules and regulations, for a start.

The type of people who run units like Jasa will sell you the same type of products that were sold to Donald Trump – flattering and ego-stroking, but ultimately delusional.

Trump did manage to fool a lot of the electorate, but ultimately not enough to cross the finish line. I would hate for Perikatan to make the same mistake.

NATHANIEL TAN is a strategic communications consultant. He can be reached at [e-mail].